Hello there, children, we are all children. From one child to another, I would like to welcome you to the second part of the ninth edition of The Worst Of The Best. Found here is the second part of the eighth edition, from last Friday. Found here is every post in the category, from the beginning to the present. Right now, this post isn’t in that section, as I write it. Right now, this post is in that section, as you read it. So, the section has changed, the section has grown. Does that mean the section is alive? According to some definitions, yes, and according to other definitions, no, the section does not possess life, that’s ridiculous. I am pleased to answer this question for you.

Earlier this Friday, we examined the wildest pitches from the past week, and now we’ll examine the wildest swings, between May 31 and June 6. Just as the wildest pitches are the pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone, the wildest swings are those swings at pitches furthest from the center of the strike zone. It seems this past week was a little less wild than usual, but that doesn’t mean we don’t still have a top-five list of hitters looking like idiots, based on the PITCHf/x data and of course their own on-field actions. There are no checked swings, and there are no swings during hit-and-runs. Those swings don’t count and that’s the last word. Incidentally, two weeks ago I provided two bonuses. Last week, there was one bonus. This week, zero bonuses. What have we learned about bonuses? They are bonuses, and by definition they are not usual. Don’t be greedy. Now please enjoy this list, at no charge to you.

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You’ve probably heard the Daniel Nava story before. He went undrafted out of college, was initially cut by the independent Chico Outlaws, and when the Red Sox did sign him, they only paid $1. (Boston would eventually pay $1,499 more). Three years later, Nava broke into the majors — but not for good. Even devout Red Sox fans would be forgiven if they’d forgotten Nava’s name heading into 2012, and he has never been part of Boston’s Plan A. But he’s waited for his turn — and so far this season, he’s been one of baseball’s best hitters.

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Hey there, you, and welcome to the first part of the ninth edition of The Worst Of The Best. This right here is a link to the first part of the eighth edition, from last Friday. This right here is a link to the series section, where you can find all of the posts from the beginning. You should know that the federal government has been secretly monitoring this series, including the posts and all of the comments underneath. But because of the .gifs I unwittingly managed to lock up all their computers so there’s a chance I may have destroyed the whole program. I’m sorry, or, you’re welcome, depending. Let’s not get into that! Leave your feelings on that matter on some other blog, like NotGraphs.

Here is where we talk about wild pitches, that weren’t officially “wild pitches” but that were pitches really far from the center of the strike zone. They’re not necessarily pitches that were really far from the target, but I can’t measure that so we make do with a bunch of two-strike breaking balls. It’s a PITCHf/x top-five that excludes intentional balls for obvious reasons, and pitches just missing the cut this week include one from Antonio Bastardo to Rickie Weeks, one from Justin De Fratus to Logan Schafer, and one from Dane De La Rosa to Jason Castro. Also, others. There are .gifs, and you know that by now, and I don’t know how to make them load faster, and the list is starting, and if this takes forever to load, it’s right to be frustrated. It’s right to be frustrated. Just know that I already know.

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Despite being in fourth place at the moment, the Rays are obviously in the playoff mix, only four games back of the AL East leading Red Sox. Indeed, Tampa Bay has been in the mix pretty much every season since 2008. Their ability to prevent runs has been what has received the most attention the last few seasons, as they seemingly add an above-average starter from the minors every year, but their hitting has not been as bad as the perception. True, the only recognizable offensive star since the departure of Carl Crawford has been Evan Longoria, but the Rays have still managed to be in the top half of the American League in wRC+ since then.

This season, the Rays have a collective 107 wRC+, their best since 2009. Having Longoria healthy and hitting has been a big plus, of course, but as in past seasons, it is surprising performances from apparent stopgaps such as the previously-discussed James Loney — who currently leads the team with a 151 wRC+ — which have provided the needed boosts. Loney’s contribution thus far has been probably the most surprising, but almost equally as significant for the 2013 Rays has been the hitting of second-baseman-turned-left-fielder Kelly Johnson, who seems to be regaining the form he displayed in a previous out-of-nowhere career year for Arizona in 2010.

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You’re going to see a lot of college seniors taken in the middle rounds of the draft today, as teams look to save bonus pool money in order to take a shot on an over-slot pick that they either drafted yesterday or might look to take at a certain spot today. College seniors often sign for a relative pittance since they don’t have any real alternatives other than to sign for what they’re offered. While college juniors can always threaten to go back to school, seniors don’t have a stick with which to negotiate, so their price falls accordingly.

That is the kind of leverage — the pressure created by having an alternative option — that most people are familiar with, at least in terms of how things work in MLB. The secondary path forces teams to negotiate a fair price, and players without a valid alternative sign for a deep discount. That theory holds in some cases, but Mark Appel is about to demonstrate that leverage can come in other forms as well.

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Yesterday, two former Braves prospects took no-hit bids into later innings. One was was Jason Marquis, a 34-year old veteran getting by largely thanks to the roomy confines of Petco Park. (Though as a reader points out, Wednesday’s game was at Dodger Stadium.) The other was 22-year old Julio Teheran, and his gem seemed to herald his arrival as the real deal. Marquis was a supplemental first rounder in 1996. (He was the 35th overall pick, 34 picks behind Kris Benson.) Teheran was the top 16-year old pitcher signed in 2007. Marquis isn’t sexy, but Julio would be happy to have his career: Marquis’ career FIP is 4.85, but he has pitched 1873 innings and won 119 games in the big leagues.

Julio has a chance to be a whole lot more than that. But it would have been understandable if many Braves fans and dynasty league owners were starting to suffer from prospect fatigue. Julio has been on the Baseball America Top 10 Braves prospect list for six straight years; they called him the Braves’ 10th best prospect after he was signed as a 16-year old, before he had thrown a pitch in the United States, they saw him as the Braves’ top pitching prospect from 2010-2013, and as the top prospect overall in 2011-2013. There was no doubting that he could destroy minor league hitters. Until last night, though, as Ben Duronio writes today, some may have doubted that he could destroy major league hitters. So what has happened over the last six years?
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You know all about xFIP, because you read FanGraphs, and it’s a distinctly FanGraphs-y statistic. You don’t quite know how you feel about it. Some pitchers demonstrate an ability to suppress runs more than one would expect. Some pitchers appear to be unusually homer-prone. Lots has been written about the handful of apparent exceptions, but xFIP isn’t trash, as some might suggest. Most generally, it does a good job of separating the good pitchers from the bad ones. Good pitchers get strikeouts, limit walks, and don’t allow homers. Most pitchers with weird-looking home-run rates will regress. One wants to argue with xFIP, but it isn’t easy, except on the margins. It contains a lot of truth.

This year, 56 American League starters have thrown at least 50 innings. Felix Hernandez leads with 90.2; we find Felix Doubront at 50, exactly. Here are the top four, by xFIP:

1. Anibal Sanchez
2. Felix Hernandez
3. Yu Darvish
4. Max Scherzer

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At this point, everyone knows the story of the Cardinals stealing Albert Pujols in the 13th round of the 1999 draft. In terms of production for the cost, it’s probably the best draft pick in Major League history. Well, apparently, the Cardinals are good at this whole 13th round draft pick thing, because exactly 10 years after they unearthed Pujols, they struck gold again.

Their 2009 13th round pick? Matt Carpenter. He was a senior sign out of Texas Christian University, a budget pick who only cost them a $1,000 signing bonus. After signing, the Cardinals had him split time between short-season and two A-ball levels. At low-A, he drew some walks but showed no power — in part because he hit flat footed with no weight transfer — and was terrible when he got promoted to high-A, hitting .219/.286/.342 in 128 plate appearances. 23-year-old non-athletes who can’t hit A-ball pitching a few months after signing for $1,000 are the definition of non-prospects.

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Zach Britton was supposed to be the Fourth Horseman. He was supposed to combine with Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, and Chris Tillman to form a stalwart rotation able enough to take down the AL East superpowers. TINSTAAPP rules, of course, then took effect. Matusz is now in the bullpen. Arrieta is back in Triple-A, and he may end up in the bullpen. Tillman lost his velocity and his spot in the rotation, and then, out of nowhere, he re-found his velocity and a spot in the rotation … for now. Britton’s career has been just as adventurous.

Britton debuted on April 3, 2011. He had been a Top-100 prospect for two years, and Baseball America had just named him the 28th-best prospect in baseball. That first season went fairly smoothly at the beginning. His strikeout and walk rates were below-average – 15% and 9%, respectively – but his groundball rate of 1.86 was enough to make him basically a league-average pitcher over 154 innings, netting him 2 wins of value that season. The trouble, however, started toward the middle of the season as rumors of shoulder issues began to surface.

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It’s draft day, so I thought a draft related link post was in order. Baseball America has covered the draft from every possible angle you might imagine, but since I’m a nerd and I like numerical analysis, this draft history piece by Matt Eddy is my favorite part of their draft coverage. While Eddy isn’t the first to look at a series of drafts and see where the strengths and weaknesses have been, he updates the results to cover 1989-2008, and he breaks down the results in a way that is easy to digest.

I could excerpt a ton of different parts of the story, which is why you should just go read the whole thing. Here’s one part that stands out, though:

Despite the large disparity in graduation rates for college position players and high school ones, the gap in impact rates is much narrower. About 14 in 100 college players in our study have accumulated at least 10 WAR for their careers, while nearly 11 in 100 high schoolers reached that level. In fact, the star-of-stars high school position players (Top 5) produced more wins above replacement (1,091) than their college counterparts (1,016), which is remarkable when you consider their lower graduation rate, lower impact rate and the fact that prep stars spot roughly three years of experience to college players at the time of their draft selection, a phenomenon that ought to make collegians in the later years of our sample considerably more productive.

High school position players keep track with collegians if you expand the impact threshold to 20 career WAR (34 high school, 31 college), 30 career WAR (17, 17) or 40 career WAR (11, 11).

Eddy finds something similar when he looks at pitchers as well. Basically, the idea that college players are significantly better bets than high school players simply doesn’t seem to be true anymore, if it ever was. The flameout rate of high school players is much higher, but almost the entirety of the difference is made up of college guys who get to the big leagues but never amount to much. In terms of actually finding talent who produce significant value — and it’s not like +10 WAR is a crazy high bar — high school players have done nearly as well, despite the fact that (as Eddy notes) the three year head start they have should bias the results of active players towards the college guys.

Anyway, the whole thing is worth reading, as are the rest of Eddy’s articles on the draft’s history. And, despite what might have been written about the draft 10 years ago, don’t freak out if your favorite team takes a high school kid tonight. Even if they draft a high school pitcher. It’s okay, really.