Heading into the season, there was probably no more polarizing team in baseball than the Diamondbacks. Despite adding Zack Greinke, Shelby Miller, and Tyler Clippard over the winter, our preseason forecasts pegged Arizona as a 78 win team, a win worse than they finished a year ago. The organization themselves saw a wildly different picture, and so many articles were written about the divide that I had to write a piece in March trying to dispel the notion that we had some kind of bias against the franchise.

You know what’s happened since then. First, the team suffered a devastating loss when A.J. Pollock’s lingering elbow issues turned into a season-ending injury right before Opening Day. Then Zack Greinke gave up seven runs in his first regular season start with the team, and struggled through a slow start to the season. Then Shelby Miller imploded, pitching worse than any other starter in baseball this year. And now it’s the end of May and the team is 23-30, already nine games behind the Giants in the NL West race.

But this isn’t a post gloating that we were right all along. In reality, some of the D’Backs optimism surrounding their team has actually been more correct than our pessimism about the team’s chances, if you look beyond the overall record, anyway. Our projections didn’t like the Diamondbacks because it had a negative view of their role players, thinking that this was basically a stars-and-scrubs team that relied too heavily on a few elite players. But so far, those role players have been carrying the team, keeping it afloat while the big names struggle.

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Last week, Rian Watt published a terrific piece at Vice Sports on the growing use of wearable technology by Major League Baseball teams for purposes of collecting players’ biometric data. If you haven’t read Watt’s article, go check it out, it’s fantastic. In short, though, the piece explores the ethical implications of MLB teams asking their players to wear devices — such as the Readiband sleep monitoring system recently employed by the Seattle Mariners — that collect data that can not only be used for purposes of fine-tuning players’ on-field performance, but also potentially for roster- and contract-related decisions as well.

For instance, while the sleep-tracking data provided by Readiband could certainly help players adjust their sleep patterns to maximize their chances of performing at a peak level on the playing field, this data could also give teams insight into a player’s habits undertaken in the privacy of his own home. It’s not hard to imagine a team ultimately incorporating such information, or other forms of biometric data, into their player evaluations in ways that may ultimately harm a player’s career prospects or earning potential.

In addition to the ethical considerations surrounding the use of these technologies explored in Watt’s article, the collection of biometric data by MLB franchises also has potential legal implications as well. As Watt notes in his piece, wearable technology may very well become an issue during this year’s collective-bargaining negotiations between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association. Indeed, Pirates’ infielder Cole Figueroa recently mentioned during an episode of the Effectively Wild podcast that a number of MLB players are growing increasingly concerned over the potentially adverse consequences of the growing use of this technology by their teams.

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It was an inauspicious start to the season for Michael Feliz. It’s been an inauspicious start to the season for the entire Houston Astros ballclub. One of them’s turned it around, providing hope to the other.

Feliz’s numbers, on the whole, are impressive, and even they come with something of an asterisk. In 20 innings of relief work, the 22-year-old right-handed rookie has struck out 33 batters and walked four — only two pitchers in baseball currently have a better K-BB%, and they both wear pinstripes. You’ve probably heard of them. The asterisk is that Feliz has walked just four batters all year, and they all came in his season debut, a 107-pitch relief outing back on April 6 after starter Collin McHugh recorded just one out. Feliz was thrust into action in the first, asked to eat innings, faltered, and was promptly sent to the minors for a fresh arm. He was recalled a couple weeks later, and since then, he’s been completely unhittable.

Dating back to that April 26 recall, Feliz has struck out half of the batters he’s faced, and he’s walked none of them. He’s getting ground balls, and he’s working multiple innings. Before the year, you might’ve only known Feliz’s name by being an Astros fan or a prospect hound — while he fell just outside of preseason top-100 prospect lists, most evaluators viewed him as a top-10 piece in a deep Astros’ system. Now, he’s turning heads, with the kind of numbers that practically demand attention.

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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
Pittsburgh at Miami | 19:10 ET
Cole (53.1 IP, 100 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (60.2 IP, 63 xFIP-)
Were Noah Syndergaard and Nathan Eovaldi and Carlos Martinez and Yordano Ventura — were none of those four to exist, the starters in this game between Pittsburgh and Miami would possess the top two average four-seam velocities among all qualifiers. This presupposes, of course, that Cole and Fernandez weren’t somehow also altered. Which, have Syndergaard and Eovladi and everyone — have they died in this hypothetical scenario? Or have they merely never been born? Is it possible that their presence is detected only by their absence, not unlike a black hole? Can a man step in the same river twice? Of course, he can. As long as he’s brought his towel with him, it shouldn’t be a problem.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Pittsburgh.

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On Monday, the White Sox lost 1-0, so that makes things fairly uncomplicated — they lost because they didn’t score. It happens. Also, they ran into Matt Harvey, and the Mets had reportedly identified a problem with Harvey’s mechanics beforehand, so if Harvey’s back on track now, well, there’s no shame in losing to him. Matt Harvey is an ace, and sometimes aces shut people out.

That’s how the White Sox lost their most recent game. Now let’s talk about the previous games.

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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 Milwaukee | 14:10 ET
Martinez (53.0 IP, 106 xFIP-) vs. Guerra (30.0 IP, 100 xFIP-)
Were one to view — like the author is currently viewing — the NERD game scores for today calculated down to the second decimal, what that one would find is that today’s game between the Cardinals and Brewers actually isn’t the most highly rated. That distinction — which is a strong word for what that is — belongs rather to the Boston-Baltimore encounter (6.09 NERD). The Houston-Arizona game (5.89 NERD) also possesses a higher score than this one (5.80 NERD). What neither of those contests offers, however, is the Brewers’ Junior Guerra, which right-hander features not only one of the world’s top split-finger fastballs, but also sufficient experience abroad to substitute periodically for Rick Steves on the latter’s PBS travel program. Research indicates, for example, that Rick Steves visited San Marino long enough only to produce a five-minute video regarding it, while Guerra recorded over 60 innings as a pitcher there in 2014.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Milwaukee.

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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 Toronto | 13:07 ET
Price (62.1 IP, 70 xFIP-) vs. Dickey (60.2 IP, 99 xFIP-)
Research indicates that knuckleballers typically prevent runs at a rate better their fielding-independent numbers would suggest. R.A. Dickey, whom the reader will recognize as a knuckleballer, is no exception to this rule. Between 2010 (when he began throwing the pitch at about the current rate) and 2015, Dickey produced a 102 xFIP- but 89 ERA- — which is to say, an expected FIP about 2% worse than average, but an ERA about 11% better than average. In 2016, the figures are inverted. Dickey’s recorded a 99 xFIP- and 110 ERA-. “What’s happening?” one is likely asking — about not only R.A. Dickey, probably, but also about this entire frightening world.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Boston.

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Chad Bettis throws both a cutter and a slider. Or maybe he throws cutters but not sliders? That determination largely depends on how you parse pitches. Whatever your opinion, you probably won’t get much of an argument from him. The Rockies right-hander isn’t 100% sure himself.

“Both,” was Bettis’s initial answer to my ‘Cutter or slider?’ question. That was followed by less-than-definitive elaboration.

“It’s the same grip; it’s just me manipulating it to make it shorter or bigger. With one, I’m more behind the ball and with the other I’m a little more on the side of it. When I want to make it a little sweepier, I can. When I want to make it short and tight like a cutter, I can do that too.”

Bettis had a slider at Texas Tech, although he’d already begun developing a cutter by the time Colorado selected him in the second round of the 2010 draft. Prior to last season, the cutter is all he’d thrown in pro ball.

The reintroduction of a slider — if that’s what you choose to call it — came about mostly by accident. 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
New York AL at Tampa Bay | 16:10 ET
Pineda (49.2 IP, 86 xFIP-) vs. Moore (51.0 IP, 95 xFIP-)
Here’s a fact that’s concurrently startling and true and startling: as of Friday night, the Tampa Bay Rays — a club which not only plays in a legitimate pitcher’s park but which also features one of the league’s lowest collective payrolls — led the majors in home runs, having accumulated one more than both the Mets and Orioles. Adjusting for park, one finds that the Rays had produced a home-run rate approximately 2.1 standard deviations better than league average. The next best club by that measure? The Mets, at 1.6 standard deviations above the mean. Here’s who’s been the best at homering for Tampa Bay: Corey Dickerson. As of Friday, he’d recorded homers in 5.6% of his plate appearances. Here’s who’s been second-best: Steve Pearce. He’d also produced a 5.6% mark. Here’s who was third: Steven Souza Jr., at 5.3%. To find the rest of the team’s numbers, the reader will have to perform his or her own calculations. Or, alternatively, abandon all curiosity about the rest of the team’s numbers, thus rendering it unnecessary to perform all those dumb calculations.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Tampa Bay.

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