Episode 757
The prolific Travis Sawchik is a former beat reporter for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and author of the book Big Data Baseball. He’s also the guest on this edition of the program, during which he discusses (a) Jimmy Nelson’s use of the kinetic sciences, (b) the prospects of realignment in Major League Baseball, and also (c) the BBWAA Hardball Dynasty league.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 17 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Washington at Arizona | 16:10 ET
Strasburg (119.2 IP, 80 xFIP-) vs. Ray (112.0 IP, 90 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm has selected this afternoon’s Washington-Arizona game as the day’s most compelling. In this case, the distinction seems warranted. Consider: both probable starters have the capacity to overwhelm hitters, each having produced a top-10 strikeout rate among baseball’s 70 qualified pitchers. As for the clubs involved, both continue to play games of some relevance, the D-backs very much chasing a Wild Card spot while the Nationals attempt simply to preserve their lead in the NL East.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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Jose Berrios is having a breakout season. In 13 starts for the Minnesota Twins, the 23-year-old right-hander has a 3.50 ERA, and he’s won nine of his twelve decisions. His breaking ball is a big reason. It’s a plus pitch, and certainly not run-of-the mill.

I recently had the following exchange with Twins pitching coach Neil Allen:

How would you describe Berrios’s breaking ball?

“It’s Bugs Bunny. It’s pretty darn good.”

Is it a curveball or a slider?

“It’s a little bit of both.”

Chris Gimenez had a less-catchy, but every bit as compelling, response to the same question(s).

“It’s a curveball, but he can make it a little more slider-ish when he’s really trying to wrench it down and away from a right-hander,” said the Minnesota backstop. “It’s the closest I’ve seen to Corey Kluber’s curveball, and to Yu Darvish’s slider. I’ve had a chance to catch both of those guys, and that’s some pretty elite company to be in.”

Curveballs and sliders are obviously classified differently, so I asked Gimenez to elaborate. Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric forefather Rob Neyer, and expanded at the request of nobody, NERD scores represent an attempt to summarize in one number (and on a scale of 0-10) the likely aesthetic appeal or watchability, for the learned fan, of a player or team or game.

How are they calculated? Haphazardly, is how. An explanation of the components and formulae which produce these NERD scores is available here. All objections to the numbers here are probably justified, on account of how this entire endeavor is absurd.

Most Highly Rated Game
Toronto at Cleveland | 19:10 ET
Stroman (119.0 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Salazar (55.0 IP, 81 xFIP-)
The author’s haphazardly constructed algorithm has identified today’s Toronto-Cleveland game as the most appealing. While, at this point in the season, a club’s playoff odds — and, specifically, the proximity of those odds to 50% by the coin-flip method — are weighted more heavily than pitching-related variables, the performances this year by Marcus Stroman and Danny Salazar have been exceptional or something like exceptional this year. This, in conclusion, accounts for the logic behind the selection of this game as the day’s most appealing.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times and blue for Community Research.
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Fringe Five Scoreboards: 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013.

The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion among the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, MLB.com, John Sickels*, and (most importantly) lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen and also who (b) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on any updated list — such as the revised and midseason lists released by Baseball America or BP’s recent midseason top-50 list — will also be excluded from eligibility.

*All 200 names!

In the final analysis, the basic idea is this: to recognize those prospects who are perhaps receiving less notoriety than their talents or performance might otherwise warrant.

Yonny Chirinos, RHP, Tampa Bay (Profile)
This represents Chirinos’s third consecutive appearance among the Five. His start this week, on Wednesday against Pirates affiliate Indianapolis, was consistent with the others he’s produced over the past month or so. Against 26 batters over 6.0 innings, the 23-year-old right-hander recorded an 8:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and conceded his lone earned run on a homer (box).

Chirinos continues to exhibit impressive comfort with his secondary pitches, showing a willingness to throw them in all counts. Indeed, he began his most recent appearance with three different pitches, all for strikes, to dispatch swiftly of Indy leadoff hitter Eury Perez.

This video footage documents that sequence:

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Heading into the year, the Mariners plan seemed to be to acquire as many low-ceiling middling prospects as they could find and throw them all at the wall, hoping one or two would help stabilize the back end of the team’s rotation. Over the last year and change, they’ve acquired and started Ariel Miranda, Dillon Overton, Chase De Jong, Chris Heston, Christian Bergman, and Ryan Weber. Thanks to a .220 BABIP, Miranda’s been a reasonable enough starter for the team, but most of the other guys made a few low-quality appearances and were then shipped back to Triple-A.

But the Mariners are apparently undeterred, and are trying this strategy one more time.

#Mariners acquire LHP Marco Gonzales from St. Louis for minor league OF Tyler O’Neill.

— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) July 21, 2017

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The other day in the Giants’ clubhouse, I told Jeff Samardzija he was close to setting a record. “I don’t want to hear about it,” laughed the amicable righty. “No, no, a good one,” I pointed out, informing him of how he’s close to recording the best strikeout-to-walk figure of all time.

“Doesn’t mean I don’t have plenty to figure out,” he responded back.

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It’s been an utterly lost season for the San Francisco Giants. Sure, it’s not an even year, so finding the Giants outside of the playoff mix isn’t a total shock, but the second-worst record in baseball? Not exactly what Bay Area fans had in mind.

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