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
Toronto at Detroit | 19:10 ET
Sanchez (72.1 IP, 79 xFIP-) vs. Boyd (16.0 IP, 93 xFIP-)
On the strength both of excellent statistical indicators and also improved arm speed, left-hander Matt Boyd finished atop the author’s arbitrarily calculated Fringe Five Scoreboard last season. Boyd’s minor-league dominance didn’t “translate seamlessly,” however, to the major leagues: over roughly 60 innings with Toronto and then Detroit, he produced an adjusted xFIP about 30% worse than league average while actually allowing runs at an even faster pace than the fielding-independent numbers would suggest. Not a classic beginning to his career, in other words. Boyd has now recorded two starts for Detroit this season, however, and the results are positive. In 11.1 innings, the 25-year-old has produced a 10:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and overall better-than-average fielding-independent numbers. Of some note, too: 69.9% of his pitches have been strikes, the second-highest figure among pitchers to record 10-plus innings as a starter (behind only Danny Duffy).

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Detroit.

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Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.

The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.

Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.

Below are the 30th- through 21st-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.

But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
• A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.

30. New York Yankees
Main Broadcasters: John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.5, 1.7, 2.0

Representative Reader Comment
“As a Yankee fan, I am thankful for MLB At Bat.”

Notes
It’s difficult to find any feedback among the readers’ comments that doesn’t merely resort, at some point, to an ad hominen attack on the Yankees’ radio team. Which, that’s unfortunate. But also: probably indicative of the sort of frustration a FanGraphs reader might have attempting to comsume a Yankees game by way of the radio feed.

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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
Tampa Bay at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Archer (66.1 IP, 89 xFIP-) vs. Ray (57.0 IP, 92 xFIP-)
In 2013, Arizona’s Robbie Ray appeared several times among the Fringe Five. What qualified him for inclusion within that weekly exercise were his excellent fielding-independent numbers. Over 148.2 innings between High-A and Double-A, the left-hander (then a Nationals prospect) produced one of the top strikeout rates among minor-league starters — ahead, for example, of Archie Bradley and Lance McCullers. That was encouraging. What rendered him eligible for the Five, however, was his omission from any of the industry’s notable top-100 lists. The reason why, it appears? A lack of arm speed. Ray possessed merely average fastball velocity. Now, however, that’s no longer the case.

Regard, the top-five average four-seam velocities among pitchers who’ve recorded 50-plus innings:

Average Four-Seam Fastball Velocity, Left-Handed Starters

Name	Team	IP	vFA
Robbie Ray	D-backs	57.0	93.5
Carlos Rodon	White Sox	63.1	92.9
Martin Perez	Rangers	72.1	92.9
Clayton Kershaw	Dodgers	92.2	92.8
Matt Moore	Rays	62.2	92.7

Minimum 50 innings pitched.

Ray, who’s also passed through the Detroit system en route to Arizona, is now among the hardest-throwing left-handed starters in baseball, and he’s recording numbers commensurate with the stuff.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Tampa Bay.

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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
New York NL at Miami | 13:10 ET
Harvey (60.1 IP, 101 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (32.2 IP, 88 xFIP-)
Child prodigy and Ohio native August Fagerstrom explored recently for the benefit of these pages both how (a) the Marlins and Jose Fernandez himself had planned this spring for the right-hander to adopt a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach in 2016, but then also how (b) Fernandez had produced almost identical numbers so far in 2016 as he had in previous campaigns. In Fernandez’s lone start since Fagerstrom’s piece, however, Fernandez exhibited a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach.

Regard, an illustrative table:

Jose Fernandez, Pitching (More) to Contact?

Dates	GS	IP	Zone%	K%	BB%	GB%
4/6 to 5/26	10	60.2	49.8%*	36.7%	10.2%	38.4%
5/31	1	7.0	54.6%*	27.3%	0.0%	60.0%

*League average for starters is 48.1%.

One, so motivated, might consider monitoring Fernandez’s approach this game. To monitor it and ask a questions like, “Is he throwing more or less than 50% of his pitches in the zone?” And also: “Is he inducing ground balls on more like 40% or more like 60% of his balls in play?” And also: “By using my time in this way, am I endeavoring to pursue happiness or ignoring my obligations to liberate others from suffering or both or neither?”

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: New York NL.

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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
Toronto at Boston | 16:05 ET
Stroman (74.2 IP, 91 xFIP-) vs. Wright (69.2 IP, 100 xFIP-)
The rules of baseball dictate that, at any given time, a team is permitted to field only eight players plus a pitcher — and, in the case of the American League, an extra “designated” hitter. Given those particular limitations, one is surprised to see the most current iteration of this site’s WAR leaderboard for the last 30 days:

Batter WAR Leaderboard, Last 30 Days

	Name	Team	PA	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+	BsR	Off	Def	WAR
1	Ben Zobrist	Cubs	109	.418	.509	.648	211	0.6	15.1	1.8	2.1
2	Marcell Ozuna	Marlins	116	.406	.448	.689	204	-0.1	14.3	1.6	2.0
3	Mookie Betts	Red Sox	133	.322	.391	.669	179	1.0	13.5	1.2	2.0
4	Mike Trout	Angels	118	.319	.449	.532	173	2.3	12.5	1.6	1.9
5	David Ortiz	Red Sox	112	.371	.446	.845	233	-1.1	16.5	-2.6	1.8
6	Kyle Seager	Mariners	118	.400	.458	.629	196	-0.1	13.3	0.3	1.8
7	Ian Desmond	Rangers	118	.372	.390	.593	161	2.4	10.9	2.5	1.8
8	Xander Bogaerts	Red Sox	134	.363	.403	.548	156	-0.2	8.6	3.2	1.7
9	Corey Seager	Dodgers	125	.310	.352	.612	161	-0.3	8.8	3.4	1.7
10	Jackie Bradley Jr.	Red Sox	107	.374	.467	.714	212	0.3	14.3	-2.1	1.6

Four Boston players, is what one finds here — despite, as mentioned above, how a club is allowed to deploy only nine hitters in any particular game. Not only have the Red Sox deployed certain players with sufficient regularity to produce runs in volume, but four of those players have produced runs mostly better than anyone else. All four of those Boston players are likely to appear in this game — which the reader can watch or not watch at his or her discretion.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Boston.

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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, and John Sickels, and also who (c) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on an updated prospect 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.

Greg Allen, CF, Cleveland (Profile)
Allen debuted among the Five proper last week as a result not merely of his promising statistical indicators and strong collection of tools, but also for the manner in which his profile, in its entirely, caused — and continues to cause — the present author’s intuitive faculties to become illuminated. Certain readers might suggest that the author is working here merely on the promise of a “hunch.” This is impossible, of course: a brief examination of the literature reveals that the only demographic capable of channeling “hunches” are hard-boiled television police detectives burdened with the responsibility of bringing the plot of a weekly procedural show to its final act. No, what the author has experienced more closely resembles certain of the qualities described by F.C. Happold in Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology in the chapter regarding characteristics of mystical states. Whatever the precise vehicle, one finds that Allen’s past week has been excellent. Over his last 32 plate appearances, the 23-year-old center fielder has produced a a 6:5 walk-to-strikeout ratio, nearly a .200 isolated-power mark, and a 4-for-4 stolen-base record.

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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
Seattle at Texas | 20:05 ET
Walker (54.1 IP, 90 xFIP-) vs. Darvish (5.0 IP, 38 xFIP-)
Darvish returned this past Saturday from a Tommy John procedure and the subsequent rehab, recording his first major-league appearance since August of 2014. The results were almost embarrassingly positive. The right-hander produced a 7:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against just 19 batters over 5.0 innings while also posting an average fastball velocity more than 1 mph harder than his previously established levels. With a view towards best representing the sort of pleasures facilitated by Yu Darvish, the remainder of this brief entry will be delivered by means of video footage — a medium the reader will recognize as easier to consume and largely better than dumb words.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Seattle.

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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
Los Angeles NL at Chicago NL | 14:20 ET
Urias (2.2 IP, 192 xFIP-) vs. Hendricks (55.1 IP, 84 xFIP-)
The left-handed Urias’s major-league debut was a success by no measure, really. He didn’t prevent runs particularly well, nor do the fielding-indepedent numbers suggest he really ought to have prevented runs particularly well. On the other hand, one finds that Urias’s start also represents the best one recorded by a pitcher under 20 over the last decade. That it’s also the only such start might constitute a “fly in the ointment” so far as that particular distinction is concerned. But that’s what happens with ointments. Flies are always attempting to enter and remain inside them. One must be vigilant regarding his or her ointment. Protect it from flies. This, if nothing else, is what we’ve learned from Julio Urias.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Chicago NL.

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Episode 657
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio he chronicles the stateside career of the recently DFA’d Alex Guerrero, explores the differences (or lack thereof) between the 2015 and -16 Boston Red Sox, and — as part of the Practical Analytics series — identifies the five tools for assessing one’s neighbors.

This episode of the program is 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 44 min play time.)

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