Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41
#40 to #36
#35 to #31
#30 to #26
#25 to #21
And now there’s a run on pitchers. Because of their inherent risks, this is getting close to the upper limit for hurlers, even though each pitcher at this point is an excellent performer and an excellent value. Oh, and there’s some hitter you might have heard something about this year too.
Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41
#40 to #36
#35 to #31
#30 to #26
As we move to the top half of the list, we begin to enter the land of guys who just aren’t getting traded. It’s basically impossible to imagine a scenario where a team agrees to move any of these players. This is where we start finding franchise players on friendly contracts. They would have a lot of trade value if they were put on the market, but they’re all too valuable to their own franchises to actually be used as trade chips.
Yes. We will do more of these. Because they are fun. On July 18th, we won’t have baseball to watch, and that will make this a support group meetup of sorts. Come talk to us about the first half of real baseball, or fantasy baseball, or about brewing, or about beer, or about life.
Thanks to all of these great writers that have agreed to come for this informal Q&A session. Ask for the FanGraphs event, as we’ll have our own space. Sorry youngsters, this is a 21 and over event.
July 18, 4pm — 8+pm, Fizz, Chicago
Eno Sarris (BeerGraphs, FanGraphs)
Michael Bates (NotGraphs, SBNation)
Carson Cistulli (FanGraphs)
Dayn Perry (FanGraphs, CBS Sports)
David Wiers (FanGraphs)
Bradley Woodrum (FanGraphs)
Cee Angi (SBNation)
T.K. Gore (CSNChicago/NBCSports)
Dan Hayes (CSNChicago)
Kevin Holden (CBS Milwaukee)
Harry Pavlidis (BrooksBaseball)
Sahadev Sharma (ESPNChicago)
Scott Skillings (STATS)
JJ Stankevitz (CSNChicago)
Matt Dennewitz (BeerGraphs, Pitchfork)
Greg Sasso (BeerGraphs)
J.R. Shirt (BeerGraphs)
Jeff Gross (Hardball Times, SaBEERmetrics)
If this were any other stat, it wouldn’t be worth a post. If this were instead “All-Star Break Home-Run Update,” it’d be a waste of your time, because you could simply just look up the stat on the FanGraphs leaderboards. They’re right up there! But, at the moment, FanGraphs doesn’t house and update any pitch-framing statistics, and while that could change in time, that’s the way things are today, meaning this post could have some substance. Most people can’t look this stuff up on their own, so I’m here to provide for you while crossing something off my weekly quota. Everybody wins.
FanGraphs is pretty selective for the intellectually curious. And, of course, baseball fans, and intellectually curious baseball fans have generally been interested in pitch-framing research. It’s just another thing that players can be good or bad at, so fans want to know where their catchers rank. Right now, we have a little break in regular-season action, so it seemed like a good time to post the latest numbers, through the middle of July. It was either this or a .gif post about Yasiel Puig and no there weren’t any other options. I’ll give a quick explanation, before the data.
Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41
#40 to #36
#35 to #31
As we approach the middle of the list, we end up with a group of young players who are mostly more about future value than present production. These are some of the very best players in the game, and this is about as high as a player can rank without establishing himself as a big leaguer.
Hey everybody — that’s you! — and welcome to the first part of The Worst Of The Best’s first ~half in review. This is a link to what The Worst Of The Best is, basically. It’s objectively incorrect to refer to what’s happened as the first half of the season, since every team in baseball has played at least 91 games and every team in baseball won’t play at least 182 games. But “first half” is the accepted terminology, and it’s the easiest way to grab your attention, and you know what I mean when I say “first half”, and technically we’re about halfway to the conclusion of the World Series. It’s been more than the first half of the regular season, but it’s been about exactly half of the complete, competitive season. Spring training can go ahead and get lost. I’ll care about spring training when spring training decides to provide for me more complete PITCHf/x information.
What you’re going to find below are five wild pitches, from between March 31 and July 14. They’re the five wildest pitches of that window of the season, as determined by distance from the center of the strike zone. Ordinarily, this is where I tell you it’s all based on PITCHf/x, but included below are two pitches that PITCHf/x didn’t even register. That’s how you know the pitches were terrible, or, PITCHf/x just had a glitch, which happens sometimes. Some pitches that just missed being included: Phillippe Aumont to Travis Snider on July 2, Ian Kennedy to Pablo Sandoval on April 29, and Cory Gearrin to Justin Ruggiano on July 3. Those pitches were 67.8 – 69.6 inches from the center of the strike zone. The pitches you’re going to see were worse. Sometimes everything just goes to hell for no reason other than that sometimes everything just goes to hell.
Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41
#40 to #36
As we get towards the middle of the pack, we start to find players who have been among baseball’s best performers in 2013. While the last section was littered with potential, this section is more about realized potential, at least in 2013. These guys are highly talented players having terrific seasons, and as usual, their contract status is also adding value.
Honorable Mentions
#50 to #46
#45 to #41
We move away from high salary, high risk players into a group of players on the opposite end of the spectrum. While the players below might not be seen as superstars yet, they all possess significant potential and have some very appealing contracts.
The mid-season Top 50 prospects list is here as we celebrate the most exciting players at the minor league level. There is lots of room for debate and I’m excited to hear what others have to say about the players listed below. For a refresher, check out the pre-season Top 100 prospects list here.
We continue on with the 2013 Trade Value list, starting out with a pretty safe bet for short term value, then moving on to four high risk/high reward players who could either be franchise building blocks or reminders of the unpredictability of developing talent. At this part of the list, there are trade-offs to be made, and each of these players comes with some flaws, but enough value to demand a serious haul in order to even make their current teams consider parting ways with this kind of talent.
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