Episode 575
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio, during which edition he presupposes that everyone is abiding by reason.

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 47 min play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

12:00

:

12:00

:

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Los Angeles NL at Chicago NL | 20:05 ET
Kershaw (93.0 IP, 57 xFIP-) vs. Wada (29.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
In his collection of aphorisms The Trouble with Being Born, the spiritually embattled and now also dead Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran writes “The more gifted a man is, the less progress he makes on the spiritual level. Talent is an obstacle to the inner life.” Granting, for a moment, the truth of Cioran’s utterance, one is compelled to reason that left-hander Clayton Kershaw lacks much in the way of said inner life — owing, that is, to the flagrancy of his talents. This season, for example, he’s produced thus far both the highest swinging-strike and also overall strikeout rate of his career. Also, somehow, his average fastball velocity remains largely identical to the figures he recorded over each of the past seven years — this, despite the fact that pitchers as a population tend to lose about 0.3 to 0.5 mph each year. Empty, is what he must be on the inside. Empty and hollow. Like a big human kettledrum.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 574
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 guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 2 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
Detroit at New York AL | 13:05 ET
Sanchez (91.0 IP, 95 xFIP-) vs. Tanaka (43.1 IP, 71 xFIP-)
Research by the Washington Post’s Christopher Ingraham — summarized in the graph below — reveals that Google searches for the term “hangover cure” are most frequent on Sundays.

Insofar as today is Sunday, it follows that a certain percentage of this site’s readers are experiencing la gueule de bois. While this afternoon’s encounter between the Tigers and Yankees doesn’t represent an actual hangover cure, it ought to serve — more than any other of the day’s games, according to the haphazard methodology utilized by the author — as a reasonable means of passing the time.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Detroit Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Pittsburgh at Washington | 16:05 ET
Liriano (82.2 IP, 68 xFIP-) vs. Scherzer (93.1 IP, 73 xFIP-)
In the Book of Luke, Jesus of Nazareth relates a parable about a traveler who’s beaten and robbed but then ultimately cared for by a passerby. It’s from this passage that we derive the term Good Samaritan, after the ethnicity of that compassionate citizen. What one extracts from the parable is a working definition of the word neighbor (or plésion, it seems, in the Greek). What else one learns, however, is that two other men had seen the beaten traveler and ignored him entirely. Asshole (or something like malakas in the Greek, it seems), is the word most immediately applicable their particular behavoir.

How’s this relevant to this afternoon’s encounter between the Pirates and Nationals? This is how: instead merely of noting that Francisco Liriano and Max Scherzer have both recorded strikeout rates among the top five by that measure in all the major leagues — instead merely of nothing that and perhaps inserting a link such as this one — what that same author has done, in a fit of neighborly love, is to create an illustrative table for the reader’s benefit and publish it here:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Pittsburgh at Washington | 19:05 ET
Burnett (85.2 IP, 85 xFIP-) vs. Ross (13.0 IP, 65 xFIP-)
There are a number of events on which a pitcher exerts zero influence. The tides, for example. Middle East relations. A wife who, for some reason, insists on preparing dishes with improbable quantities of cilantro despite the fact that it tastes to her spouse like the bitter tears of orphan children. In the face of all these, a pitcher is a helpless and wriggling creature. With regard to those areas over which a pitcher does possess some control, however, Washington right-hander Joe Ross has been nearly flawless over his first two career starts, producing a 12:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 13.0 innings while also inducing grounders on over 60% of batted balls against him. What one finds here today is that same Joe Ross scheduled to record his third start — in this case, against a Pittsburgh club whose odds of qualifying for the divisional series are approximately a 50-50 proposition.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Chicago NL at Cleveland | 19:10 ET
Hammel (80.0 IP, 82 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (68.2 IP, 70 xFIP-)
It’s a working theory of the author’s, substantiated less by empirical fact than by observation of his own dumb self, that the human mind isn’t particularly adept at integrating a pitcher’s newest, most relevant performances into its understanding of that same pitcher. With regard to this game, for example, an encounter between Jason Hammel and Danny Salazar clearly lacks the prestige of last night’s matchup between Madison Bumgarner and Felix Hernandez — because Hammel has produced mostly average seasons, for example, and Salazar, despite an arm composed wholly of dangerous and beautiful electric current, hasn’t produced a signature season yet. At this moment, however, all relevant information — strikeout rate and swinging-strike rate and velocity — all of it suggests that Hammel and Salazar are the equals of Bumgarner and Hernandez.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago Television.

Read the rest of this entry »

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) 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Miami at New York AL | 19:05 ET
Urena (26.1 IP, 111 xFIP-) vs. Pineda (74.2 IP, 66 xFIP-)
Central to the watchability not merely of sport but of any “text” designed for a viewing public is a sense of urgency. Not for nothing is cinema — and also every episode of 1980s action-adventure series MacGyver — littered with time bombs which need to be diffused seconds before reaching zero. Nor is urgency the province of the action genre, exclusively: even a film like My Dinner with Andre, which merely documents the conversation of two men seated in a restaurant, requires that conversation to create a sense of anticipation that can be satisfied only by continuing to watch.

On June 17, the major-league season doesn’t yet offer any metaphorical time bombs on the verge of metaphorical detonation. The Yankees, however, currently offer the closest thing to that: according to the playoff odds available here, the club features (as of this morning) a 50.2% chance* of qualifying for the divisional series — or, roughly as undecided as possible. Whatever happens tonight against the Marlins, therefore, is likely to move their odds further from that halfway point — either towards qualification for or elimination from postseason play.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Miami Television.

*One notes that Pittsburgh actually features odds even closer to 50% precisely. Other variables conspire to render it less compelling, however, according to the haphazard methodology utilized by the author.

Read the rest of this entry »