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
San Diego at Washington | 16:05 ET
Richard (62.2 IP, 83 xFIP-) vs. Strasburg (60.1 IP, 83 xFIP-)
When the author’s haphazardly calculated algorithm identified May 21st’s game between Arizona and San Diego as the day’s most promising largely on the basis of Clayton Richard’s presence, it appeared only to underscore how haphazardly calculated that same algorithm must be. What actually happened, though, is Richard conceded just a single run over nine innings while recording a 6:0 strikeout-to-walk ratio — all on just 96 pitches (box). To further understand what might be facilitating Richard’s success, consider reading this piece by Jeff Sullivan. Alternatively, consider surrendering to the dark unknown of the universe.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington 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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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan banter about Pokémon as a baseball show, Mike Montgomery’s workload, whether the Yankees are preparing to turn heel again, and the AL’s early interleague dominance, then discuss whether baseball fans are better off with or without an awareness of projections and playoff odds.

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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
Arizona at Milwaukee | 20:10 ET
Godley (25.2 IP, 85 xFIP-) vs. Guerra (3.0 IP, 60 xFIP-)
Right-hander Junior Guerra makes his first major-league appearance since departing from his Opening Day start with a calf injury. He pitches for a Milwaukee club that resides much closer to the top of the NL’s centermost division than one would have reasonably assumed back on April 3rd — to face a much more competitive Arizona club than one would have expected at that time, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee Radio.

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About a year ago, I remember thinking that Billy Beane must be feeling pretty good about having Sonny Gray, perhaps one of baseball’s best trade chips. Stephen Strasburg had just signed a contract extension, leaving few, if any, pending free agents around the league and little else available on the trade market at the deadline. With a cost-controlled pitcher, the A’s could sell to any team without being limited to major markets. If Drew Pomeranz was capable of fetching a top prospect in Anderson Espinoza, Sonny Gray was going to merit a haul.

It didn’t quite work out that way. A combination of ineffectiveness and arm injuries, perhaps one causing the other, left Gray with a poor season. A year later, Gray is pitching well, and he might still be that valuable trade chip I considered him to be a year ago.

I have some recollection of Sonny Gray being a top-of-the-rotation starter, an ace-type player. Then I look at some of his stats, and I can’t help but feel slightly underwhelmed. There’s his 21% strikeout rate from 2013 to 2015, which ranks an okay 31st out of 89 pitchers with at least 400 innings. His 7.7% walk rate was 60th among those 89 pitchers — not that good at all, in other words. Then you look a little further and find the one thing that Gray did very well — namely, keep the ball on the ground. His ground-ball rate of 54% was seventh in the majors during that timeframe. It’s hard for opposing batters to collect extra-base hits when they can’t get off the ground. It’s impossible to hit it out of the park. Unsurprisingly, Gray’s 0.66 HR/9 was 12th best in baseball during that period. Opponent ISO was under .100, second only to Clayton Kershaw.

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Yency Almonte is scheduled to take the mound for the Hartford Yard Goats this weekend. It will be the 22-year-old right-hander’s first appearance since May 3, when shoulder discomfort cut short his fifth start of the season.

Prior to being shelved, Almonte excelled. The No. 13 prospect in the Colorado Rockies system has a 1.37 ERA, and Eastern League opponents have hit .189 against his power mix. He was almost untouchable when I saw him live. On April 20, Almonte allowed just four baserunners, and fanned 10, over seven scoreless innings against Harrisburg.

When I caught up to him a few weeks later, the first thing I asked about was the velocity escalation I’d witnessed. Almonte had sat 91-92 in the early innings. By game’s end, he was consistently 95-96.

“I like to spot up and not overdo it early,” explained Almonte. “I know that once the game goes on, and I start getting warm — I start getting hot — I start getting it up there. This year, I’ve been anywhere from 91 to 99.”

Reigning in a tendency to overthrow has been a focus. According to Yard Goats pitching coach Dave Burba, the youngster has been guilty of trying to light up radar guns.

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Yasmani Grandal and I will be forever connected.

Despite his paltry traditional offensive numbers a year ago — including a .229 batting average, 49 runs scored, and 72 runs batted in — I placed Grandal seventh on my NL MVP ballot. I was the only writer to cast a vote for Grandal. I wrote about why I did this back in January when I was still new on the job here at FanGraphs. In summary, I gave a lot of value to Grandal’s framing, batting eye, and power from each side of the plate.

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Ben Lindbergh and Jeff Sullivan answer listener emails about performance in interleague games, how rising strikeout rates affect defense, the “foul pole” vs. the “fair pole,” the worst best player on a major league team, Terry Collins’ injury gag order, the best control pitcher of our era, “doubles up the middle,” strikeout terminology, the worst pitchers ever, a Barry Bonds fun fact, what makes baseball leaderboards interesting, a starter bait-and-switch, and more.

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While pace of play has been an issue discussed by the league for some time now, I’ve personally been slow to regard it as an actual problem for the sport. It’s been, for me, a matter that only casual fans would take note of — and that if they weren’t complaining about this issue, they would surely find another one about which to complain.

A couple of developments have changed my thinking, though. First, Grant Brisbee took the time to actually investigate two games held 30 years apart and came away with the conclusion that a pitch clock actually may make a substantial difference in the length of games. Second, players have continued taking longer than ever between pitches this season, despite the increasing talk about the league’s problem with pace of play.

Let’s start with a graph that illustrates the problem on a league-wide basis. Data is as of Thursday morning, but the Pace numbers won’t have changed much in a day, so that’s fine.

You can see the one time in the past decade that saw any marked shift downward was in 2015, when the league put a new rule in place mandating that batters had to keep one foot in the box (except after foul balls) during a plate appearance. From my viewing experiences, the rule doesn’t appear to have been enforced with the same vigilance over the last two seasons, and the data suggest the same thing. The effect has been a rise in the average pace of more than a second and a half since 2015, and 0.7 seconds more than the previous high in 2014.

This is a problem on a couple of levels. First, it shows that the players aren’t taking the Commissioner’s Office very seriously, unless there was a new memo or rule put in place that I have missed. Second, it shows that the players cannot be trusted to follow the honor system — and, as such, more heavy-handed methods of enforcement might be necessary.

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