On Wednesday, the Reds sent righties Dylan Floro and Zach Neal, as well as international pool space, to the Dodgers for RHPs James Marinan and Aneurys Zabala. Marinan, Los Angeles’s fourth-round pick in 2017 out of Park Vista High School in Florida, made three starts in the AZL before the trade. Zabala, whom the Dodgers originally acquired from Seattle for Chase De Jong, was pitching in the Low-A Great Lakes bullpen.

Both pitchers have size and big-league arm strength. Marinan is 6-foot-5, 220, while Zabala (though listed at 175) is closer to 250. Zabala was throwing 96-100 while he was with Seattle, but his conditioning wavered after the trade and the fastball was in the low 90s when I saw him last year. He also had, and still has, issues repeating his delivery, which leads to scattershot fastball command. His velocity is back up into the upper 90s this year, and he can spin a breaking ball. He has above-average relief stuff, but is a high-risk prospect because of how far the command needs to come — and because the stuff has roller coastered over the last two years.

Marinan is a bit more stable. He has a four-pitch mix glued together by a low-90s sinker and average change that flashes above. He can throw an average curveball for strikes, and the slider can miss bats away from righties when located. He could end up with a bunch of 50s, maybe a 55 changeup and command, and become a solid No. 4/5 starter. Both players are likely three years away from the majors, at least, though Zabala will essentially be ready as soon as his fastball command improves, if it does.

For five or seven years or whatever, the author of this post published a daily collection of so-called NERD Scores — ratings, that is, intended to summarize, in one number, the appeal of a particular game to the sort of people who visit FanGraphs. Most readers ignored this daily service. Others were compelled to note its flaws with some regularity. A small minority suggested that it was of some benefit.

Due to a combination of influences — the birth of a child, a slight change in roles here at the site, ungovernable sloth — the author decided this spring not to publish the daily NERD posts this year. This has allowed me to dedicate extra time to pursue my favorite — namely, adding hyphens to the compound adjectives utilized by other authors in their work at this site. Unsurprisingly, FanGraphs has survived the absence of this content.

Recently, however, one interested party has proven what I suspected all along — that the NERD scores are the province of unthinking and -feeling robots. Enterprising millennial John Edwards has identified the least profitable use for his programming and coding skills — namely by crafting a Twitter bot that publishes the NERD scores automatically.

Here, for example, is today’s (somewhat uninspiring) slate of games:

And an apology that suggests that alerts will mark the start of each game:

Edwards himself has suggested that the feed is a work in progress. For those who prefer some guidance for their daily viewing habits, this seems like a promising resource.

Whether you’re a Washington, DC-area resident or a visitor who will be in town for the All-Star Futures Game, you’re invited to the great Politics and Prose Bookstore on Saturday, July 14 at 6 pm, where ESPN’s Keith Law and I will discuss and sign our respective books, Smart Baseball (William Morrow, 2017, now out in paperback) and The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017). During my years at Baseball Prospectus, I was part of half-a-dozen bookstore events at P&P, and they always drew great crowds for engaging discussions and enjoyable interactions with readers, and I have no doubt that this event will deliver the same.

As a prospect-focused senior baseball writer for ESPN Insider, a former member of the Toronto Blue Jays’ front office, and an alumnus of Baseball Prospectus, Keith is uniquely positioned to explain the evolution of talent evaluation within baseball and to examine the trends that are shaping the field in the 21st century. Whether you’re a long-time stathead or a newcomer to this little corner of the game, you’ll enjoy his book (full title Smart Baseball: The Story Behind the Old Stats That Are Ruining the Game, the New Ones That Are Running It, and the Right Way to Think About Baseball) and you can order a signed, personalized copy ahead of time here.

The Cooperstown Casebook is the culmination of a decade and a half of my research and writing about the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum — the forces that shaped the Hall and its honorees, and the battles to recognize and honor the game’s greats and its history, with an emphasis on how advanced statistics have changed our understanding of what makes a Hall of Famer. You can read plenty more about the book here and at my publisher’s page as well as Paul Swydan’s review, and there’s an exceprt from my chapter about Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris here. To order a signed, personalized copy to pick up at the event, click here.

This event is free to attend with no reservation required. Seating is available on a first come, first served basis.

Politics & Prose Bookstore
Saturday, July 14, 6 pm
5015 Connecticut Ave NW
Washington, DC 20008
Map

Dodgers infielder Max Muncy is an instrument of the Absurd, nor is there much evidence to the contrary. He owns, for example, a name that has traditionally been the province exclusively of mid-century private detectives. He’s also a former fifth-round pick who entered the season with roughly -1 WAR and yet who, somehow, is currently leading his club by that same measure. Muncy’s bona fides wherein the ridiculous is concerned are beyond reproach.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Max Muncy has once again had a rendezvous with the improbable. Batting in the first inning tonight against the Cubs, Muncy drove a fastball from Kyle Hendricks to center field — over the center-field wall, in fact. Instead of remaining over the center-field wall, however, what Muncy’s home run did instead was to re-enter the field of play and strike innocent bystander Albert Almora on the head. Did it kill or even just injure Almora? Signs point to “No.” But did it cause him a moment’s indignity? Yes, not unlike the sort one experiences just by living.

On Monday, Washington sent a three-player package of middling talents back to Kansas City in exchange for reliever Kelvin Herrera. Those prospects are 3B Kelvin Gutierrez, CF Blake Perkins and RHP Yohanse Morel.

Perkins and Gutierrez were each on our Nationals team write-up as 40 FVs. Gutierrez has a strong contact/defense profile. (He was bad at third base in my extended look at him last Fall and received some playing time at first in anticipation of Ryan Zimmerman’s continued health problems.) He lacks corner-worthy power, however. Perkins is a glove-first center-field prospect with premium strike-zone awareness (he has a 12% career walk rate) and very little power.

We have each of them evaluated as big-league role players. Gutierrez is probably a low-end regular or bench/platoon option at third base and, down the line, a couple other positions. If he alters his approach in a way that coaxes out more of his average raw power in games, he could be more than that. Perkins has a bit more variability because he hasn’t been switch-hitting for very long (he only started in 2016) and might yet grow into some competency as a left-handed hitter, but his lack of in-game power might also undercut his walk rate at upper levels of the minors — and in the big leagues, too — because pitchers are going to attack him without fear that he’ll do any real damage on his own. He also might become such a great defensive center fielder that he plays every day despite providing little offensive value.

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As I noted earlier today, Orioles slugger Chris Davis, who through the Orioles’ first 67 games has already dug himself a -1.9 WAR hole, is on pace for the worst season ever by that measure, -4.6 WAR. At the other end of the spectrum, Mike Trout is having not just the best season of his already amazing career, but one for the pantheon. His 5.7 WAR through the Angels’ first 69 games prorates to 13.4 over a full season, which would rank third all-time, behind the 1923 and 1921 seasons of Babe Ruth (15.0 and 13.9 WAR, respectively), making Trout’s season “only” the best in the past 95 years. What a slacker.

Even if that’s the case, Trout and Davis could combine for the largest WAR differential between two position players in one season, a chasm wider than the Grand Canyon. Below are the 20 largest single-season gaps, with some player-seasons, such as Ruth’s 1920, included more than once. I’ve also included two hypothetical end-of-season figures for Trout and Davis: their WAR differential based both on current pace and also our Depth Chart projections.

Seven separate Ruth seasons are represented here, along with three apiece from Hornsby and Bonds. Aside from the projection of Trout, only one other post-World War II player besides Bonds is represented above on the good side of things, namely A-Rod in 2002. That’s just one small set of data points related to the fact that the spread of talent between the best and worst players is much less now than it was 75 or 100 years ago and that leagues today are stronger than the ones of decades past.

Ruth hit “only” 41 homers during his 15.0-WAR 1923 season, but via his .393/.545/.764 (231 wRC+) line, he set career highs in the first two categories even while somehow failing to win a batting title. (The Tigers’ Harry Heilmann hit .403.) His dance partner from the 1923 season was Collins, a light-hitting outfielder who batted .231/.265/.289 for a lousy 43 wRC+ that year and was six runs below average on defense. To the extent that Collins has any other claim to fame, it’s apparently that he was the only player in the White Sox’ starting lineup for Game One of the World Series who didn’t wind up either banned for life as part of the Black Sox scandal or elected to the Hall of Fame (as Eddie Collins and Ray Schalk were). Ruth’s 1931 season (.373/.495/.700, 46 HR) is paired with Levey, the Browns shortstop who actually had an even worse season (1933, -4.0 WAR) that represents the record Davis is trying to avoid.

As for Trout, to date, the largest WAR gap of his career is 13.9 WAR, from 2013, when he set a career best with 10.1 WAR and Yuniesky Betancourt turned in a -1.8 WAR clunker. Even if Davis didn’t play another game this year, Trout would only need to add another 4.5 WAR over the Angels’ 93 remaining games to surpass that previous high. While he and Davis don’t have much margin for error in surpassing Ruth and Collins, it still boggles the mind that we could be seeing such extremes in the same season.

In April, I discussed two then-pending cases before the U.S. Supreme Court challenging Major League Baseball’s long-standing exemption from antitrust law. Since that time, the Court had had the two appeals scheduled for consideration on three occasions, only to reschedule its deliberation each time. Although it wasn’t immediately clear why the Court was repeatedly postponing its consideration of the two appeals, this rather unusual delay raised the possibility that several of the justices were potentially interested in reconsidering baseball’s controversial antitrust exemption.

Despite any possible behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the delay ultimately proved to be for naught, as the Court announced on Monday that it was declining to hear either appeal, effectively ending the two cases. This means that MLB will continue to operate largely outside the scope of federal antitrust law for the foreseeable future.

As is normally the case, the Court did not explain on Monday why it was denying the two appeals. The Court did reveal one piece of potentially relevant information this morning, however, noting that Chief Justice Roberts recused himself from any consideration of the appeal in the Wyckoff v. Office of the Commissioner of Baseball case. It’s not at all clear why Chief Justice Roberts opted not to participate in the Court’s deliberation of the case.

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Like half my social-media feed, I woke up to the awful news of the suicide of Anthony Bourdain, whose work I have loved going all the way back to the 1999 New Yorker piece that became Kitchen Confidential, his first book. The chef-turned-writer-turned-television-journalist had a remarkable gift for illuminating any corner of the world he wandered via A Cook’s Tour, No Reservations, The Layover, and Parts Unknown, bringing a rare and genuine empathy, compassion and gusto along with him. His career-changing discovery of his writing voice was among the many that inspired me as I embarked upon my own change from graphic design to writing about baseball.

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Just a few quick notes on the prospects Kansas City received from Arizona today, in exchange for CF Jon Jay. Those minor leaguers are RHP Elvis Luciano and LHP Gabe Speier.

Luciano is a live-armed 18-year-old Dominican righty who spent most of 2017 in the DSL, then came to the U.S. in August for a month of Rookie-level ball, then instructional league. I saw him during instructs when he was 90-94 with an average curveball, below-average changeup, and below command, especially later in his outing as he tired. He was an honorable-mention prospect on the D-backs list.

His velocity has mostly remained in that range this spring, topping out at 96. Luciano’s delivery has been changed to alter his glove’s location as he lifts his leg, probably to help him clear his front side a little better. He’s still had strike-throwing issues and might be a reliever, but he has a live arm and can spin a breaking ball. Though 18, Luciano’s frame doesn’t have much projection, so while he might grow into some velocity as he matures, it probably won’t be a lot. He’s an interesting, long-term flier who reasonably projects as a back-end starter.

As for Speier, he’s repeating Double-A. He’s a sinker/slider guy, up to 95 with an average slide piece. He projects as a bullpen’s second lefty and should be viable in that type of role soon.

If you read FanGraphs regularly, you’re probably already familiar with Saberseminar, the annual weekend event that puts you up close with some of baseball’s top coaches, statisticians, scouts, doctors, and scientists. You can view last year’s speakers here. It’s always an incredible lineup.

This year’s seminar will take place August 4 and 5 in Boston, MA. And while the exact agenda is still being finalized – baseball folks are so busy! – the organizers have shared a few highlights, which include:

• A panel with many of the authors of the recent report commissioned by Major League Baseball to explore changes to the baseball and MLB’s increased home run rate
• Ex-major league player Fernando Perez
• Top talent evaluators from the Red Sox front office
• Over 15 research presentations, including several from Japanese baseball
• The presentation of Saberseminar’s first-ever scholarship awards to women and minority students aspiring to front office roles

Early ticket pricing ends today, May 31st, with regular ticket sales starting June 1. Tickets, including discounted student tickets, can be purchased here.

And as if a weekend of nerdy baseball fun isn’t exciting enough, you’ll also be supporting a wonderful cause, as proceeds from the event will be donated to the Angioma Alliance.

We’ll keep you posted as the agenda is finalized and we confirm which FanGraphs writers will be in attendance.

In the meantime, take advantage of the early ticket pricing, and start looking forward to a great event!