In 2012, Kenta Maeda threw a curveball or two a game. He threw three or four four-seam fastballs for every sinker. He was a four-seam/slider guy with the occasional changeup, is what he was. And that’s what I had to work with when I tried to find a comp for him and settled on pitchers like Aaron Nola and a young Kenshin Kawakami.

I was probably wrong, but it’s also possible that what we’re seeing now is a different Maeda. He allows that it’s possible, too.

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On Monday night in Baltimore, Rick Porcello allowed two earned runs in a complete-game victory, striking out seven batters without a walk. That outing lowered his season ERA to 3.08, topped in the American League only by Masahiro Tanaka and Chris Sale. It raised his innings total to 210.2, topped in the AL only by Sale and Porcello’s teammate, David Price. It improved his pitcher record to 21-4 — which, I don’t need to tell you how poor of an evaluating tool pitcher record is, but there’s a part of me that refuses not to be at least a little impressed by 21-4.

Porcello, over the last month or so, has gone from fringe Cy Young candidate to a legitimate possibility. Sale is the only AL pitcher with a higher RA9-WAR and FIP-WAR than Porcello. The argument is right there if you want to make it. Sure, you could probably make the argument that Porcello’s ERA is more a product of good fortune than performance by pointing to his .260 batting average on balls in play, which is 42 points lower than his career mark. But then also you’ve got to consider that his career mark’s probably unfairly inflated by his being a ground-ball pitcher in front of Detroit’s defense for so many years, and that the BABIPs of his strongest Cy Young competitors are similarly depressed.

So you could make the case that Porcello’s numbers point more to good fortune than performance, or you could make the case that Porcello has made some legitimately compelling strides in the way he pitches.

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Episode 683
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio, he discusses the recent dismissal of Arizona front-office member De Jon Watson and what hand Watson likely had and didn’t have in some of the club’s curious decisions; addresses the recent but unsurprising suspension of San Diego general manager A.J. Preller; and speculates wildly about what discoveries Statcast might have facilitated during baseball’s last dramatic increase in power numbers.

This episode of the program either is or isn’t sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

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 39 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by sabermetric nobleman 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. Read more about the components of and formulae for NERD scores here.

Most Highly Rated Game
St. Louis at Colorado| 15:10 ET
Weaver (33.2 IP, 70 xFIP-) vs. Marquez (5.1 IP, 118 xFIP-)
In Marcel Proust biopic Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, a frenzied crowd chants “two men enter, one man leaves” before a gladiatorial duel that pits Mel Gibson against a developmentally disabled giant. Following wins by San Francisco and St. Louis last night — plus a loss by the Mets — the current National League wild-card situation bears some similarity to that post-apocalyptic mise-en-scène. Except, instead of perspiring Australians, the competitors are the three aforementioned clubs. And instead of two of them, there’s three. And also Tina Turner’s not there.

Here are the current standings and probabilities per this site’s methodology:

Less urgent but still notable is the pitching matchup here. St. Louis right-hander Luke Weaver has produced the highest strikeout rate (tied with Rich Hill) among all starters to record 20 or more innings over the last month. German Marquez, meanwhile, is scheduled to make his first major-league start. Owner of a plus fastball, he produced decidedly above-average strikeout and walk numbers as just a 21-year-old in the high minors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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On Monday night, Ken Rosenthal wrote something of a plea to his fellow BBWAA members; stop looking for reasons to give the MVP award to anyone besides Mike Trout.

My fear is that in 20 years people are going to say, “Trout led the majors in combined OPS-plus from 2012 to ’16 and won only one MVP in those five seasons? What the heck were the writers thinking?”

Shame on us if, instead of celebrating Mike Trout, we keep looking for the next best thing.

It’s a good piece, and given Rosenthal’s standing in the baseball writing community, it could have some influence on the 30 voters who have AL MVP ballots this year. And if you’ve read FanGraphs for the last few years, you probably know that most of us writing here agree with his stance; the idea that Trout is somehow less valuable because his teammates stink is not an argument that I give much credence to.

But I also have been doing this long enough to realize that a good number of people are entrenched on this issue, believing that production on a losing team is not valuable; we’ve all heard some version of “The Angels could have finished in last without him” trope. The (unfortunate) reality is that this idea isn’t going away any time soon, and it’s likely that a bunch of AL MVP voters will continue with the tradition of voting for the best player on a playoff team.

So here’s what I would like to add to Ken’s plea to our BBWAA brethren; if you’re going to argue that Trout cannot be more valuable than one of Mookie Betts, Josh Donaldson, or Manny Machado, because his teammates didn’t let him turn his production into value, then extend that belief throughout your ballot. Own the idea of value being exclusively created by team wins and playoff appearances, and apply it to every place on the ballot, not just the top spot.

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Ben and Sam banter about Padres GM A.J. Preller’s suspension, then discuss whether each of 2016’s non-playoff teams should consider its season a success or a failure.

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