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Jose Iglesias is a shortstop capable of doing some pretty terrific things on a baseball field. I say that now because there’s going to be plenty of .gifs in this post that paint Iglesias in a not-so-positive light, and it can be a weird feeling to make a player look bad based solely upon which clips you’ve hand-chosen to show, so here, look at all the incredible things Jose Iglesias is capable of doing on defense. There. Those are the kinds of plays that earn you a reputation.

And Iglesias has certainly earned a reputation. He had earned the reputation before he ever stepped on a big league field. He was named the best defensive infielder in the Red Sox system by Baseball America from 2009 to 2012. In 2010, he was named the best defensive shortstop in the entire Eastern League, and received those same honors in the International League each of the next two seasons. From that same publication’s scouting report of him in 2010, as the No. 1 prospect in Boston’s farm system a year before his MLB debut:

Iglesias is an exceptional defender who could challenge for a Gold Glove in the big leagues right now. He plays low to the ground, using his quick feet, lightning-fast hands and strong arm to make all the plays. His instincts and body control also stand out, and he made just seven errors in 57 games at short last season. He’s fearless in the field, almost to the point of overconfidence, but he makes more web gems than mistakes.

The reputation was what it was, and it’s since carried over to the big-league level. And yet, in about two full season’s worth of major-league playing time at shortstop (1,991 innings), Iglesias has but three Defensive Runs Saved to his name. Baseball Prospectus’ Fielding Runs Above Average actually has him below average, crediting him with -0.8 runs saved over the course of his still-short career. Ultimate Zone Rating is the only defensive metric with anything more than an average assessment of Iglesias’ defense, and even that pegs him as a +13 defender over two seasons, which is certainly good, but still comes up short of the perennial Gold Glove types around whom Iglesias’ name is mentioned.

Understandably, folks have been skeptical of these assessments. It’s something our very own Neil Weinberg addressed last fall. As a community, our understanding of how to properly evaluate defense has always lagged behind other facets of the game, but the good news is, it’s getting better every day! It’s still far from perfect, but between the arrival of Statcast and advancements made by Baseball Info Solutions and Inside Edge, we’ve got more pieces to the puzzle than ever before. And they’re already helping explain some of our outliers, guys whose performance by the metrics have never aligned with the scouting reports or eye tests. Like Dexter Fowler, who we discovered was playing more shallow than any center fielder in baseball, and that it was killing his defensive metrics. The Cubs realized this, and have repositioned him. Let’s see if we can’t use some of these same advancements to better figure out the Jose Iglesias mystery.

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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
Philadelphia at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
Nola (33.0 IP, 67 xFIP-) vs. Wacha (29.1 IP, 93 xFIP-)
Despite their 15-11 record, the most likely outcome for the 2016 iteration of the Phillies remains the very dim one intimated by this site’s preseason projections. The club’s BaseRuns record — which metric strips out sequencing — is the fifth-worst in the majors. The team’s hitters, meanwhile, have produced the second-worst collective WAR. They possess a 0.1% probability of qualifying for the postseason. What oughtn’t be ignored, however, is the starting rotation. As a group, they’ve recorded the league’s highest strikeout rate and fifth-best collective WAR. Entirely central to that effort has been right-hander Aaron Nola. Despite having produced an average fastball velocity of just 90.0 mph, Nola has nevertheless parlayed impressive command and largely unhittable curveball into one of the league’s best pitching lines.

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Event

Gregory Polanco has been an absolutely fantastic baseball player, having started to turn potential into results at the plate.

Explanation

Polanco has committed himself to various swing adjustments, as expertly documented by expert Travis Sawchik.

Further, unnecessary evidence for the explanation

Below!

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Episode 650
Dave Cameron is the managing editor of FanGraphs. During this edition of FanGraphs Audio he examines the unprecedented talent among baseball’s young players; Dexter Fowler, Andrew McCutchen, and the the influence of data on outfield positioning; and, finally, the science of deterrence as it pertains to Dee Gordon and PED suspensions.

This episode of the program is sponsored by SeatGeek, which site removes both the work and also the hassle from the process of shopping for tickets.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 45 min play time.)

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If the season ended today, it would be chaos. There would be significant protestation from players, owners, and fans alike, all parties confused by the suddenly truncated schedule. But if matters were allowed to proceed from there, the National League would have the Mets grab one wild-card slot. The other entry would be determined through a different one-game playoff — that one played between the Pirates and the Phillies.

The Phillies! It’s understood that anything can happen on any given day. What that means is that anything can also happen during any given month. And here the Phillies sit, tied for baseball’s fifth-best record. The Phillies came in as a clear contender for baseball’s worst record, but they have a better record than the defending champs. They have a better record than everyone in the AL West, and also the NL West. The Phillies have won six games in a row — baseball’s longest active streak — and they’ve completed series sweeps against the Nationals and Indians. A handful of teams in the league are rebuilding. The Phillies have had the best start of any.

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You’d rather have the Rangers’ problem than the Braves’ problem. See, the Braves problem is that they just don’t have enough competent players to field a competitive major-league baseball team. The Rangers problem seems to be that they’re soon to have too many competent players. An embarrassment of riches isn’t necessarily a problem, per se, but it’s something of an inefficiency, and it’s the kind of thing that can result in at least one deserving employee feeling less than pleased by his role in the workplace.

Nomar Mazara wasn’t supposed to be in the big leagues this soon, but Shin-Soo Choo’s strained right calf accelerated Mazara’s timeline, and now that the 21-year-old rookie is here, it doesn’t seem like he’s going away any time soon. In Mazara’s first game, he homered. Through his first 17, the preseason consensus top-25 prospect has run a 127 wRC+, showed a knack for controlling the strike zone, impressed scouts with his ability to adjust, and even made an impact with the glove. The Rangers are in the business of competing for a World Series championship this year, and when a team is in the business of competing for a World Series championship, it does so by fielding a 25-man roster comprised of its best 25 players. Nomar Mazara is one of those players.

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It is no secret that baseball is in the midst of a youth revolution. Mike Trout and Bryce Harper are, of course, two of the best players we’ve ever seen at their respective ages. They both look like they’re on the path to inner-circle Hall of Fame careers, barring health problems. They are the Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle for our generation.

But the depth of remarkable young talent around the game doesn’t stop at Trout and Harper. In another time, where those two superstars weren’t dominating the sport, the simultaneous rise of Manny Machado, Nolan Arenado, and Kris Bryant would lead to numerous stories about the sport entering a golden age of third baseman. Except third base might not even be the most loaded position right now, as the young shortstops breaking into the game now include Carlos Correa, Francisco Lindor, Xander Bogaerts, Corey Seager, and Addison Russell, with J.P. Crawford, Trea Turner, Orlando Arcia, and Dansby Swanson representing a pretty remarkable next wave; the first three of those four will likely arrive in the majors later this summer.

The future of the sport is clearly in good hands, but the most amazing thing about the present group of young players flooding the game is that they aren’t just hype and potential; they’re already some of the best players in the game. In fact, in terms of early career production, this may be the best young group of hitters the game has ever seen.

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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.

A Brief Introduction
As the title indicates flawlessly, what this post represents is the first edition of NERD game scores for the 2016 season. As the brief italicized paragraph above indicates, NERD scores themselves 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.”

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A casual stroll down the stacks of the FanGraphs hitting leaderboards for outfielders yields many interesting takeaways, but perhaps none more interesting than this: among the top 10 outfielders by wRC+, there’s a 23-year-old who played only 45 games above High-A before being called up to the majors last year. He came into this season with the expectation of being a left-handed platoon bat, and now he’s leading the majors in hard-hit rate and hitting third everyday in the sixth-best offensive lineup in baseball. A year can change a lot of things, and it has changed more for Michael Conforto than for just about anyone else in baseball.

Conforto had about as successful a short stint in the majors during 2015 as one could hope for out of a young player with little experience in the high minors — he posted a 134 wRC+ in 56 games, hit a few important home runs in the playoffs, and outperformed the established historical expectations for players in his position. Conforto was good for 2.1 WAR in those 56 games, and the Mets went from a .505 team without him — 3.0 games back in their division — to a .631 team with him, comfortable winners of the National League East. The August/September 2015 Mets weren’t just Conforto, of course, but the Mets needed an offensive jolt, and he provided it. Conforto’s introduction represented a tidy dividing line between mediocrity and wild success, and we’d be fools not to at least recognize the narrative convenience of that line.

That type of introduction to the major leagues is hard to live up to — and yet! Here we are, a month into the season, and Conforto has lived up to them. More than lived up to them, in fact. He’s probably created new expectations, and they’re even loftier, almost impossible ones. We know how easy it is to be wrong about April numbers. It’s folly to think that April assures us of what’s going to happen for the rest of the season. But, while we shouldn’t necessarily expect this current level of production out of him moving forward, he’s showing us a few real improvements so far this season that merit some attention. Conforto isn’t truly this good (no one is), but there’s a reason he’s currently this good.

Let’s start with who he was in 2015. Describing Conforto as a dead-pull hitter in 2015 wouldn’t be accurate, but he was close: he ranked 35th from bottom in terms of batted balls to the opposite field (out of 361 qualifying hitters, min. 190 PAs). Interestingly, he had a hole in his swing, and it was on the inside part of the plate — not really where you’d expect to find it for such a pull-happy hitter. Take a look at his isolated power per pitch location from 2015:

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