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The best player in baseball so far has been Troy Tulowitzki. He made it to 4 WAR before any other player made it to 3 WAR. Tulowitzki isn’t the entire reason why the Rockies have been a pleasant surprise, but he’s more responsible for their success than any other player is responsible for his own team’s success, and as long as Tulowitzki is able to stay on the field, he ought to resemble an MVP candidate. Healthy Tulowitzki is always an MVP candidate.

Let’s break that WAR down a little bit. As the best player in baseball, Tulowitzki has been the best hitter in baseball. It’s true that he spends half his time in a hitter’s paradise, but we have numbers that adjust for that, and the adjustment is built into the fact. The most conspicuous part of Tulowitzki’s hot streak has been his offensive productivity. You don’t just overlook a .764 slugging percentage. But another thing that’s true is that Tulowitzki has been among the best defenders in baseball. He’s on track for a career-best UZR. He’s already at a dozen Defensive Runs Saved, after finishing last year at +6. We’ve long known that Tulowitzki is a good defensive shortstop, but thus far he’s been out of his mind, just as he’s been at the plate. So one wonders: just what has he been doing?

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Here on FanGraphs, we don’t do a lot of writing about other writers. It’s actually a site policy, and when someone joins FanGraphs, we make a point of telling them that our goal is to talk about baseball, not talk about the people who cover baseball. I have little to no interest in media criticism, or in advancing any kind of notion that the “traditional” and “new” media outlets need to be at war with either. But yesterday, Bob Ryan published a piece in the Boston Globe that I think is worth responding to.

In some ways, the piece isn’t that different from what hundreds of other sports writers have written over the last few years. However, I think this one is worth a response, or put more accurately, I think Bob Ryan is worth responding to. He’s one of the most respected sports writers in America, generally, and his body of work suggests that this article was born out of a genuine belief system, not just an attempt to stir the pot and generate discussion. My experience in reading and listening to him has always led me to perceive him as a reasonable man, and so I’d like to offer a reasoned response to his column.

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A feature that gets a lot of attention here, probably, is our playoff odds page. That page uses updated player projections and manually updated team depth charts to determine playoff probability and expected record. I look at the page probably two or three times a day, and though the numbers mean only so much, there’s no better way to get an idea of where a team truly stands. Current standings tell you about the now; projected standings tell you about the significance of the now.

A feature that gets a lot less attention here, probably, is our playoff odds page based on season-to-date performance. It uses the same depth-chart information, but instead of using player projections, it uses what players have already done. For example, in the former case, the Rockies are projected with a half-decent Charlie Blackmon. In the latter case, the Rockies are projected with a terrific Charlie Blackmon. It’s evident why the former page is preferred, but the latter page can serve a purpose, especially if you’re wondering about potential under- and over-achievers.

I thought it could be interesting to compare the two pages. We’ll leave the playoff odds alone — those get complicated, and they’re not what this is about. Both pages have projected rest-of-season winning percentages. With which teams do we see the greatest differences? Is this as predictable as it seems like it would be?

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In 1992, Gene Lamont took over as manager of the Chicago White Sox. The following season he led them to 94 wins and a playoff berth. In 1994, his team was on pace to win close to 100 games when a players’ strike ended the season in August.

Why were the 1993 and 1994 White Sox serious title contenders?

“We had really good players,” said Lamont, now the bench coach for the Detroit Tigers. “Once Jason Bere and Wilson Alvarez came in, we had five good starting pitchers. We had a good offense, but if you look at most teams that are really good, they have good pitching. We had Jack McDowell, who won a Cy Young one year. Alex Fernandez was awful good. Scott Sanderson was good. Tim Belcher was our fifth starter the year we got in the playoffs.

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If you missed the inaugural post of The Best Of FanGraphs, you can do so here. In case you don’t feel like clicking through though, here is how this post is structured:

We’ll pull from the whole FanGraphs family, picking 10-15 stories that we feel you really should read before the week draws to a close. The links are color coded — green for FanGraphs, burnt sienna for RotoGraphs, purple for NotGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community. They are listed in this order as well in each day, just for the sake of consistency.

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Jose Fernandez. Patrick Corbin. Jarrod Parker. A.J. Griffin. Luke Hochevar. Matt Moore. Brandon Beachy. Cory Luebke. Bruce Rondon. Bobby Parnell. Kris Medlen. Ivan Nova. And now Martin Perez. Top and mid-tier pitchers in the early stages of their professional careers who have had Tommy John surgery this season, or in the case of Perez, are about to have it. Then there’s Matt Harvey, Jonny Venters, Dylan Bundy, Alex White and Eric O’Flaherty, who went under the Tommy John knife last season. For these pitchers, the surgery and rehabilitation will consume critical service time in their careers when they would otherwise be building up value for their arbitration-eligible seasons or free agency.

So while we lament the loss of these talents to our favorite team and to the game, the players face a troubling question: how will Tommy John surgery and the typical 12-18 month recovery time affect their short-term earning power?

Let’s start with the “lucky ones”: Matt Moore, Martin Perez, Cory Luebke and Dylan Bundy.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
Black might have the most velocity of any minor leaguer.

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The Mariners and Rays played a Wednesday matinee that featured extraordinarily little in the way of offense. Following the conclusion, there was this simple throwaway tweet:

#Mariners fall to Rays 2-0. Tampa had 3 hits, Mariners 2. No idea why this one took 3 hours, 21 minutes.

— Greg Johns (@GregJohnsMLB) May 14, 2014

Seems long. Seems like too much. An isolated instance is an isolated instance, and you shouldn’t focus too much on anything unless it repeats, but it turns out, for the Rays, this is a reflection of the norm.

Granted, there was a variety of reasons for Wednesday’s duration. Mariners starter Brandon Maurer struggled, and Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon went and got himself into an on-field argument. The day before, the Rays won 2-1, and that game took less than three hours. But a few days ago, the Rays lost a nine-inning affair 6-5, and they played for 228 minutes. Not long before that, they lost a nine-inning affair 6-3, and they played for 250minutes. In terms of footspeed, the 2014 Rays presumably are not the slowest team in baseball history. In terms of game pace, they most probably are.

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Roughly a quarter of the 2014 season is in the books, and the sample sizes are creeping toward a representative level. Over the next couple of weeks, let’s take a somewhat deeper look at some of this season’s more noteworthy players and performances to date. “Noteworthy” doesn’t always mean “best”, though it does in most cases. Let’s kick it off today with a look at Masahiro Tanaka’s first seven starts as a Yankee. (This article was written prior to his eighth start, on Wednesday night.) His 58/7 K/BB ratio obviously speaks volumes about his ability. Is his future success based almost exclusively on this solid foundation, or is there even more to him? Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve updated our WAR Graphs tool to include pitcher comparisons:

Source: FanGraphs — Pedro Martinez, Clayton Kershaw, Sandy Koufax

It’s also now possible to compare batters and pitchers on the same graph:

Source: FanGraphs — Clayton Kershaw, Felix Hernandez, Justin Verlander