For a while there, it seemed like the healthy version of Troy Tulowitzki was the best shortstop in baseball. That’s the guy the Blue Jays wanted to trade for, but Tulowitzki has entered a decline period, vacating the positional throne. And now things are kind of complicated. It doesn’t actually matter in any real way who you rank No. 1, among shortstops, but there’s plenty of competition. Last summer, I wondered aloud if Carlos Correa was already deserving of the label. More recently, August suggested it could be Francisco Lindor. There’s probably an argument for Brandon Crawford. There’s definitely an argument for Manny Machado, if you consider him a shortstop. Young shortstop talent is seemingly everywhere, but in Boston, now Xander Bogaerts is making his case. He’s doing so by blending all of his skills.

For Bogaerts, in one way, it hasn’t been smooth. That dreadful slump in 2014 raised several legitimate questions about his future. In another way, this was how it was always going to go. Rookie Bogaerts showed some skills. Sophomore Bogaerts showed different skills. Now the skillsets are being combined, and pitchers are running low on ways to get Bogaerts out.

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The Dodgers announced today that teenage LHP Julio Urias will be called up to make his major-league debut on Friday in New York against the defending National League champion Mets. His statistics in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League this year have been cartoonish. In eight appearances, Urias has thrown 41 innings, allowed 24 hits, 8 walks, and accrued 44 strikeouts. He sports a 1.10 ERA and a 0.78 WHIP — versus the PCL averages of 4.36 and 1.40, respectively. All of it at the age of 19, a full eight years younger than the average Pacific Coast Leaguer.

When he debuts on Friday, Urias will be the youngest player in Major League Baseball and the first pitcher to debut as a teenager since Madison Bumgarner in 2009. Not bad for a kid whom the Dodgers discovered in the Mexican League (and later signed for $450,000) on the back end of a scouting trip that also netted them Yasiel Puig.

Urias’ repertoire and usage thereof is advanced. His fastball is plus and will sit 91-95 while touching 97. However, it can be fairly straight, and even features some natural cut at times, but Urias generally commands it down or below the zone and to both sides of the plate. He generates lots of ground balls when he’s not catching hitters looking on the corners or blowing away the ones who struggle with velocity. The heater is complemented by a plus low-80s curveball and an 82-85 mph changeup that is consistently above average. Urias’ usage of his repertoire is just as (if not more) impressive than his pure stuff. You’ll see him back door and back foot the curveball to right-handed hitters, pitch backwards with it to lefties and rarely leave a secondary pitch hanging in a place where it can be punished.

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Last month, I mentioned that we were going to be partnering up with the Pitch Talks guys, and would be helping with their efforts to bring the fantastic baseball speaker series to the U.S. this summer. Today, we’re excited to announce what the summer tour is going to look like.

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After a breakthrough summer in the Cape Cod League, Mercer outfielder Kyle Lewis entered the spring as a potential first-round pick and has managed to dramatically improve his stock over the course of the season. He’s among the country’s leading hitters with a .411/.545/.729 line, 17 homers and 61 walks against 43 strikeouts at the time of this publication, numbers that helped him win the Southern Conference Player of the Year Award for the second straight season. With elite performance to back up five-tool promise and one of the best swings in the class, he’s in the conversation to be one of the first five players off the draft board.

I saw Lewis this past weekend when the Bears traveled to North Carolina for their regular-season series finale at UNC-Greensboro. The video below offers two angles from batting practice and a couple throws from center field, concluding with his first three plate appearances of the series. Other draft follows from this series get their own blurbs at the end.

Physical Description

Playing in the Southern Conference, Lewis looks pretty different from everyone else on the field. He’s listed at 6-foot-4, 210 pounds, and features a high-waisted, athletic build that should add another 15 pounds or so. He shows fast-twitch ability in all phases, coupling athletic movements in the box with fluid actions in the field.

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This is a follow-up post that could practically write itself. Last year, the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in spite of (because of?) weak-hitting shortstop Alcides Escobar leading off each and every game and almost always swinging at the first pitch, even when the opposition was nearly certain it was coming. It became a thing. Broadcasters talked about it every game, we all laughed about it on Twitter, and the Royals rallied around the idea that they’d win as long as Escobar went after that first pitch. He kept doing it, and they kept winning, and I honestly believe that plenty of rational people (myself included, I think) legitimately began questioning whether magic — specifically, Esky Magic — might be real.

And as long as Escobar (inexplicably?) continued to lead off for the Royals this season, his first-pitch tendencies would be worth a review at some point in the year. Escobar has continued to lead off, and so his first-pitch tendencies are worth a review at some point in the year. This is that point.

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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
Miami at Tampa Bay | 13:10 ET
Fernandez (53.2 IP, 66 xFIP-) vs. Smyly (56.0 IP, 91 xFIP-)
Having read no fewer than two or maybe one popular-science books on the subject of human cognition, the present author is prepared to state unequivocally that a central feature of the brain is its tireless search for patterns — and tendency to extract meaning from mere coincidence. As a product of those traits, one might reasonably expect the human brain to regard these numbers with some interest:

Jose Fernandez , 2015 vs 2016

Season	GS	TBF	IP	xFIP-	FIP-	ERA-	WAR	WAR200
2015	11	265	64.2	68	60	75	2.1	6.5
2016	9	217	53.2	66	62	75	1.7	6.4

WAR200 denotes WAR prorated to 200 innings.

Those are the the 2015 and 2016 seasons of Jose Fernandez. What one observes are the similarities between certain of the right-hander’s index stats from one season to the next. Nearly identical adjusted xFIP marks, for example. And nearly identical (and lower) adjusted FIP marks. And actually identical (and slightly higher) adjusted ERA marks. Of course, the figures aren’t entirely random; they have, for example, been produced by the same pitcher. Nevertheless, the symmetry of the data is unusual. The brain is stirred! Or, at least: maybe the brain is stirred!

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