The outfield can get boring. But you can spend time thinking about your positioning at least. And if you spend a lot of time thinking about positioning, as Sam Fuld does, then you’ll eventually dissect every part of the play as it sets up. Even the catcher’s butt.

From pitch to pitch, I’ll try to guess with the pitcher. I’ll just take a couple steps in that direction. Sometimes, once the catcher sets up early enough, I can tell something. If the guy is set up middle and his ass is up a bit, I can tell it’s offspeed if a runner’s on base. He’s getting ready to block the pitch because you’re more likely to get a ball in the dirt. You can sort of read stuff from the catcher and think of what pitch is coming. — Sam Fuld

Can we mere laymen see this change in catcher butt height?

Let’s look at a game from the weekend and compare the catcher’s posterior positioning. Both of these images come from the first inning of the Braves against the A’s at home this past weekend. Julio Teheran is throwing Evan Gattis an outside changeup in both instances, as well. But Gattis is in a different receiving position in each case, with the bases empty on the left and a runner on first in the picture on the right:

Knowing an offspeed pitch is coming, as you would in this situation if you were looking in the right place, would allow you as an outfielder to take a step towards the pull field. A step can make a difference.

It gets boring out there in the outfield, and Sam Fuld thinks of all sorts of things to fill the time. Sometimes he thinks about the catcher’s butt.

I wrote over on the main blog today about tomorrow’s debut of the organizational prospect lists. Head over there for the details of what to expect, but in general I’m looking to give as many objective measures as possible of what scouts think about the top prospects in the game. With 20-80 grades on every tool, an overall Future Value grade, a risk rating, projected triple-slash line and various other measures, there’s a risk of interpreting having a lot of data as having certainty about the future.

I often see fans berating each other on social media about the risk and/or upside of a prospect (whom they’ve never seen and never talked to a scout about) being CLEARLY higher/lower than another, ending the exchange with something like, “look at the rankings of these three publications, there’s a consensus and you’re wrong.” I suppose that’s inevitable with the commodification and proliferation of scouting reports on top prospects, but I wanted to be clear that my effort to better explain my opinion about a prospect doesn’t mean I’m as certain about the future as what I’m writing may suggest. Dave tweeted about this idea earlier this month:

Guys like Roark are one of the reasons why I think “upside” is so overrated for pitching prospects. We don’t know anyone’s “upside”. — David Cameron (@DCameronFG) August 7, 2014

Throwing 99 and having a nasty breaking ball obviously helps. But 88 at the top of the zone works too if you can locate. — David Cameron (@DCameronFG) August 7, 2014

Mike Trout was the 3rd prospect in the Angels system after he was drafted, according to Baseball America. After the 2007 season, Cliff Lee was 29, due to make $3.75 million for 2008 and had essentially zero trade value after two straight years with an xFIP over 5.00. Big league organizations often can’t even see elite players just a year or two in advance.

If Mike Trout wasn’t even the top rated outfield prospect in the Angels’ system at one point (it was Peter Bourjos), then technically every player’s upside is to be the best player in the game.

It would make my job easier if I just said that about every prospect, but, much like how MLB clubs treat the draft, I realize there are no perfect rankings, just people trying to do a little better than the competition. I’ve sat in draft rooms and war rooms during the trade deadline and I can tell you that there isn’t rocket science happening in these rooms. The thing that separates those conversations from what I’m writing is the quantity and quality of the information, not necessarily the decision-making process.

I think with these org rankings that I will be upping the quantity and quality of the prospect information that readers are accustomed to seeing. That being said, even if I magically had all the proprietary information of all 30 teams and unlimited resources, it’s still just putting lipstick on a pig.

Well, it’s here. Or, it will be soon. Not soon as in less than 48 seconds from now, but in just a few slim hours, it will be time for the FanGraphs Boston Meetup. We hope you can join us. Here, once again, is the info, in both link and block quote form:

Sometimes, we nerds like to go out on the town. One of those times is the weekend of the Saber Seminar, which is one of the best events (if not the best) on the yearly sabermetric and/or sabermatic calendar. This year’s Saber Seminar is August 16-17. So, just as we did last year, we’re once again going to set up shop at The Mead Hall in Cambridge the night before Saber Seminar, on Friday, August 15th!

So come join Dave Cameron, David Appelman, Carson Cistulli, David Laurila, Matt Swartz and myself tonight at any time from 7 pm to midnight. George Springer won’t be playing, but there should still be plenty to talk about!

Yesterday, Max Scherzer and Mike Fiers each struck out 14 batters in their respective starts against the Pirates and Cubs. When such a thing happens, there’s a danger in concluding that this sort of thing must not be special, and that it happens all the time. The wiser among us — and me — know that this is still pretty rare. But just how rare? I decided to investigate.

Now, if I’m using the Baseball-Reference Play Index correctly, and lord knows I might not be, I see that in their searchable regular season database — which runs from 1914 to the present — there have been 342,540 games started. But I wanted also to eliminate those rare occasions where the starting pitcher, either through ineptitude or injury, fails to record an out. Using the “at least 1 out” criteria lops off another 1,000 or so games, so now we’re working with 341,258 games started. I also limited things to nine-inning starts, since no one cares that Tom Cheney struck out 21 batters in a 16-inning start in 1962. This actually knocked our sample down much more significantly, all the way down 309,263 starts. I feel that that is justified, otherwise not everyone is operating on the same playing field. If you disagree, feel free to let me know about it in the comments.

From there, I calculated the percentages and came up with this handy table. Since I’m a glutton for punishment, I also added in a couple of extra year-based filters to put things into further context and so that you have the freedom of choice in selecting your arguments on Scherzer’s, Fiers’, and/or any other pitcher’s behalf. After all, this is America.

Note: My look here is pretty simplistic. If you want a more detailed look, check out Neil Weinberg’s post over at Beyond the Box Score from May. It has cool graphs and junk.

One of the first things that pops out at me, besides how rare the 14-strikeout game, is that across all years, a two-strikeout game is more common than a zero- or one-strikeout game. I wouldn’t have guessed that.

We can also see that while 14-strikeout games have become ever so slightly more frequent, they aren’t even close to one percent of all games started. That’s pretty legit.

Below, is the list of all the pitchers who managed the feat since 1995. Feast upon them.

If you’ve spent any time around FanGraphs or other sabermetric-leaning sites, you’ve certainly heard about the statistic Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP). FIP is one of the bedrock pitching statistics at FanGraphs and is the basis for our Wins Above Replacement (WAR) calculation for pitchers. Clearly, having a good handle on what FIP does and doesn’t tell you is important if you want to get the most out of FanGraphs.

To that end, the FanGraphs Library entry on FIP just got a makeover and now provides a more detailed breakdown of what FIP is, why we care about it, and how to use it. If you’re a little hazy on how and why FIP works, it’s a very useful place to start. There’s also a new entry in the FanGraphs Library blog examining why FIP is step forward from traditional stats like ERA.

As always,  please feel free to pose questions or comments below or find me on Twitter @NeilWeinberg44 if that’s more convenient. Also remember to stop by our weekly FanGraphs Q&A chat (Wednesdays at 3pm eastern) to learn more about our stats and our site.

Yes, it’s true. We’re less than 48 hours away from the FanGraphs Boston Meetup. For all of the original details, which are still true, read this post here. Or read the pertinent info here, if you’re lazy like Cistulli:

Sometimes, we nerds like to go out on the town. One of those times is the weekend of the Saber Seminar, which is one of the best events (if not the best) on the yearly sabermetric and/or sabermatic calendar. This year’s Saber Seminar is August 16-17. So, just as we did last year, we’re once again going to set up shop at The Mead Hall in Cambridge the night before Saber Seminar, on Friday, August 15th!

It promises to be a good time. Since the posting, other luminaries of the Boston media market have pledged their attendance, but since I A) won’t remember all of them and B) want to protect their identities, you’ll just have to take my word on that. Beer, baseball, and baseball nerds. It’s a combination just crazy enough to work. Join us, won’t you?

Right-handed Detroit prospect Buck Farmer, making his major-league debut shortly after making his Double-A debut, has just completed his first inning of work. With a view to edutaining the public and also securing internet clicks, the author presents footage below of Farmer’s secondary pitches.

First, his slider, to Pittsburgh’s Russell Martin:

And second, probably his changeup at 83 mph, to strike out Martin:

Chris Carter, as of this writing, has hit 28 home runs this season. That’s more than Mike Trout, Josh Donaldson, David Ortiz and Jose Bautista. Only Nelson Cruz, Jose Abreu, and Giancarlo Stanton have more. Carter has always had a power stroke, so perhaps this isn’t a great surprise. But he’s only one dinger off his career high, and has been gathering them in bunches as of late. In fact, since the calendar flipped to July, Carter has been a (literal) man (metaphorically) on fire.

In July, Carter hit .289 with 8 homers and a .361 ISO. His 176 wRC+ was good enough for ninth among qualified batters that month. So far in August, he leads all batters in wRC+ with a bonkers 261. He’s collected 15 home runs in the last two months and the second month isn’t even half over. When a hitter who historically hits for a poor average suddenly stops doing that, it’s fair to assume that a good deal of it could be luck-dependent, but that isn’t the case here. While his August BABIP is certainly inflated, he wasn’t really that lucky in July. A .314 BABIP is a little above league average, but not terribly so and is actually on par with his 2013.

This can stem from two things — one quantifiable, the second less so. The first factor is that Carter is chasing less as of late. Here’s a heat map of all his swings, courtesy of baseballsavant.com:

There are still a few bad swings on the right, but there’s a discernable lack of flails at outside pitches. The Frisbee sliders are still getting swung at, but the borderline pitches on the outside are being left alone. On the season, he’s still swinging at more outside pitches than in 2013, but his recent approach seems to be helping him.

There has also been talk on Astros broadcasts about a swing tweak that Carter has been working on. Namely, that he’s trying to shorten his stroke. Carter is a big huge enormous man with long arms, and he gives it his all on most swings. While he’s certainly not turning into a slap hitter, a shorter stroke might be helping his contact a bit. Here are two home run swings — the first from 2013, the second from just a few days ago.

The camera angles add some difficulty, but the bat doesn’t seem wrapped around his head as much in the latter GIF, and it appears as if his full-arm extension comes a little later, as well. This could be part of what’s patching the holes in his swing.

According to BaseballSavant, Carter is seeing the same amount of pitches in the zone (36%) in his recent tear as he has all season. Whether it’s through an improved swing, or an improved plate discipline that is leading to better pitches, Chris Carter is showing glimpses of what a man his size looks like he should be doing. He should still have a few good years left in him, and if he really has turned a bit of a corner, he could be a contributing piece of a team looking to make their push at relevancy in the next few years.

You knew what this was as soon as you saw it. The conversation’s popping back up again, and lots of people are weighing in, but I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a reader poll on the topic. So here is a reader poll on the topic, for our collective edification.

Last night, Justin Verlander lasted one inning, gave up five runs, and left the game with “right shoulder soreness”. After the game, Verlander admitted that this had “been lingering for a little while”, which shouldn’t come as a huge surprise, given that Eno Sarris postulated that Verlander might be pitching through an injury a few weeks ago.

And while average fastball velocity certainly isn’t the only way to tell if a pitcher is pitching through a health problem, the game by game chart from BrooksBaseball.com does make it seem like perhaps this became a more serious problem in mid-June.

On June 21st against the Indians, Verlander threw 51 fastballs with an average velocity of 95.1 mph. On the 26th, facing the Astros, his average fastball was just 93.5 mph. Against the A’s on July 2nd, he averaged 92.4 mph. And then, finally, he bottomed out against the Dodgers on July 8th, sitting at just 92.1 mph. Over the course of four starts, he lost three miles per hour on his fastball.

He got back into the 93 range over his last few starts, but is still well below where he was earlier in the year. And as Eno noted, his release point has been less consistent, and he’s throwing fewer pitches in the strike zone. Maybe the MRI will show that he just needs some rest and there’s no structural damage, but historically, these variables have done fairly well at identifying injured pitchers. And so the Tigers should probably not plan on having the old Justin Verlander back any time soon.