A less interactive bracket for the NCAA baseball tournament. Click to enlarge, nevertheless.

The NCAA baseball tournament lacks both the popular appeal and, owing probably to each sport’s respective pace, the unrelenting delirium of its basketball counterpart. Nevertheless, it does offer the sort of drama innate to elimination play — that, and the opportunity to observe players whose names have been invoked, for example, in Kiley McDaniel’s draft-prospect rankings and also the present author’s own (maybe) predictive statistical reports. Another advantage that it possesses — at the moment, at least — is that it’s being played literally this moment, while the basketball version doesn’t recur until next March.

Follow this link for an interactive bracket of the tournament and also this link for video of actual games by way of Watch ESPN — including the Bases Loaded channel, which provides what may or may not be called “whip-around coverage” of the tournament.

Eduardo Rodriguez debuted yesterday for the Red Sox. There was instantly something remarkable about him.

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Just to be clear, there are two separate positions here.

Position: Los Angeles Dodgers Research & Development Data Scientist

Location: Los Angeles

Description:
The Los Angeles Dodgers are seeking a Data Scientist for the team’s Baseball Research and Development (R&D) group. The Data Scientist will work closely with the Director of R&D and our analytics team to research, develop and test mathematical, statistical, and predictive models to support Baseball Operations.
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It could have just been your basic ol’ swap: make your general manager your manager, and your assistant general manager your general manager. Since it’s the Marlins who have attempted to make the maneuver, though, they couldn’t just go and make it that straightforward. When your author was simply attempting to confirm, via the Internet, that former Marlins assistant general manager Mike Berger was now in fact the Marlins’ general manager, your author fell into a hole of frighteningly dissonant reportage. That the reportage is dissonant is not, your author has hypothesized, the fault of the very able reporters. Rather, the author suspects that blame should be placed at the feet of the Marlins, seeing as the identity of the other 29 general managers can be very easily ascertained on the same Internet via the work of these same reporters.

To re-set the timeline: on Sunday, May 17, the Marlins were handily defeated by Shelby Miller and the Atlanta Braves in a matinee, after which manager Mike Redmond was fired. On Monday, May 18, Dan Jennings (not Dan Jennings) was re-assigned from Marlins general manager to manager, in time to be knighted by Ichiro Suzuki in the dugout that evening. This part is pretty straightforward.

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Earlier today, the present author utilized a nearly coherent metaphor involving astronomy to illustrate a point about Tampa Bay right-hander Chris Archer — namely that, not unlike how a star is both luminous and hot, so is Chris Archer’s future as a pitcher simultaneously luminous and also bursting with heat.

There are a number of statistical indicators one might consider when attempting to evaluate a pitcher’s likelihood for future success. One of the most expedient, however, is to assess his capacity to produce both strikeouts and ground balls at a rate better than league average. What follows is a graph that plots those two metrics against each other for all qualifiers thus far in 2015.

The data points in the top right corner represent a small sample of those pitchers who’ve managed to record decidedly above-average figures by both metrics — and the names associated with those data points are noteworthy. Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, and Corey Kluber: as a group, they’ve received five Cy Young awards total and have produced a three of the top-five pitching WAR figures since the beginning of 2014. As for Tyson Ross, he’s also recorded excellent numbers — and would produce even more excellent ones were he to exhibit slightly better command.

Archer, meanwhile, hasn’t exhibited problems with either command or control this year. He features one of the hardest fastballs among qualifiers and has also recorded one of the most unhittable sliders among starting pitchers this year, as well. To find him among the top candidates for the American League Cy Young award at the season end would be an exercise in not-surprise.

This is my favorite nerd-conference event of the year, and I’m looking forward to participating once again. If you’re in the Boston area that weekend, this is a must-attend conference, and if you’re not in the Boston area, you should think about coming anyway. It’s a blast, and raises tens of thousands of dollars for cancer research at the same time. I give it my full endorsement. Come hang out with us.

Tickets are now on sale for Sabermetrics, Scouting, and the Science of Baseball 2015.
They can be purchased through Ticketleap by following the link.

This year’s conference will happen August 22nd-23rd in Boston, MA, at Boston University’s Jacob Sleeper Auditorium. Our keynote sponsors are FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus.

We’ve assembled a stellar cast of speakers from across MLB and the baseball research community. We’ll have demonstrations from the bleeding edge of performance-enhancing technology. And we’ll have a fun, friendly, community event that raises a ton of money to fight cancer.

Tickets are only $140, with special prices of $65 for full time students. The best part of this exceptionally well valued ticket is that 100% of our ticket proceeds go directly to the Jimmy Fund, a Boston area charity that funds cancer research and patient wellbeing.

For more information including a growing list of speakers, directions to the event, and full pricing information, please visit our website at saberseminar.com.

We work very hard to make Saberseminar the most entertaining, thought-provoking, and charitable baseball event of the year. Come join us in Boston this summer!

On Sunday, the Miami Marlins fired their manager, Mike Redmond, barely half a year after he received votes for the 2014 NL Manager of the Year. Coupled with the cut and forthcoming salary-eating of Jarrod Saltalamacchia and his contract, and now the, uh — promotion? demotion? — of general manager Dan Jennings to manager, it’s been a mighty volatile season in Miami. This is a lot of action before Memorial Day: what this team will do in July is anybody’s guess.

During last Friday’s game at home against the Atlanta Braves, which the Marlins would lose, the Miami broadcast team shared a fun fact that rather unwittingly illustrated the team’s lack of continuity and talent. After Giancarlo Stanton hit two home runs earlier in the game, the broadcast team reported that Stanton was the leader in home runs hit in beautiful Marlins Park, established 2012, with 59 — a number that Stanton has since increased to 60, since he is a mighty man.

All’s good so far! Where the fun fact started to unravel was when the identity of the second-most-prolific-homer-er in Marlins Park was revealed. That man is Marcell Ozuna. Which, sure, Ozuna is a promising young talent, but his total of 12 home runs hit in Marlins Park seems something like a typo and something like a piece of trivia from the Deadball Era.

What the broadcast team did not reveal, but which I very much wanted to know, was the remainder of the leaderboard for most home runs hit in Marlins Park. And, thanks to BaseballSavant, I have it.

Tied for third place, with seven homers apiece, is Garrett Jones (a Marlin in 2014), Justin Ruggiano (2012-2013), and Hanley Ramirez, who only called Marlins Park his home for the first 93 games of 2012.

Where the list gets really hairy is if we look at the three players who are tied with six homers apiece. One of them is Saltalamacchia, who is let’s say unlikely to be remembered fondly in the annals of Marlins history. The other two are Ryan Zimmerman and Evan Gattis. The presence of both of these players so high on this list is notable because — and your memory is serving you correctly here — neither of these players have ever been employed as Miami Marlins.

By playing a handful of games instead of half of their games annually at Marlins Park, Zimmerman and Gattis should, under normal circumstances, be nowhere near this close to the top of this leaderboard, especially considering that Gattis did not make his big league debut until 2013, and Zimmerman only managed five total homers in a weak 61 games in 2014. But when, of course, have the Marlins provided a set of normal circumstances?

With Jacoby Ellsbury out of action for at least the next couple of weeks with a knee sprain, the Yankees called up former first round draft choice Slade Heathcott to help fill the void in the outfield. If it feels like you’ve been hearing about Heathcott for a while now, that’s because you have been. The Yankees took Heathcott 29th overall out of high school way back in 2009, but it’s taken him until now — at age-24 — to crack the major leagues.

Heathcott’s extended stay in the minor leagues hasn’t been due to a lack of talent, but has been almost entirely the result of injury. Slade’s spent an awful lot of time on the shelf since he was drafted back in 2009. Here’s a look at his lengthy injury history courtesy of Baseball Prospectus. Read the rest of this entry »

A few weeks ago, the Padres promoted one of their best remaining prospects, Austin Hedges, to join the Major League club to serve as Derek Norris‘ backup. It was a bit of an odd move, given that Hedges might have just been figuring out how to hit professional pitching, but the Padres wanted to upgrade their roster and saw more short-term value in having Hedges catch a couple of times per week in the big leagues.

Well, apparently, the Washington Nationals are going to try a similar trick, as Ken Rosenthal reports that the team is promoting infield prospect Wilmer Difo, with outfielder Jayson Werth potentially heading to the DL.

Sources: #Nationals expected to promote IF Wilmer Difo. Werth a candidate for DL.

— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) May 19, 2015

Difo spent all of last year in low-A ball, started this year in high-A, and was promoted to Double-A a few weeks ago. He’s consistently hit well, showing both contact and some power, but he has a grand total of 33 games above low-A ball in his career — even though he just turned 23 — so to say it’s been a quick rise would be an understatement. But now the question is what the Nationals are going to do with him?

Shortstop is blocked by Ian Desmond, who while struggling at the moment remains one of the best players at the position in the game. Yunel Escobar has hit well while playing both second and third base, but has primarily settled in at third in Anthony Rendon’s absence, leaving second base to Danny Espinosa, who is also hitting far better this year than he has in prior years. Neither Escobar nor Espinosa need replacing, so Difo is apparently coming up to serve as a utility infielder until Rendon returns, at which point the team won’t even need him in that role.

Difo is an interesting player, and could potentially be a starter for the Nationals as soon as next year, but he doesn’t have a clear role on the 2015 Nationals, and having him sit on the bench in the big leagues isn’t going to help speed up his development. I’m not entirely sure why promoting a prospect to sit on the bench is becoming a trend, but it probably shouldn’t be. In the end, this likely won’t matter much at all, but it’s a little weird to see another prospect promoted at a time when the big league team doesn’t need him to actually play.

Bryce Harper continued terrorizing Major League pitching yesterday, coming a double short of the cycle against the Padres. For the season, he’s now hitting .338/.476/.729, good for a 215 wRC+, and it seems pretty clear that we’re seeing the breakout season of a truly elite hitter. As Jeff Sullivan noted a couple of weeks ago, Harper has made some significant changes this year, and now that he’s pulling the ball and getting it into the air with regularity, he has turned his raw power into high-level production.

He won’t keep this up all year, of course, and will eventually return to human levels of production. But it’s worth noting that even when he does, Harper will have essentially replicated the first couple of years of Miguel Cabrera’s career. Here are their career numbers through age-22.

Miggy’s age 20-22 seasons came from 2003 to 2005, so while his unadjusted numbers are slightly better, Harper actually has been more productive at the plate when you add in today’s pitcher-friendly run environment. And, of course, Harper’s line is still predominantly made up of his data from ages 19, 20, and 21, with only six weeks of his age-22 performance mixed in.

If we add in the Depth Charts rest-of-season forecast for Harper — which calls for him to hit .287/.382/.524 for the rest of 2015 — in order to create an expected line through his complete age-22 season, Harper’s career numbers would be .280/.368/.497, with a .373 wOBA and a 136 wRC+. The full list of hitters in baseball history that stepped to the plate 2,000 times by the end of their age-22 season and put up a 136 wRC+ or better? Mike Trout (165), Ty Cobb (159), Mickey Mantle (149), and Mel Ott (147). Ken Griffey Jr was at 134. Alex Rodriguez was at 130. As noted, Cabrera was at 131, and in fewer plate appearances, which skewed his numbers more towards his more developed years.

Bryce Harper is pretty, pretty good.