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
Houston at Chicago AL | 20:10 ET
Velasquez (Debut) vs. Quintana (67.1 IP, 96 xFIP-)
Outfielder Preston Tucker, ranked 18th among Astros prospects by Kiley McDaniel this past offseason, recorded his debut for Houston on May 7 and has since produced a batting line about 20% better than league average. Right-hander Lance McCullers made his debut about 10 days later, and has proceeded to record one of the best fielding-independent pitching marks among all starters in the meantime. With regard to shortstop Carlos Correa, he first appeared for the parent club just two days. Regardless, he’s already recorded more home runs than nine qualified hitters and more stolen bases than 39 of that same group.

In light of the above, the reader should not be surprised to learn that, today, yet another Houstonian is expected to debut for the club. Right-hander Vincent Velasquez was ranked third among Astros prospects by Kiley McDaniel this preseason and 75th among all prospects everywhere. According to McDaniel, he sits at 91-95 mph — and, indeed, skewed towards the higher end of that range during the Arizona Fall League last year, according to Brooks Baseball. He’s struck out over a third of opposing batters over five starts at Double-A Corpus Christi.

The human brain, which is marvelous but also feeble, is inclined to suppose that, merely because the debuts to have preceded Velasquez’s — that because those debuts have amounted to nothing but great success, so will this new player’s. That, obviously, isn’t really the case: Velasquez’s performance is dependent almost exclusively on Vincent Velasquez’s own capacities. That said, his capacities appear to be pretty substantial. Substantial capacities, in conclusion, is what Vincent Velasquez possesses.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Radio.

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Episode 571
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 discusses the one weird trick regarding the draft, the inevitability of the Mark Trumbo trade, and also the forthcoming FanGraphs Live event in Washington, DC.

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 41 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
Arizona at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
Ray (11.0 IP, 87 xFIP-) vs. Frias (42.1 IP, 102 xFIP-)
In addition to representing an opportunity to collect another data point in a series of data points relevant to Carlos Frias’s career as a major leaguer, what else this game represents is an occasion, apparently, to observe left-hander Robbie Ray sitting at 94 mph with his fastball. A departure, that, from the version of Ray who made nine appearances with Detroit last year and recorded an average fastball velocity of 91.3 mph. Perhaps a result of that added velocity, Ray has produced excellent fielding-independent numbers over his first two starts with Arizona, posting a 9:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio against 44 batters over 11.0 innings with his new club.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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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.

What follows is not that usual weekly exercise, but rather a version of it designed to identify the most compelling fringe prospects in the draft. As that same draft enters its second day, the discussion of fringe-type prospects is relevant: while the first round is generally populated by players who will develop into useful major leaugers, even the 100th-overall selection in a typical draft is expected to produce only 1-2 WAR over the entirety of his career. A club that’s able to find a Matt Carpenter (13th round, 2009) or Ben Zobrist (6th round, 2004) out of this interval of the draft is adding considerable value to its franchise where little or none is typically available.

As with the weekly editions of this exercise, central to this one is a definition of the word fringe. For the purposes of this post, a fringe prospect is any draft-eligible player absent from the April edition of Kiley McDaniel’s draft rankings — which document contains roughly 300, or about 10 rounds’ worth, of names.

In addition to McDaniel’s own work, I’ve benefited from that published recently by Chris Mitchell at the Hardball Times in which he examines predictive elements both for hitters and pitchers at the college level.

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Episode 570
Pat Venditte is the switch-pitcher originally drafted by the Yankees who recently made his major-league debut with Oakland. Curt Young is the current pitching coach for the latter of those clubs. They’re both guests on this edition of FanGraphs Audio — talking, in both cases, with contributor David Laurila.

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 22 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
Houston at Chicago AL | 20:10 ET
McCullers (24.0 IP, 71 xFIP-) vs. Sale (66.0 IP, 71 xFIP-)
Houston right-hander Lance McCullers entered the 2015 season as a pitcher who, despite the possession of conspicuous talent, also possessed a career walk rate of nearly 12% over roughly 230 professional innings. That none of those innings had been recorded above High-A suggested that the 21-year-old would benefit from further development. Indeed, while evaluating the Astros prospects, Kiley McDaniel estimated McCullers would assume a regular major-league role only in 2017. McCullers has not only assumed a role with the Astros two years earlier than that, he’s produced merely a 6.1% walk rate while so doing — which is to say, almost precisely half his cumulative minor-league figure. Is this proof that miracles exist? Perhaps, but only if — as gravel-throated American comedian Kyle Kinane suggests in the following video — only if the threshold for what constitutes a miracle is duly lowered.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston 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
Houston at Toronto | 13:07 ET
McHugh (70.2 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Dickey (70.0 IP, 119 xFIP-)
When the author first introduced pitcher NERD scores and the algorithm used to calculate them, there was near consensus among the wide readership that knuckleballers ought to receive a bonus of some sort, owing to the appeal of that same pitch. The solution at that time: an addition of (5 * KN%), where KN% denotes knuckleball rate, to every pitcher’s score. At no point in the meantime has there been any great uproar suggesting that the knuckle bonus was poorly conceived. That said, R.A. Dickey has produced so far in 2015 both (a) the worst fielding-independent numbers and also (b) the worst run-prevention numbers since before he was a Met or even a Twin. And yet, he currently possesses an 8 NERD, placing him at roughly the 85th percentile among all starters. Bearing in mind that the entire endeavor is futile, the reader is encouraged nonetheless to meditate upon whether Dickey’s NERD score is representative of the pleasure one continues to derive from his craft.

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
Houston at Toronto | 13:07 ET
Oberholtzer (8.1 IP, 96 xFIP-) vs. Hutchison (63.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
Among the mostly haphazard adjustments made by the author last year to the certainly flawed method for calculating NERD’s game scores, one of them was to weight pitcher scores more heavily at the beginning of the season (by a factor of 3:1) and then team scores, with postseason-odds adjustments, more heavily at the end of the season (by a factor of 3:1, as well). The exact weights are tied to the percentage of games played across the league, meaning that, at the season’s exact midpoint, pitcher and team scores are weighted precisely the same. The justification for all this futile arithmetic: that team-related conditions (such as postseason implications, for example) tend to influence the appeal of a game more strongly as the season progresses. And the reason any of this is relevant right now: Houston and Toronto possess two of the highest team scores among the league’s 30 clubs — the former largely because of its combination of power and youth; the latter, owing primarily to its all-around batting production and baserunning.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Episode 569
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 draft boards of both the virtual and also all-too-real variety.

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 57 min play time.)

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