Episode 587
Kiley McDaniel is both (a) the lead prospect analyst for FanGraphs and also (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he discusses some recently promoted prospects (Gregory Bird, John Lamb, Luis Severino), a curiously successful one (Zachary Godley), and the implications of prep-showcase season on the 2016 draft.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 17 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
San Francisco at St. Louis | 20:09 ET
Heston (141.0 IP, 98 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (138.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
Of buying a pet, George Carlin said that what one is actually doing is “purchasing a small tragedy” — owing, that is, to the inevitable future death of that same animal. With regard to the San Francisco Giants, one finds a different sort of scenario, composed not of one inevitable — but two equally possible — outcomes. No other team currently possesses odds of reaching the divisional series closer to 50% than San Francisco*. What one finds, then, when observing the Giants is a group of men equally likely to experience the sort of ecstatic pleasure which attends that moment in which all of one’s efforts have been justified — either that, or the hollow misery which accompanies that other type of moment, in which one is compelled to realize that this great investment of time and energy has occurred to no greater end.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

*By the season-to-date-stats methodology.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Washington at San Francisco | 16:05 ET
Ross (49.2 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Bumgarner (154.1 IP, 80 xFIP-)
As one grows older and feels more acutely the baleful gravity of life, he’s more liable to begrudge those who experience success without any of the attendant struggle. One might expect, in light of this tendency, to find that right-hander Joe Ross has become the object of universal derision. Consider: over the first 49.2 innings of his career as a major leaguer, Ross has produced decidedly better-than-average fielding-independent and run-prevention numbers — and, with the exception of his most recent appearance, has conceded no more than three runs in any of his eight starts. He has, unlike the founders of Kansas, found his way to the stars without difficulties. And yet, a brief examination by the author of his interior self, reveals no contempt at all for Joe Ross. Both his Nationals and also Madison Bumgarner’s Giants currently possess divisional odds somewhere between 20% and 50% (using the season-to-date stats methodology).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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 AL at Toronto | 13:07 ET
Tanaka (99.2 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Estrada (117.2 IP, 117 xFIP-)
Toronto right-hander Marco Estrada, acquired recently from Milwaukee, has recorded among the lowest park-adjusted ERAs this season relative to his park-adjusted xFIP — trailing only Zack Greinke and Scott Kazmir by that measure, actually. “Is it a product of fortune,” one wonders, “or of skill?” The answer, as in most cases, is likely “both.” It’s the distribution of two that’s relevant — and the precise terms of which, like personal happiness or a father’s love, continue to remain just beyond arm’s reach.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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 AL at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Nova (46.0 IP, 109 xFIP-) vs. Price (161.0 IP, 84 xFIP-)
There’s a barbershop on Rue Beaubien in Montreal, very close to where the author is currently staying in that city, that’s full perpetually of young Latin American men and which features — somehow also perpetually — a live broadcast either of a Blue Jays or Yankees game on the shop’s large flat-screen television. How the proprietors of this business have influenced the space-time continuum in such a way so as to facilitate constant live feeds of the two aforementioned clubs — this is an unsolved mystery. Of less mystery is whether, when walking past the shop tonight, the author will find the aforementioned flat-screen tuned to the Yankees-Blue Jays game. Indications are that he will.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Episode 586
Jonah Keri is a contributor to Grantland, author of real books (including, most recently, Up, Up, and Away regarding the Montreal Expos), and also apparently a sometime guest on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. What else he is, is both (a) a native of Montreal and also (b) a guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 38 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Washington at San Francisco | 22:15 ET
Strasburg (68.0 IP, 84 xFIP-) vs. Vogelsong (105.2 IP, 120 xFIP-)
Yesterday, for the first time, the author endeavored to participate in one of the daily fantasy contests such as those offered by DraftKings and FanDuel — a practice which, one notes, bears a strong and (welcome) resemblance to gambling. Gambling is not unlike drinking insofar as (a) it yields great pleasure in moderation but also (b) if you indulge in it to excess, your wife says to sleep on the couch. Impossible to ignore is how compelling a baseball game can become in proportion to the amount of one’s hard-earned he has wagered on the result of that game. It’s probably accurate to say, for example, that I watched Danny Salazar’s start last night with the sort of intensity typical of a terrier monitoring a backyard for squirrels or a pubescent heterosexual male monitoring any vaguely female human. Writing for RotoGraphs today, Brad Johnson suggests that Stephen Strasburg represents a strong investment in daily-fantasy play. The haphazardly derived algorithm which produces the NERD game scores here also appears to favor the Washington-San Francisco contest.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

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Note: the author recently employed new restrictions regarding eligibility for inclusion. Any player is excluded from eligibility whose name has appeared among the midseason prospect lists of Baseball America, Keith Law, or John Sickels.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a couple 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 both (a) absent from the most current iteration of Kiley McDaniel’s top-200 prospect list and (b) absent from the midseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Keith Law, and John Sickels, and also (c) not currently playing in the majors. Players appearing on any of McDaniel’s updated prospect lists or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Washington at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
Zimmermann (141.1 IP, 102 xFIP-) vs. Kershaw (154.0 IP, 55 xFIP-)
The Nationals and Dodgers, both currently situated deep within the throes of postseason contention, have split the first two games of their important series at the latter’s home park. While, in a literal sense, the two clubs have actually participated in that pair of contests and thousands have gathered to observe them, the results have produced roughly the same effect as an alternate scenario in which neither game was played at all. Indeed, everyone involved could merely have stayed home — or dined out with friends at one of Los Angeles County’s excellent restaurants — and found the two clubs occupying basically the same place as today. Which, that awful reality noted, one notes furthermore that today’s game actually will produce a series winner, thus rendering the entire endeavor something slightly better than totally meaningless.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Radio.

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