Last week, I wrote a piece about where the struggling Diamondbacks go from here, given their current position in the NL West race despite high hopes for their season. This week, on the back of the Padres dumping what they could of James Shields‘ remaining contract, it’s time to talk about the other NL West team whose hopes of contention have been dashed on the harsh rocks of reality.

During the Diamondbacks big splashy off-season, comparisons between Arizona and San Diego have been pretty common, as the Padres spent the prior winter making big moves in an attempt to skip the rebuilding line and get back to the winner’s circle. The moves mostly failed, though, with the Padres finishing 74-88 despite the roster makeover, and 2016 isn’t going any better; they’re currently 23-35 and just agreed to pay $31 million to make James Shields pitch for someone else over the next few years. But even as I write a piece with the same headline as the one that I wrote about the Diamondbacks last week, it’s important to note that the D’Backs and Padres aren’t really in the same boat. In fact, at this point, it’s not actually clear that the Padres even have a boat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Roughly four years ago now, the present author facilitated a crowdsourcing project designed to place a “grade” on each of the league’s television and radio broadcast teams. The results weren’t intended to represent the objective quality or skill of the relevant announcers, but rather to provide a clue as to which broadcast teams are likely to appeal most (or least) to the readers of this site.

The results of that original exercise have been useful as a complement to the dumb NERD scores published by the author in these pages. Four years later, however, they’ve become much less useful. In the meantime, a number of the broadcast teams cited in that original effort have changed personnel. It’s possible that the tastes of this site’s readers have changed, also.

Recently, the author published an updated version of the television rankings according to the site’s readership. This week: the results of that same exercise, but for radio broadcasts.

Below are the 30th- through 21st-ranked radio-broadcast teams, per the FanGraphs readership.

But first, three notes:

• Teams are ranked in ascending order of Overall rating. Overall ratings are not merely averages of Charisma and Analysis.
• The author has attempted to choose reader comments that are either (a) illustrative of the team’s place in the rankings or (b) conspicuously amusing.
• A complete table of ratings will appear in these pages on Thursday, unless they appear later than that.

30. New York Yankees
Main Broadcasters: John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.5, 1.7, 2.0

Representative Reader Comment
“As a Yankee fan, I am thankful for MLB At Bat.”

Notes
It’s difficult to find any feedback among the readers’ comments that doesn’t merely resort, at some point, to an ad hominen attack on the Yankees’ radio team. Which, that’s unfortunate. But also: probably indicative of the sort of frustration a FanGraphs reader might have attempting to comsume a Yankees game by way of the radio feed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

CHICAGO — Cubs ace Jake Arrieta continued his year-long run of brilliance on Sunday afternoon, striking out 12 batters with one walk in a 3-2 home loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

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
Tampa Bay at Arizona | 21:40 ET
Archer (66.1 IP, 89 xFIP-) vs. Ray (57.0 IP, 92 xFIP-)
In 2013, Arizona’s Robbie Ray appeared several times among the Fringe Five. What qualified him for inclusion within that weekly exercise were his excellent fielding-independent numbers. Over 148.2 innings between High-A and Double-A, the left-hander (then a Nationals prospect) produced one of the top strikeout rates among minor-league starters — ahead, for example, of Archie Bradley and Lance McCullers. That was encouraging. What rendered him eligible for the Five, however, was his omission from any of the industry’s notable top-100 lists. The reason why, it appears? A lack of arm speed. Ray possessed merely average fastball velocity. Now, however, that’s no longer the case.

Regard, the top-five average four-seam velocities among pitchers who’ve recorded 50-plus innings:

Average Four-Seam Fastball Velocity, Left-Handed Starters

Name	Team	IP	vFA
Robbie Ray	D-backs	57.0	93.5
Carlos Rodon	White Sox	63.1	92.9
Martin Perez	Rangers	72.1	92.9
Clayton Kershaw	Dodgers	92.2	92.8
Matt Moore	Rays	62.2	92.7

Minimum 50 innings pitched.

Ray, who’s also passed through the Detroit system en route to Arizona, is now among the hardest-throwing left-handed starters in baseball, and he’s recording numbers commensurate with the stuff.

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: Tampa Bay.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last year’s brilliant rookie class was exciting for many reasons, one of which was that it brought the arrival of an infusion of talent to the shortstop position in Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, and Addison Russell. Remarkably, we were assured that even more young shortstops are on the way – an assurance reinforced by Corey Seager’s strong debut last September and his near unanimous presence atop top-100 prospect lists this past winter. But, at the start of the season, it was less-heralded rookie shortstops Aledmys Diaz and Trevor Story catching all the headlines. Where was Corey Seager?

While Story spent the month of April hitting 10 home runs and Diaz spent it batting .423, Seager posted an unremarkable 92 wRC+ through 106 plate appearances. He put up decent enough plate-discipline numbers — a 8.5% walk rate and 14.2 strikeout rate — but a low BABIP (.275) and low ISO (.146) kept him from producing at the level expected of the sport’s top prospect, whether those expectations were fair or not.

Ever since the end of April, however, Seager has been quietly reestablishing his place among the league’s best players. Well, he was going about it quietly, until this weekend. On the off chance anyone had forgotten about Seager or prematurely written him off as over-hyped, he reminded the baseball world Friday night that he’s exceedingly worthy of our time and attention when he did this to Braves pitcher Julio Teheran:

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 NL at Miami | 13:10 ET
Harvey (60.1 IP, 101 xFIP-) vs. Fernandez (32.2 IP, 88 xFIP-)
Child prodigy and Ohio native August Fagerstrom explored recently for the benefit of these pages both how (a) the Marlins and Jose Fernandez himself had planned this spring for the right-hander to adopt a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach in 2016, but then also how (b) Fernandez had produced almost identical numbers so far in 2016 as he had in previous campaigns. In Fernandez’s lone start since Fagerstrom’s piece, however, Fernandez exhibited a more contact-oriented, ground-ball approach.

Regard, an illustrative table:

Jose Fernandez, Pitching (More) to Contact?

Dates	GS	IP	Zone%	K%	BB%	GB%
4/6 to 5/26	10	60.2	49.8%*	36.7%	10.2%	38.4%
5/31	1	7.0	54.6%*	27.3%	0.0%	60.0%

*League average for starters is 48.1%.

One, so motivated, might consider monitoring Fernandez’s approach this game. To monitor it and ask a questions like, “Is he throwing more or less than 50% of his pitches in the zone?” And also: “Is he inducing ground balls on more like 40% or more like 60% of his balls in play?” And also: “By using my time in this way, am I endeavoring to pursue happiness or ignoring my obligations to liberate others from suffering or both or neither?”

Readers’ Preferred Television Broadcast: New York NL.

Read the rest of this entry »

The only prospect involved in the White Sox and Padres deal for James Shields is 17 year old INF Fernando Tatis, Jr., who the White Sox signed during the 2015-2016 July 2 International Free Agent period for $700,000. Tatis was not ranked among the 47 prospects to which former FanGraphs writer Kiley McDaniel ascribed hierarchy on his 2015 J2 Sortable Board and was not on my top 10 International Prospects list from that time. He’s blown up a bit this Spring and is one of the more interesting bats in Extended Spring Training. Read the rest of this entry »

Jon Harris had a rocky outing a week ago. After allowing just one run over his previous 32 innings — an unearned run, to boot — the Blue Jays pitching prospect was kicked around for eight runs in a loss to South Bend. The reason for his poor performance was as much mental as it was physical.

“I was in a funk,” explained Harris, whom Toronto selected 29th-overall last year out of Missouri State. “I couldn’t really get comfortable — I couldn’t get a rhythm — and I let the game speed up on me a little. I was in my head a lot, worrying about what I was doing wrong instead of just focusing on making my pitches. South Bend is a good hitting team and if you make a mistake they’re going to jump all over it. And they did.”

Harris didn’t allow the implosion to linger. In his next start for the low-A Lansing Lugnuts, the 22-year-old righty allowed just one run over five innings against Dayton. His prior-game hiccup in the rearview, he took the mound with his chin held high. Read the rest of this entry »

Two offseasons ago, James Shields was seeking a five-year deal worth $125 million. He went unsigned until February, and ended up settling for a four-year deal worth $75 million in San Diego. One year and four months later, the Padres are paying more than half of Shields’ remaining salary for him to play on another team.

The deal goes like this:

So the full deal — James Shields and cash for Erik Johnson and Fernando Tatis Jr. — is what @barstoolWSD originally reported. Nice work.

— Dennis Lin (@sdutdennislin) June 4, 2016

Read the rest of this entry »