I’ll be in California for the next few days at the Area Codes and some Cal League stuff, but below are some thoughts on three Phillies prospects I’ve seen recently, including Jake Thompson, who debuts today.

Jake Thompson, RHP, Philadelphia Phillies

I saw Thompson a few weeks ago and he struggled with command. I don’t think strike-throwing is a long-term issue here — at least not so much that it will prevent him from starting — but I do think it impacts the effectiveness of his slider and that the most important part of his development at the major-league level will be locating that pitch where he wants when he wants. It’s often plus and should be so consistently at maturity. Thompson had issues locating it for me for the first half of his start until a mid-game at-bat during which C Andrew Knapp called for six straight sliders. It was a great opportunity for Thompson to find his slider, and it worked: Thompson located it for the rest of his start. It’s his best option for swings and misses to both right- and left-handed hitters. It was anywhere from 83-86 during this particular start though I’ve seen it up to 87 in the past.

Thompson’s fastball sits 90-93 and tops out around 94. His low-80s changeup has average projection, as does his curveball, which is slower and more vertically oriented than his slider. It’s a league-average starter’s profile for me.

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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.

MONDAY
The Dylan Bundy Hype Train Is Finally Boarding by August Fagerstrom
Conveniently, Bundy recorded the best start of his brief career the day after this post.

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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
Boston at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
Wright (137.2 IP, 104 xFIP-) vs. Kazmir (116.1 IP, 95 xFIP-)
This game isn’t the evening’s most highly rated one because Andrew Benintendi might appear in it. Rather, it’s because both the Red Sox and Dodgers find themselves contending with such daunting uncertainty wherein the postseason is concerned. It’s possible that Andrew Benintendi will appear in the game, however. Which provides the reader an opportunity to observe Andrew Benintendi, Hot Prospect, and even to warm one’s hands by Benintendi’s considerable radiant heat.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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Perhaps lost a bit in the trade-deadline shuffle, Kansas City left-hander Danny Duffy pitched one of the very best games of the year this past Monday. On the road against Tampa Bay, he had a no-hitter going until the eighth inning. By the time that inning had ended, Duffy had recorded 16 strikeouts against just one hit and one walk. After a fairly mediocre 2015 season spent mostly in the rotation, Duffy looked to be the next in line to become a very good reliever on a Royals team that has had its fair share. For the first month of the season Duffy pitched quite well out of the pen, but since the middle of May, he’s been a part of the rotation. Jeff Sullivan chronicled Duffy’s rise in the middle of June, noting in particular the lefty’s ability to throw for strikes, and hitters’ general inability to hit those strikes.

The numbers Sullivan cited in his post six weeks ago have remained good since then. Danny Duffy is generally a strike-thrower, keeping the ball in the zone 53% of the time this season, a figure which ranks sixth out of 95 qualified pitchers. Nor is he necessarily pitching to contact, however: his 78% Z-Contact rate is third in baseball behind only knuckleballer Steven Wright and Max Scherzer. Hitters haven’t fared too much better outside of the zone: his 56.6% O-Contact rate is 13th among qualifiers. His overall contact percentage (72%) and swinging-strike percentage (14.3%) sit behind only the figures produced by Jose Fernandez, Clayton Kershaw, Michael Pineda, Max Scherzer, and Noah Syndergaard. His 62% first-strike rate is good, but closer to the middle of the pack.

In Duffy’s brilliant game against he Rays, his first-strike percentage was actually a tad lower than normal at 53.9%, and his zone percentage was just a bit under 50%. Where Duffy excelled was getting the Rays to chase the ball outside the strike zone. Of the pitches outside of the strike zone, Rays batters swung at 44% of them and made contact on just 20% of swings.

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There’s only one Clayton Kershaw. Comparing a pitcher at any level — amateur, minors, majors — to Clayton Kershaw is a terrible, awful, no good, very bad idea. Presumably there will be another generational pitching talent at some point in the future and, when that future ace posts Kershavian stats over the course of multiple seasons, maybe we can start having that discussion. Maybe. Until then, do not make Kershaw comps. In fact, let’s call that The First Rule of Kershaw: no comps.

Alright, with all that out of the way, let’s have some fun comparing a pitcher to Clayton Kershaw… Look, I stand by The First Rule of Kershaw fully, but I’m also partial to this crazy theory that baseball is fun. We’re all smart enough here to recognize that players who aren’t comparable on a macro level can still have similarities at the micro level. So I’m going to ask you to turn off that beautifully analytical portion of your brain for just a moment, sit back, and watch two pitchers.

I know it’s been much too long, but here’s a reminder of what Clayton Kershaw looks like when he throws a baseball:

Full disclosure bordering on sacrilege: there’s a part of me that doesn’t love watching Kershaw pitch. I feel like a monster even admitting such a thing but, well, look at that delivery. It’s herky, jerky and doesn’t live up to my ideal of what an elite pitching motion should look like. But that’s my problem, not Kershaw’s. He’s a generational talent and that’s what this generational talent looks like when he pitches.

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Brian Dozier isn’t concerned with the first three digits of his slash line. Nor does he worry about his spray chart, which reveals his pull-heavy approach. What the Twins second baseman cares about is creating runs.

Extra-base hits are Dozier’s forte. He had 71 of them last year, and this season he has 48 with two months left on the schedule. Yesterday he went deep for the 22nd time, putting him on pace to match last year’s career-high total of 28.

Dozier established his hitting identity in 2013. Since that first full season in Minnesota, he’s slashed .245/.325/.440, with 128 doubles and 91 home runs. Now, at age 29, he’s turning it up a notch. Gong into the weekend, Dozier is slashing .263/.341/.506 with the aforementioned 22 dingers.

Dozier discussed his approach during a recent visit to Fenway Park.

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Dozier on value: “The game has changed. Everything is being brought into light as far as advanced stats, and all that. They’re evaluating players like… for instance, a .300 hitter who slaps 5, 10 home runs is less valuable than a .250 hitter who hits 25-30 home runs. A guy who creates runs. People are realizing that’s it’s not just the statistics we see on the scoreboard that you use to evaluate a hitter.

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Marcus Stroman ended June with a bloated 5.33 ERA that was mostly deserved, so he went back to the drawing board. He’s since had an ERA two runs lower, once again deserved, since he changed things in early July.

After a good start in early July, he made general reference to some adjustments after the game, and Shi Davidi went and asked pitching coach Pete Walker for some specifics. So we know some of what Stroman did to recover. He cleaned up the delivery, he moved his hands, he changed his release point, and he altered his pitching mix. It’s the kind of stuff pitchers do to bust a slump.

The most interesting thing might be where he learned these things, though. Who knows when he picked them up from the Red Sox lefty, but these adjustments have made Stroman a bit more like David Price these days. Even if Price is struggling a bit, you have to count that as a good thing compared to where Stroman was earlier this season.

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Yesterday, I listed off my favorite win-now moves of the trade deadline. Today, we’re going to lavish some praise on some teams who also made good moves, but did so by looking to the future. These are the five moves I liked the most from the seller’s perspective.

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It’s still sort of hard to fathom how quickly the league-wide strikeout spike snuck up on us. And after a one-year plateau between 2014 and 2015, they’re back on the rise again. On the one hand, a statement like, “Present-day Robbie Ray would’ve been baseball’s strikeout leader as recently as 2010” speaks volumes toward the current state of baseball and how much has changed just in the last five years. It also speaks volumes toward Robbie Ray, because era be damned, what he’s doing is impressive, and it seems like it’s flying under the radar. Funny how quickly we’ve come to take strikeouts for granted.

Robbie Ray has struck out 28% of all the batters he’s faced this season. That’s more than Jake Arrieta last year, higher than Danny Salazar’s current total. It’s higher than almost anyone, in fact, even in our strikeout-laden era. What follows is a complete list of pitchers who, this season, have (a) as many or more innings thrown, and (b) a higher strikeout rate than Ray:

• Jose Fernandez
• Clayton Kershaw
• Max Scherzer
• Stephen Strasburg
• Noah Syndergaard

That completes the list. Just five pitchers in baseball have ran a higher strikeout rate over as many innings as Robbie Ray, and they might just be the five best. Over his last eight starts, the strikeout rate’s up to 33%. It seems time to start paying some real attention to Robbie Ray, who suddenly looks like the second-hand man to Zack Greinke in Arizona.

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