Lucas Erceg hopes to have his name on the back of a Milwaukee Brewers uniform someday. In order to get there, he will have to keep his word to the scout who put his name on the back of Erceg’s. So far, so good.

Erceg slashed .327/.376/.518, with nine home runs, between a pair of low-level stops this summer. He did so after the Brewers drafted him 46th overall out of an NAIA program that helped him grow up. The left-handed-hitting third baseman had transferred to Menlo (CA) College after becoming academically ineligible at Cal-Berkeley.

“My priorities were mixed up,” admitted Erceg, who made a name for himself by hitting .303/.357/.502 in his sophomore season at Cal. “I failed a couple of classes — I didn’t pass enough units — because I was trying to live the life of a college student instead of going to the library on a Tuesday night. In essence, I wasn’t taking school seriously.”

Erceg is taking seriously the fact that he let people down. He doesn’t intend to have it happen again. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben, Sam, and Los Angeles Times Dodgers beat writer Andy McCullough discuss Dave Roberts’ decision to remove Rich Hill after seven perfect innings on Saturday.

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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
Boston at Toronto | 13:05 ET
Rodriguez (82.0 IP, 114 xFIP-) vs. Happ (164.1 IP, 95 xFIP-)
This encounter between Boston and Toronto appears as the day’s most highly rated for all the same reasons it appeared as yesterday’s most highly rated — and will appear as tomorrow’s, most likely, as well. Despite Boston’s 13-3 victory yesterday, the consequences of the game are considerable. The probability of either club winning the division or merely qualifying for a wild-card spot or doing neither — in every case, it remains substantive. As banal as this paragraph has been, that’s as riveting as this game could possibly be.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.
Read the rest of this entry »

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
Boston at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Porcello (186.2 IP, 92 xFIP-) vs. Estrada (49.1 IP, 107 xFIP-)
If one is inclined to choose a game, even a game in September, for the quality of the pitching matchup it offers, then tonight’s encounter between Clayton Kershaw and Jose Fernandez is very clearly the crème of that particular crème — and, as any number of billboards along rural state highways in this country are inclined to remind the public, this is a free country. In the event, however, that one is more inclined towards the sort of conflict which is the staple of narrative structure, then the conflict created by the Blue Jays’ and Red Sox’ nearly equal and definitely opposite designs on the AL East title offers a strong example of that sort of pleasure, as well.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is center fielders. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Middle Infielders / Left-Handed Pitchers.

Center field is a difficult position to play. It requires special straight-line speed but also the ability to read ball trajectory off the bat and hunt down said ball while making in-flight adjustments at a full sprint. As it is such a difficult position to play, not many humans are capable of it and this year’s group of high-school prospects are no different. Below are most all the prospects I’ve seen during summer showcases who I think have a prayer to remain in center field. For the uninitiated, the players who have their own sizeable sections are ranked in the order in which I’d draft them were I forced to do so today, while the players below that are just in alphabetical order.

Jordon Adell, OF, Ballard HS (KY)
Height: 6’3, Weight: 200, Commitment: Louisville

Jordon (or “Jo”) Adell has the best hit/power combination among high schoolers in the 2017 class and has a non-zero chance of playing center field. If that sounds like a player worthy of consideration in the draft’s top 5-10 picks, that’s because it is.

Read the rest of this entry »

According to our playoff odds, there are currently 13 teams which feature playoff odds below 2%. As that number grows throughout the month, an increasingly large percentage of baseball fans will be bidding farewell to the hopes that this is the year for their preferred teams and looking to adopt other rooting interests. There’s no full replacement for the satisfaction of your team winning in October, but playoff baseball is still worth enjoying as much as you can. So, for whom do you root this month?

In recent years, Jay Jaffe of Sports Illustrated has popularized Team Entropy — spending your September rooting for the chaos generated by ties testing the limits of baseball’s tie-breaker system. With a range of 5.5 games separating the seven teams atop the AL Wild Card standings, Team Entropy is as in play as ever. The theoretical implications of a three- or four- or five-way tie for a Wild Card spot are delightful to imagine. It would be a blast to watch and, as someone with no skin in the game this year, I’d enjoy the hell out of it. That said, my strongest loyalties lie with another team — I’m not Team Entropy, I’m Team Cinderella.

For me, there’s no more exciting storyline than a September longshot bucking the odds and finding its way into the postseason. Two years ago, the Pirates had roughly a 20% chance to make the postseason on September 3rd according to The Baseball Gauge and then proceeded to secure themselves a spot in the Wild Card game. But I’d argue an even more exciting September Cinderella storyline unfolded a year before that when the 2013 Indians finished off the season by winning 15 of 17 and beating out the Rangers for a Wild Card Spot despite possessing 15% playoff odds at the start of that final 17-game run. Now that’s my idea of brilliant September baseball.

It’s been a few years and, though it may be a virtue, patience is certainly no fun. It’s time for a new September Cinderella team, so let’s go searching for one. For this exercise, I’m considering the cases of the five teams with playoff odds currently in the 3%-20% range.

Read the rest of this entry »

While trolls and naysayers on Twitter were crying bust after Houston Astros’ top prospect Alex Bregman began his major-league career by going 0-for his first 17 and 1-for his first 32, manager A.J. Hinch was moving him up to bat in the most important spot in his team’s lineup. At the time, Hinch cited his contact rate and exit velocity as indicators that Bregman’s at-bats were better than the results indicated.

Bregman’s now become a fixture in the second position of Houston’s batting order, starting there in each of the club’s last 33 games, and over the last month, he’s been among baseball’s most productive hitters. Seems like there must have been a grand adjustment, or a light bulb that went off. Astros hitting coach Dave Hudgens dispelled that notion before a recent game in Cleveland, reinforcing Hinch’s suggestions that Bregman was never actually struggling at all.

“The biggest thing is, he was having good at-bats and having tough luck, too,” Hudgens said. “He was getting good at-bats. He just needed a couple hits to fall. His at-bats were good even when he was struggling.”

Split Bregman’s short career into two near-halves, and it’s evident that Hinch and Hudgens aren’t just blowing smoke — the Bregman we saw the first three weeks really isn’t all that different than the Bregman that’s tore up the league over the last month.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

When Kiley McDaniel wrote about the Athletics prospects before the 2015 season, Ryon Healy was just a “name to note” with “55 raw power that plays down in games.” After Healy produced a nice year at Double-A — albeit one without much power — Dan Farnsworth didn’t add much love, saying that he didn’t think Healy had the “swing path to keep driving balls.”

They weren’t alone. Baseball America made him Oakland’s 22nd- and 23rd-best prospect those two years, respectively. He didn’t make it into either of the team write-ups on Baseball Prospectus. Keith Law didn’t include him in his Oakland write-up going into this season.

Healy is 24, yes. He’s only had 184 plate appearances, sure. But he’s already shown more power than projections and prognosticators had in mind for him, and it’s probably not a fluke. He’s made a change we’ve heard about from many other major leaguers. He’s not using the same swing path that kept him off the top-prospect lists.

Read the rest of this entry »