| 12:01 |
: I’m watching Hook. RU-FI-O! RU-FI-O!
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| 12:02 |
: Also as a note, since I’ve been talking Chapman on Twitter for like 12 hours, all Chapman questions will be answered with non-sequiturs.
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| 12:02 |
: I actually like Hook.
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| 12:02 |
: No, it’s not great, but it’s fine.
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| 12:02 |
: Who made Ryan Schimpf Barry Bonds?
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| 12:03 |
: TEH STEROIDS~!!!!!!oneoneoneonetwothree
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Episode 670
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books — one of them not very miserable. He’s also the deeply unimportant guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.
This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.
Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.
You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.
Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 7 min play time.)
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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
St. Louis at New York NL | 19:10 ET
Martinez (114.1 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Syndergaard (111.1 IP, 59 xFIP-)
Among the league’s 93 qualified starters, Carlos Martinez and Noah Syndergaard have recorded the third-highest and actual highest average fastball velocities. Who’s produced the second-highest fastball velocity? Click here to learn his identity. Alternatively, click here to learn your own identity by way of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
Cleveland at Baltimore | 13:35 ET
Kluber (129.0 IP, 78 xFIP-) vs. Worley (51.1 IP, 104 xFIP-)
Vance Worley isn’t the precise name one expects to find headlining what is allegedly the day’s most compelling game. The score produced by the author’s haphazardly calculated algorithm for this particular contest, however, has less to do with the identity of Baltimore’s starter and more with its current place in the standings. No team is perched more precariously on the knife edge of postseason qualification than the Baltimore Orioles, which club features both divisional and wild-card odds in the vicinity of 50%. For more on that, read the author’s tortuous explanation of NERD’s ongoing playoff adjustment below. For less on that, do anything else that you want.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Miami | 19:10 ET
deGrom (102.0 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (113.2 IP, 53 xFIP-)
Given where each club currently resides within this site’s playoff-odds projections, it’s probable that either the Mets or Marlins will qualify for some manner of postseason appearance. It’s improbable, on the other hand, that both will qualify. In this way, tonight’s game resembles that scene from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome where two men enter and then only one man leaves. How it differs from that 1985 film is that, instead of taking place in a lawless, post-apocalyptic Australian hellscape, it’ll actually just be in Miami.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
McCarthy (16.0 IP, 59 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (109.1 IP, 96 xFIP-)
Left-hander Clayton Kershaw last pitched on June 26th. Brandon McCarthy first pitched on July 3rd. Kershaw has produced the lowest adjusted xFIP (52 xFIP-) among all qualified starters this year. McCarthy, over his three starts, has produced a nearly identical figure (59 xFIP-). Coincidence? Yes. Of course. Kershaw and McCarthy are two distinct people, often photographed in each other’s company — or near proximity, if nothing else. The have difference faces and bodies. And dreams. They likely have different dreams, too.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.
The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.
Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) received a future value grade of 45 or less from Dan Farnsworth during the course of his organizational lists and who (b) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo, and John Sickels, and also who (c) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on a midseason list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.
In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.
Why he appears here now, though, is because of a different leaderboard on which he’s recently appeared — namely, the secret and proprietary one the author utilizes to track each minor league’s top fringe batters. Through his first 20 plate appearances this year — which also represent the first 20 plate appearances of his career in affiliated baseball — Davis has recorded a walk, two strikeouts, and four extra bases (essentially, extra bases minus hits). That’s a 20% extra-base rate versus only a 10% strikeout rate. For context, between 2011 and -15, only 43 batters produced even a positive differential between extra-base rate and strikeout rate — out of 335 qualified batters total during that interval.
Here are the top-10 batters by that measure between 2011 and 2015:
| Name | Team | PA | XBs | K | XB% | K% | Diff | wRC+ | |
| 1 | Albert Pujols | – – – | 3120 | 615 | 332 | 19.7% | 10.6% | 9.1% | 127 |
| 2 | Edwin Encarnacion | Blue Jays | 2961 | 657 | 413 | 22.2% | 13.9% | 8.2% | 143 |
| 3 | David Ortiz | Red Sox | 2804 | 636 | 412 | 22.7% | 14.7% | 8.0% | 148 |
| 4 | Adrian Beltre | Rangers | 3102 | 582 | 352 | 18.8% | 11.3% | 7.4% | 132 |
| 5 | Jose Bautista | Blue Jays | 2921 | 647 | 460 | 22.1% | 15.7% | 6.4% | 154 |
| 6 | Miguel Cabrera | Tigers | 3233 | 683 | 480 | 21.1% | 14.8% | 6.3% | 170 |
| 7 | Nolan Arenado | Rockies | 1646 | 336 | 240 | 20.4% | 14.6% | 5.8% | 104 |
| 8 | Victor Martinez | Tigers | 2389 | 336 | 207 | 14.1% | 8.7% | 5.4% | 125 |
| 9 | Robinson Cano | – – – | 3398 | 597 | 452 | 17.6% | 13.3% | 4.3% | 136 |
| 10 | Aramis Ramirez | – – – | 2654 | 460 | 349 | 17.3% | 13.1% | 4.2% | 122 |
| Average | – – – | – – – | – – – | – – – | 19.6% | 13.1% | 6.5% | 136 |
That’s a collection of basically the league’s top batters. The bottom of the list, meanwhile, includes most of the league’s worst ones. A combination of extra bases and strikeouts serves as a good proxy for success — and each has the benefit of stabilizing long before the typical slash stats.
It’s improbable, of course, that Davis will continue hitting like one of the top batters, literally, of the last half-decade. He needn’t do anything of the sort, of course, to offer some value. Madison Bumgarner and Zack Greinke, for example, have both produced more than three extra wins over the last five years on the basis of their offensive contributions alone — each while batting roughly 50% worse than a league-average hitter.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Washington | 12:05 ET
Urias (36.1 IP, 91 xFIP-) vs. Strasburg (114.2 IP, 75 xFIP-)
The best way to preserve and nurture a young basil plant is to cut the stem just above the second set of true leaves (also called a node). This will create a bifurcation of the stem, essentially doubling the output of the plant and leading to the “bushy” look customary of basil. Repeating this process every week or so nearly guarantees the cultivation of a healthy, productive plant.
The best way to preserve and nurture a young pitcher is a complete mystery. They don’t have stems, they don’t have true leaves, and “pruning” them is an offense punishable in a court of law. Julio Urias, who’s excellent and also young, recorded his last appearance in relief for Triple-A Oklahoma City after a series of promising starts for the Dodgers. Presumably to preserve his health, is why. Will it have the intended effect? Perhaps. One can only answer in probabilities — and even then, through research darkly.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
Los Angeles NL at Washington | 19:05 ET
Norris (86.1 IP, 96 xFIP-) vs. Gonzalez (103.1 IP, 96 xFIP-)
Norris has been fantastic over his first three starts for the Dodgers, recording strikeout and walk rates of 27.3% and 4.6%, respectively — the differential of which (22.7 points) would represent the sixth-best mark among baseball’s 96 qualified starters. The relatively quick pace at which they become stable, is why the author cites those metrics as a proxy for Norris’s brief career in Los Angeles. Because he’s a frightened and scurrying creature, is why the author does almost everything else.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.
Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.
Most Highly Rated Game
New York NL at Chicago NL | 19:05 ET
Syndergaard (105.2 IP, 59 xFIP-) vs. Arrieta (114.1 IP, 82 xFIP-)
Typically, the author would abuse his role as custodian of this daily exercise and assign a sufficiently high discretionary NERD score to a top pitching prospect making his debut — such as Washington’s Reynaldo Lopez is expected to make tonight — so as to render the corresponding game score the day’s highest. Why I haven’t today is on account of two reasons. One, because the success that Lopez experienced at the Double-A level this year didn’t translate to his first (and only) couple starts at Triple-A. Whatever Lopez’s physical virtues, his inability to record significantly more strikeouts than walks in the International League doesn’t bode particularly well for his major-league debut tonight. And for two, because the prospect of a Syndergaard-Arrieta rencontre is a compelling one, for reasons that likely needn’t be catalogued for the benefit of one who’s somehow made his or her way to the end of a paragraph riddled with obscurities.
Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.
