Even for those readers who regard Gary Huckabay’s contention from the late 90s that there’s no such thing as a pitching prospect — even for those who regard it as perhaps an exercise in hyperbole, the notion of a 30-year-old pitching prospect likely sounds absurd. Prospectdom, first of all, implies some degree of future potential, which itself implies some degree of youth. And second of all, what information exists regarding aging curves suggests that, if a pitcher wasn’t a prospect at 20 or 25, there’s little reason to suppose that he would be at 30, with years of abuse behind him already.

And yet, in the absence of that word (i.e. prospect), there’s a shortage of appropriate terms for what White Sox right-hander Junior Guerra is. At 30 years and 118 days, he’s made zero major-league appearances. Indeed, he recorded his first Triple-A appearance* just last Thursday. His rookie eligibility, in other words, is not in question. And yet, as noted in yesterday’s edition of the Fringe Five, Guerra has produced one of the top strikeout rates among all qualified minor leaguers while also exhibiting sufficient arm speed to suggest that his success isn’t the product merely of deception or veteran wiles.

*Affiliated Triple-A appearance, that is. Guerra played for Yucatan of the Mexican League in 2012, where he produced an unambiguously poor 20:22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 28.0 innings.

Guerra made his second Triple-A appearance ever shortly after that newest installment of the Fringe Five was published. The purpose of this post is to report the absolutely most basic information regarding that start — and, probably mostly, to provide more footage of Guerra’s repertoire.

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Here at FanGraphs and RotoGraphs, I occasionally delve into articles that look at split-data, and have had to create a simplified version of our wOBA formula in order to generate some numbers where wOBA isn’t easily available.

wOBA is simply a rate-stat version of a linear-weights calculation, but because the relative values of events change according to the run environment, the value of the different types of outcomes that go into the formula change from season-to-season. This is why why we publish the guts of wOBA, so that you can see exactly how to calculate wOBA for any given year.

But if you’re looking at multiple years including different run environments, it can be helpful to have a basic wOBA formula that gets very close to the results for any individual year, but includes static values and a set formula. To that end, I’ve created what I call Basic wOBA, which does exactly that; follows the year-by-year wOBA shifts very closely without needing to update the variables for each season. We’re not rolling this out as an official version of wOBA, and it won’t appear on the site itself, but it will be referenced occasionally in articles, and so it is helpful to have the formula listed as a reference for when it is called upon.

After some testing, here is the equation we decided to use:

Basic wOBA = (.7* (BB + HBP) + .9*1B + 1.25*2B + 1.6*3B + 2*HR)/PA

Looking back at players with more than 200 plate appearances since 1980, the R-squared between the actual wOBA and Basic wOBA is 0.986, with a value of 1.0 being a perfect 1:1 relationship. So while not perfect, it will give a nearly equal value in almost every case.

If you see Basic wOBA referenced in an article, this is the formula that isbeing used.

Giant Dutch- and/or Danish- and/or Texan-American Noah Syndergaard is at this moment making his major-league debut for the New York Mets in Chicago. One thing he’s exhibited with considerable frequency over the course of his inaugural start is a fastball at ca. 94-98 mph. Another thing is what Branch Rickey would probably have referred to as “hella moxie” were he (a) still alive and also (b) a resident of California’s Bay Area for some reason.

The purpose of this post is to address neither of those qualities, but rather to document Syndergaard’s first memorable curveball — with which curveball he struck out Cubs shortstop Starlin Castro for the second out in the second inning.

Here, for the benefit of the reader, is action footage of that curveball in real time:

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Position: TrackMan Cape Cod Data & Operations Intern

Location: Cape Cod, Mass.

Description:
At TrackMan Baseball we measure stuff – the speed, spin and movement of pitched and hit baseballs.

We do this using proprietary 3D Doppler radar hardware and software. The majority of Major League teams use our products and services for player development and evaluation. We also work with collegiate, Japanese and Korean teams, premier amateur baseball organizations, broadcasters and equipment manufacturers. Our business is growing fast. By the start of next season we will have a network of radars installed in more than 100 stadiums on three continents, and dozens of remote systems traveling the US.
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Position: Minnesota Twins Applications Programmer, Baseball Systems

Location: Minneapolis

Description:
This position offers wide-ranging exposure to current programming models and methods in a fast-paced Agile environment. As a member of the front office, collaborate with the Baseball Operations staff to develop, deliver, and maintain data driven solutions for player evaluation, player development, and statistical analytics. Ideally, the candidate will be a core .Net applications programmer with experience focused on SQL Server data integration and back-end API services to consume and present new perspectives on an evolving set of interesting sources of data. Strong communication and interpersonal skills will enable the candidate to enjoy direct relationships with product users.
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Among all the barely read posts published by the author at this site, one of the most barely read ever was this past Thursday’s effort dedicated to the Mexican League, in which post I endeavored to identify the five players within that circuit whose combination of age and performance most recommended them to a place (hypothetically, at least) within affiliated baseball.

The purpose of this current dispatch is not to comment once again upon the virtues of that Thursday post, nor to bemoan its lack of audience. Rather, it’s to (first) show and (then also) tell the reader why Mexican baseball oughtn’t be ignored.

With regard to the allure of that league, here’s a visual argument very decidedly on its behalf (from here):

And here’s a brief explanation of that visual argument: it’s an excerpt from the box score from today’s game between Mexico City and Tijuana. Specifically, it’s the part of that box score which documents Tijuana’s pitchers. What one notes is that those pitchers were Jose Contreras (formerly of the White Sox and Yankees) and Dennys Reyes (formerly of an extra-large major-league uniform). “Importer/Exporter of the Marvelous,” it reads on each of their business cards. And how do I know this? Because of Mexican baseball, is how.

QED.

Shortly before the season began, I wrote a post in which I identified minor leaguer hitters who saw stark decreases in their Zone% in the final month of the 2014 season. This research was meant to emulate work done by Rob Arthur, who found that hitters who saw fewer pitches down the heart of the plate late in the year often outperformed their projections the following season. The player who jumped out most from my analysis was Richard Shaffer — a former first round pick in the Rays organization who had fallen on hard times since his draft year.

I wrote a follow-up piece on Shaffer a few days later, noting that his plummeting Zone% wasn’t the only reason to think he might have turned a corner. He had also reportedly made some adjustments, which were acknowledged by people in the Rays organization and by Shaffer himself. And perhaps most importantly, he raked over the season’s final month. He hit .357/.486/.768 with six homers over his final 17 games. To wit.

A little more than a month later, those adjustments seem to be working. Through 25 games, Shaffer’s belted 6 homers, and holds a 147 wRC+ in Double-A. His .260/.363/.490 triple slash is a far cry from the .222/.318/.440 he posted at the same level last season.

Lead prospect analyst Kiley McDaniel had the chance to see Shaffer in action multiple times this year, and was able to confirm that Shaffer indeed looks like a different player. Kiley noted that Shaffer seemed much more relaxed and comfortable at the plate than he was last season and didn’t seem quite as worried about his mechanics. He noted that the bat speed looked the same, but that Shaffer’s doing a better job of crushing mistakes and not guessing on pitches.

Kiley said he’d now put the 24-year-old ahead of fellow Rays third base prospect Patrick Leonard, who managed to crack the ranked portion of his list. He now sees Shaffer as a 40 FV player, who could wind up providing value as a part-time corner infielder. That’s not super exciting, but it’s a useful player. As recently as last summer, Richie Shaffer looked like an extreme long shot to ever become a productive big leaguer. Now, it seems like a strong possibility.

Before his start on Thursday in Milwaukee, Dodgers right-hander Carlos Frias — celebrated on multiple occasions by the present author in these same pages — Dodgers right-hander Carlos Frias had thrown 110 pitches over three appearances, including a 70-pitch start on May 1st against Arizona.

Over the course of those three appearances, Frias’s fastball sat at about 96 mph — unsurprising, that figure, given both his scouting reports and also his previous work in the majors. More notable with regard to those first 110 pitches was this, though: the absolute slowest among them was a changeup he’d thrown at 88.9 mph to David Peralta on May 1st.

This changeup:

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Scapegoat is an often-used word when a manager or coach is fired. As the saying goes, “You can’t fire the players,” and the person responsible for putting together the roster is rarely let go during the season. That puts a select few in the cross hairs when things aren’t going as expected. Or, in some cases, what many predicted comes to fruition.

The Red Sox fired their pitching coach today, 28 games into a season where their beleaguered staff is living down to its expectations. Unable to magically turn the likes of Clay Buchholz, Joe Kelly and Justin Masterson into more than what they are, Juan Nieves is now unemployed.

Somewhat surprisingly, Nieves’ replacement is not yet known. According to Ben Cherington, at least one internal candidate and one external candidate is being considered. The Boston GM did say “Nothing happened specifically, recently, that precipitated this.” Cherington said once the decision was reached, the right thing to do was make the move, even without a successor in place. Read the rest of this entry »

Early 19th century French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord argued — according to late Romanian aphorist Emil Cioran, at least — argued that it’s preferable “to follow one’s inclination rather than to make one’s way.”

Having pointed his internet browser to this site, the reader has already exhibited a willingness — in part, at least — a willingness to follow his inclination. What follows, however, represents an opportunity for that same reader to indulge his inclination to an even larger and more substantial degree.

As of press time, talented Cleveland starter Carlos Carrasco had struck out talented Kansas City outfielder Alex Gordon in each of the latter’s four plate appearances tonight (box). What the footage below documents are two pitches from the second of those plate appearances — both swinging strikes and both a result of Carrasco’s changeup.

The reader will find that his or her inclination is to meditate upon these animated GIFs for an extended period of time, committing them to what may or may not be called “spiritual memory.” Is that a real term or one just invented by the author right now? It neither matters nor does anyone care.

Moving on, here’s the first of those changeups to Gordon, in real time:

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