Last week, we updated our mid-May analysis of park factors based on granular batted-ball data, showing the offense-inflating impact that a hot summer can have, especially in certain parts of the country. This week, let’s take a look at the season-to-date overall and fly-ball park factors for all 30 parks, one league at a time, focusing on some interesting park-specific information.

First, here’s the quick-and-dirty on the method used to calculate these park factors. Through August 21, 106,962 balls were put into play during MLB regular-season contests. They resulted in an overall batting average of .328 and slugging percentage of .537, while fly balls generated a .328 AVG and .895 SLG. Line drives generated a .661 AVG and .872 SLG, and ground balls a .237 AVG and .258 SLG. (Oh, and pop ups have generated a .018 AVG and .028 SLG.) Each BIP type was split into “buckets” separated by 5-mph increments. The top fly-ball bucket begins at 105 mph, and the top liner and grounder buckets begin at 110 mph.

For each ballpark, the actual production derived from that park’s actual BIP mix was compared to the projected production, assuming that each BIP bucket generated MLB average production for that BIP type/exit-speed combination. Convert everything to run values, and voila, park factors, both overall and by BIP type.

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On Monday, the Oakland Athletics promoted a couple of hitting prospects from Triple-A: Renato Nunez and Matt Olson. Both Nunez and Olson came off the bench on Monday to make their big-league debuts. With Billy Butler out of the picture, and Danny Valencia likely soon to follow, Nunez and Olson might see a decent chunk of playing time these next two weeks.

Olson’s numbers have trended in the wrong direction since his 37-homer season in the Cal League in 2014. He slashed .249/.388/.438 in Double-A last year and only managed to hit .235/.335/.422 in the PCL this year. Throughout his minor-league career, Olson has demonstrated good power and a willingness to draw walks. He’s also a 22-year-old with a 6-foot-5 frame, which suggests he may still have some untapped upside. But his underwhelming performance, defensive limitations and 24% strikeout rate don’t bode particularly well for his future in the show.

KATOH pegs Olson for 3.7 WAR over his first six seasons by the traditional method and 2.8 WAR by KATOH+, which integrates Baseball America’s rankings. To help you visualize what his KATOH projection entails, here is a probability density function showing KATOH+’s projected distribution of outcomes for Olson’s first six seasons in the major leagues.

To put some faces to Olson’s statistical profile, let’s generate some statistical comps for the newest Brewers prospect. I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Olson’s performance this year and every Double-A season since 1991 in which a first baseman or corner outfielder recorded at least 400 plate appearances. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.

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When a below-average lineup in 2015 was followed by a quiet offseason and a Michael Brantley shoulder surgery, it was easy to make a case against Cleveland’s preseason playoff hopes that started and ended with the lineup. Yet here we are, now, in September, and Cleveland is all but a lock to win their division. They’ve gotten here due in large part to a lineup that’s exceeded expectations (third in runs scored, 10th in wRC+) and kept pace with the pitching (third in ERA-, seventh in WAR) and defense (fourth in UZR, 10th in DRS). They’ve gotten here by crushing offspeed pitches, at a near-historic rate.

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The words “Ubaldo Jimenez” and “good start” haven’t appeared together often this year. In fact the word “start” itself hasn’t always applied. But with his team clinging to a Wild Card spot and still within reach of a division title, he picked a great time to throw four good starts in place of an injured Chris Tillman.

Jimenez’s first two years with the Baltimore Orioles are a study in contrasts. In 2014, he walked nearly 14% of his batters en route to a 4.48 xFIP. Although the Orioles won the AL East and took Jimenez to the ALDS, they left him off the ALCS roster. But in 2015, Jimenez harnessed his funky mechanics, got more ground balls, walked fewer batters, and had a much better 3.83 xFIP.

This year has more resembled 2014 than 2015. Although Jimenez is walking fewer batters than in 2014, he’s striking out fewer, too, leading to a lower strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%). After beginning the season in the rotation, here’s what happened:

• June 14 – Demoted to bullpen. At the time, his strikeout rate was just 17.3%, while his walk rate was 11.4%.
• June 17 – Pitched 2.1 innings in emergency relief of Mike Wright. Jimenez struck out four batters but walked two and gave up two long balls.
• June 22 – Returned to rotation.
• August 1 – Demoted to bullpen again. From June 22nd to August 1st, his strikeout rate improved to 22.25%, but his walk rate soared to an unplayable 15.7%.
• August 24 – Returned to the rotation as a result of Chris Tillman going on the DL. At the time the Orioles were 69-56, two games back in the AL East and two games ahead of Seattle for the second AL Wild Card spot.

His four starts in place of Tillman were good. Jimenez struck out only 15.9% of the batters he faced, but he cut his walk rate to a stingy 5.6%. He also threw the team’s first complete game since 2014.

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Last September, a starting pitcher emerged who would go on to be one of the more popular under-the-radar “breakout” picks of the winter. Acquired from Miami in the Mat Latos trade, Anthony DeSclafani was a 24-year-old with middling results across his 31 starts last year, including a 4.05 ERA and a 12.2-point strikeout- and walk-rate differential (K-BB%). The results on their own were more than serviceable for an innings-eater type pitcher, but they weren’t exactly exciting. Until you looked at September, that is.

In September, his ERA clocked in at an unappealing 4.93, but the underlying peripherals were fantastic. He struck out 24.8% of batters while walking just 3.4% and maintained a solid 47.1% ground-ball rate — all of which left him with a 2.27 FIP for the month. A bit of bad luck in batted balls and sequencing made it possible for numbers-friendly fans to uncover what really happened with DeSclafani that month and feel like you were unearthing a great secret, because not only was DeSclafani putting on a hidden great performance, it was accompanied by the always enticing logical explanation.

Take a look at DeSclafani’s pitch-usage chart from 2015 and you’ll find that, at the end of the season, he largely scrapped his changeup and dramatically increased his curveball usage. Additionally, he decreased his reliance on the four-seamer. Great run-prevention numbers may not have initially accompanied the adjustment, but the peripherals indicated that DeSclafani had taken a step forward and could be in store for a strong 2016 campaign. And, as it turns out, that’s exactly what’s happened.

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Episode 681
Lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen is the guest on this edition of the pod, during which he discusses Matt Bowman, park effects, and assessing a prospect’s ability to benefit (or not) from information; attempts to identify those skills which might allow a pitcher, like Mike Leake or (nearly) Rick Porcello, to bypass the minor leagues entirely; and explores an anxious moment from his own sporting youth.

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 1 hr 08 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
Baltimore at Boston | 19:10 ET
Bundy (94.1 IP, 106 xFIP-) vs. Pomeranz (158.2 IP, 89 xFIP-)
Over the past week or so, this space has been reserved almost exclusively for Baltimore games or Boston games or Toronto games or Baltimore-Toronto games or Boston-Toronto games or, as is the case today, Baltimore-Boston games. Because the AL East is currently home to a giant competitive rumpus, is why. By the coin-flip methodology of calculating postseason odds — which seems to best represent how the human mind conceives of these things — all three of the aforementioned teams possess better than a 10% probability of winning the division. Even the dumb Yankees, by that same methodolgy, possess greater odds than the second-place club in three other divisions. So this Orioles-Red Sox contest is most highly rated it. This is the end of the explanation for why.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore Television.

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“This is a great time to be a baseball player and have all this info,” Reds starting pitcher Dan Straily told me last month when his team came to town. Minutes later, I was talking with a member of his front office who lauded the pitcher as “maybe the most dependable” of his squad. These things are related. It’s taken all that info for the pitcher to mold himself into the useful arm that he is today.

That info has helped Straily refine not only his approach, but also the movement on his pitches and the mechanics that created them. And it helped him when things were dire. His velocity dipped into the low 80s at one point, and he was released by two teams in a one-season span. “When I lost my velo, I had to learn how to pitch,” the righty remembered. “Now that I got my velo back, I’m still pitching the same way, but with better stuff.”

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