News broke earlier that the Pirates agreed to a three-year contract extension with Francisco Cervelli. It’s an easy enough story to analyze in isolation, but to really add depth, you can compare and contrast Cervelli and Russell Martin, who was Cervelli’s predecessor. When Martin left the Pirates, it seemed like it ought to have delivered a massive blow, but if anything Cervelli has been the superior catcher since. This year in particular, they’ve shot off in completely opposite directions.

Cervelli’s not someone who’ll hit for power, but in 2016 he’s reached base nearly 40% of the time. And the defense is there, so the Pirates are pleased. The Blue Jays like Martin, and there’s no question he’s one of their leaders, but — well, maybe you haven’t noticed this. I don’t know which things you have noticed. Russell Martin has been one of the worst hitters in baseball. Like, worse than you’d believe. Did you know Erick Aybar has a wRC+ of literally 7? That’s a 7, where a 100 would be average. Martin’s all the way up at 11. The next-worst mark: teammate Ryan Goins, at 22. The Blue Jays don’t have a good record yet, and while that’s because of a number of things, Martin has been horrible. He’s made it tough to be successful around him.

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Yesterday, we tackled the best final seasons for pitchers. Today, let’s tackle the position players, so we can get to the heart of the question of just how good David Ortiz needs to be to crack one of these lists. The rules and breakdowns are the same as before, so I would encourage you to read yesterday’s post to peep those. Once again, big ups to Jeff Zimmerman for data help.

30-39 WAR

Best Final Season, Position Players with 30-39 WAR

Player	Final Season	Age	WAR	Career WAR
Roy Cullenbine	1947	33	4.4	33.8
Chick Stahl	1906	33	3.7	33.1
Tony Cuccinello	1945	37	3.0	32.2
Gil McDougald	1960	32	2.8	39.7
Joe Adcock	1966	38	2.5	34.2
Elbie Fletcher	1949	33	2.4	30.7

The guys on this list are definitely not household names, but there are some interesting, if also tragic, stories here. Let’s deal with the tragic first. There are six players here because one of them, Chick Stahl, committed suicide during spring training of the 1907 season. He had been named the Americans’ (Red Sox) player/manager over the winter, and something drove him to take his own life. This was surely a big loss for the team, as they had been counting on him to help lead them. He was the fifth-best hitter in the game just a couple years earlier in 1904.

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Like many of you, I grew up listening to baseball on the radio. And while I’m now at a ballpark over 100 times each season, and see many games on TV, listening to pictures being painted over the airways remains a wonderful way to follow the action. To me, baseball’s best radio play-by-play broadcasters are gems.

To coincide with the broadcaster rankings currently being released at the site, I asked a cross section of players, coaches, and managers who they enjoyed listening to growing up. I asked some broadcasters as well, for the simple reason that they chose to follow in the footsteps of the voices who helped shape their love of the game.

———

Vince Cotroneo, Athletics broadcaster: “My experience was different. I saw Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek on the Game of the Week. I saw Al Michaels doing games on Monday night. I watched a little bit of the Braves on weekends when they were on TV in Orlando. But in terms of sitting in the car, or having a transistor under my bed, I didn’t have that luxury. I didn’t have Bill King or Vin Scully or Jack Buck or Harry Caray.

“My first full-time job was in 1984, in Lynchburg, Virginia, and that’s when I could hear Jon Miller doing the Orioles. When I got to the big leagues in 1991, all of a sudden I’m around Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully, and I was working with Milo (Hamilton).

“My first year, I went into the press room in Lakeland during spring training. Ernie Harwell was there with Paul Carey and he introduced himself to me. It should have been the other way around. Instead, this grand Southern gentleman was coming over to me. It was surreal. I met Vin at Vero Beach. It was the whole nine yards, where I was seeing greatness in front of me. When Vin goes to work, he paints pictures.”

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Two months ago, the Houston Astros looked like the obvious favorites in the AL West, but things haven’t exactly gone according to plan. Houston’s off to a disappointing 15-24 start, due in part to some terrible performances in the outfield. While George Springer and Colby Rasmus have hit well, Carlos Gomez, Preston Tucker and Jake Marisnick have a combined 252 plate appearances this year, and each has recorded a wOBA below .250. Gomez has been one of the biggest disappointments in baseball this year, and his struggles appear to be more than just bad luck.

To help fortify their struggling outfield, and provide a spark to their under-achieving team, the Astros have called up 24-year-old Tony Kemp from Triple-A. Although he stands at just 5-foot-7, Kemp hit .314/.393/.391 with 38 steals last season between Double-A and Triple-A, and was off to a similarly good start this year, slashing .298/.410/.405 at Fresno. Kemp’s a second baseman by trade, but has played a good deal of center and left field of late. Dan Farnsworth ranked Kemp 11th on his Astros prospect list heading into the year. Kemp appeared 15th among Houston prospects on Baseball America’s list. KATOH, however, is won over by his stellar minor-league track record. My system ranked him #2 in the Astros system and #53 overall.

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It seems impossible, but when it comes to pitching, Marcus Stroman is just a baby, man. “I’m still fairly new to pitching — I just started really pitching my junior year in college,” Stroman pointed out when we talked before a game against the Giants. He was a junior at Duke University in 2012.

Even if you count the first two years pitching at Duke, it’s only six years. Six years might seem like a long time. Six years ago, I decided to take a leap into writing about baseball for a living. Six years is not a long time, at least not to me. I’m still trying to figure out how to arrange my words in the right order, so it’s no surprise that the pitcher is “starting to learn sequences” better now.

And so, as good as the righty starter has been — top 20 by any overall per-inning measure — his latest work, and words, put into focus how he might get better.

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It’s important to remember that most everyone is trying their hardest. (Goodness, is this a sad start to a blog post about professional athletes). Disgruntled fans are quick to accuse Player X who’s making a ludicrous Y number of dollars to “play a kid’s game” of “just going through the motions,” but almost always, every player on a major-league baseball field is either giving it his all, or at least something that’s very close to maxing out his physical capabilities at that moment. They’re all making good money, some even unthinkable money, but we’re all motivated by the prospect of more money, and if not that, we’re at least motivated by the prospect of success, or of not feeling ashamed of ourselves in front of our peers and tens of thousands of onlookers, or at the very least, of not totally embarrassing our family. Nobody is out there trying to lose, individually.

The Reds bullpen is trying its damnedest to get batters out. They really are. Even if the front office isn’t motivated to field a competitive team, these guys all want to eventually earn a contract that sets their family up for life, and they want the spotlight, and they want to not get booed, and they want their loved ones to be even more proud of them, beyond the pride that comes with achieving their dream of making it to the highest level of organized baseball. Each and every one of them. It’s just, well:

Reds bullpen stats and ranks, 1961-present

• ERA: 6.44 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• FIP: 6.09 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• HR/9: 2.04 (1,476th out of 1,476)
• BB%: 11.6% (1,390th out of 1,476)

What the Reds can hang their hats on, at this moment, is that they don’t have the single worst walk rate of any bullpen in the post-expansion era. Just the 1,390th-best! Beyond that, though, they’re running literally the worst bullpen ERA ever, literally the worst bullpen FIP ever, mostly because they’re running literally the worst bullpen home-run rate, ever. Since baseball is currently going through an extremely pitcher-friendly run environment, things get even worse when you adjust the numbers for era, but they’re bad enough as is, so let’s take it easy on Cincinnati.

In fact, let’s take it even easier on Cincinnati. This is a rebuild year, so it’s not like the losses to which the bullpen is contributing are really hurting the franchise in any way. In the long run, it might even be for the better. It’s not the wins and losses that matter in a rebuild, it’s the potential seen. This year is all about finding out which players on the roster might be a part of the next winning team in Cincinnati. It’s hard to see much potential in a 6.44 ERA and 6.09 FIP through 38 games, but there’s got to be something in here worth rooting for, right? It feels like piling on to write a negative article about something that’s so obviously negative, and these guys are all trying their hardest to succeed, so let’s ignore the nasty numbers for a minute and try to find some glimmers of hope in the Cincinnati bullpen. Everyone has redeeming qualities!

Tony Cingrani

• Who is he? A 26-year-old left-handed pitcher, currently serving as the closer for the Cincinnati Reds. A third-round draft pick in 2011. Lots of promise, dating back to his rookie year! (2.92 ERA, 3.78 FIP, 104.2 innings, mostly as a starter.)
• What are his numbers this year? 3.18 ERA! Don’t worry about the rest.
• Redeeming qualities? Fastball velocity is up two ticks from last year, when he was also serving (almost) exclusively as a reliever! Is also throwing a slider 21% of the time — a career-high rate. When Cingrani debuted, scouts had concern that his lack of, well, any other pitch beside the fastball would limit his upside. He’s attempted to incorporate, and subsequently scrapped, a changeup, so he’s still a two-pitch pitcher, but he’s throwing the slider more this year than he’s ever thrown any one secondary pitch in the past, suggesting increased confidence. And it’s getting whiffs on nearly half its swings! Good pitch!

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Introduction and #31-32

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.

About a month ago, the present author began the process of reproducing that original crowdsourcing effort, facilitating a ballots for this site’s readers. This post represents the second installment of the corresponding results.

Below are the 30th- through 21st-ranked television 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 cast will appear in these pages Friday.

30. Philadelphia Phillies
Main Broadcasters: Tom McCarthy and Ben Davis/Matt Stairs.
Ratings (Charisma/Analysis/Overall): 2.3, 2.2, 2.2

Three Reader Comments
• “McCarthy routinely sounds more excited hawking WB Mason products than when the Phillies do something. Of course, the last couple of seasons, the Phillies are roughly as exciting as office supplies.”
• “Weekends with Schmidt are solid.”
• “RIP Harry Kalas.”

Notes
It might be difficult for those who’ve watched Phillies broadcasts in recent years to separate the quality of the club from the appeal of the broadcasters. Certainly, it must be difficult for the broadcasters themselves to muster enthusiasm for a poor team. In any case, if there’s a uniform criticism here, it regards McCarthy and the sort of “professional distance” he maintains, if that makes sense.

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