Last week, we ran an interview with Charlie Blackmon and Chris Denorfia on the subject of swing paths and launch angles. If you read the piece, you’ll recall that the Rockies outfielders share a similar philosophy, but come to it in different ways. One is studious in his pursuit of the science, while the other is satisfied to be aware of the launch-angle concept.

San Diego Padres teammates Carlos Asuaje and Wil Myers are much like their Colorado contemporaries. Both want to elevate the baseball, but one puts a lot of thought into the why, while the other tries to keep things as simple as possible.

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Carlos Asuaje: “It’s easy to overanalyze things, and try to focus on something that’s pretty tough to control. The angle of where the ball is going off your bat is a good example of that. But you want to hit the ball in the air. That’s the reality of it. It’s the way to get hits nowadays. There’s enough technology and science to back that up.

“It’s something I definitely focus on. Being a smaller guy doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. If you hit ground balls, you’re going to be out, especially at the major-league level. Guys don’t boot balls, they don’t throw poorly, and you’re not going to outrun the baseball. You have to play the odds, and the odds are that if you hit the ball in the air, you have a better chance to be successful.

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My regard for Mark Buehrle is growing.

We often don’t fully appreciate people or things while we still have access to them. Buehrle quietly slipped into retirement prior to last season after a remarkable career during which he struck out batters at well below league-average rates, possessed a sub-90 mph fastball for much of his career, and yet accumulated 52 WAR and a 215-160 record over 18 seasons in the majors.

His success was curious, though he was not without his gifts. He could paint corners as well as any starter in baseball. Consider his 2015 fastball location via Baseball Savant:

That’s excellent, but it pales in comparison to Buehrle’s signature skill — namely, the pace at which he worked.

With the mounting concern regarding pace of play from the commissioner’s office, with so much being made of the subject in the media, with pace itself slowing after progress made in 2015, has anyone checked in with the this century’s quickest-working pitcher to get his thoughts on pitch clocks, pace and of a pitcher’s process?

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On Tuesday, I published KATOH’s 2017 top-100 list. Naturally, a lot of good players missed the cut. But one omission seemed particularly egregious, relative to the industry consensus. KATOH’s disdain for this player has elicited a few comments in recent months.

From this week’s top-100:

From our Rockies list in November:

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It’s rare that the scouting community, projections wonks, and enthusiastic fans all possess more or less the same opinion about a player. More commonly, a player comes up and drives some kind of wedge between certain crowds. So Dan Vogelbach, guy who fans like more than scouts, isn’t necessarily rare in that regard. In Vogelbach’s case, however, the difference of opinion are more pronounced. And in Vogelbach’s case, the stakes are higher — in more ways than one.

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These are our current projected standings. Meanwhile, this will, at some point, become our updated playoff-odds page. When that second page is updated, you’ll notice some small differences when compared to the first, as the projected records on that page will take into consideration the various team schedules. That will make for a post of its own! Because it can be worthwhile to examine schedule strength. Not all baseball schedules are created the same.

What follows here is maybe a sneak preview, or maybe a shortcut. It’s at least related, because what I’ve done is figure out projected division strength. The math almost couldn’t be simpler. Up there, I linked the team projections. In the plot below, I’ve averaged them in appropriate groups. Somehow people think of me as a baseball expert. Anyway, let me say this: As of today, it looks like the AL East is baseball’s toughest division. The AL West is close behind. And the AL Central looks like relative garbage.

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I first heard of Chaz Roe in December of 2010, when he was traded straight-up for Jose Lopez. It wasn’t a promising thing; it was more like, hey, in 2009 Lopez hit 25 home runs, and in 2010 the best he could get in a trade was Chaz Roe. Roe, since then, has bounced around without quite establishing himself. He is, at this point, a 30-year-old man, who is now with his tenth organization, one of which having been an independent outfit named the Lemurs. Roe has traveled all over the place. He’s been sufficiently intriguing to get a number of looks, yet insufficiently effective to stick. Such is the career of an eighth or ninth reliever.

By now, I’m sure Roe doesn’t feel too secure. He’s probably hesitant to ever unpack any bags, and his current employer — the Braves — remains in the midst of a rebuild anyway. If Roe’s bad, he could go. If Roe’s good, he could go. The future’s uncertain, but at least Roe is now giving it his best shot. He’s running out of time to build a more stable career, so late last season, he started using his best pitch a lot more. It sounds so simple to us. It seems almost obvious. You can now count Chaz Roe among the slider machines.

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The Scott Boras influence on the Nationals’ roster is “inescapable” wrote Washington Post scribe Barry Svrluga on Monday.

Svrluga calculates that, after the Matt Wieters signing, nine players on the Nationals’ projected Opening Day roster will almost certainly be Boras clients, their contracts totaling $551.4 million.

When Dave Cameron examined the curious signing of Wieters by the Nationals earlier this month the FanGraphs editor wrote:

The lesson, as always; if you’re not sure where a Scott Boras client is going to sign, Washington is always a safe guess.

At the plate, Wieters isn’t clearly better than Norris, even with the latter’s miserable 2016 as our most recent data point. …. Statcorner has Norris at +22.5 runs from framing in his career, while Wieters is at -20.9. Prorated to 10,000 pitches, that’s roughly +6.5 per season for Norris and -3.2 for Wieters, so about a 10 run swing between them per year.

The Nationals needed help. They needed to bolster their bench, they required bullpen help, and reportedly added Joe Blanton Tuesday. What they didn’t need was Wieters, a poor receiver with a middling bat. With Wieters, Boras appears to have sold ice to an arctic village. It was a surprising fit, only it wasn’t, as Boras and Nationals owner Ted Lerner have developed something of a deal-making relationship.

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Episode 719
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod. On this episode, he and the idiot host set the over/under WAR figures for the home edition of the Over/Under Prospect Game, which readers can play by clicking here.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 10 min play time.)

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