Episode 646
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the wholly endangered guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 1 hr 19 min play time.)

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Jaime Garcia has had Tommy John surgery, rotator-cuff surgery, and thoracic-outlet surgery. Despite those setbacks — or perhaps to spite them — yesterday Garcia pitched the game of his life, throwing harder than he ever has during his career. Garcia’s afternoon was nearly perfect: a wild pitch on a strikeout, a walk that was erased by a double play, and one hard-hit single were the only blemishes on a 13-strikeout performance. Garcia’s performance was made possible by continuing to keep the Brewers hitters off balance.

Garcia’s opposition on the day often seemed dumbfounded by his arsenal, unable to figure out which pitch was coming and frequently finding themselves frozen. Twenty-six of Garcia’s pitches were taken for strikes, and these weren’t just get-ahead fastballs. Eight of the 13 Garcia strikeouts came looking. Given that so many pitches were taken, it’s probably necessary to check the strike zone and make sure Garcia was not benefiting from an expanded zone. Here was the zone against left-handers, from the catcher’s point of view.

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The Houston Astros are not off to the start they had hoped for. At 3-7, they find themselves in last place in the AL West, and ahead of only the winless Minnesota Twins in the American League overall. The cause of their slow start? The pitching, which ranks 27th in ERA and 24th in FIP. The back end of the rotation has been particularly lousy, with Collin McHugh, Doug Fister, and Mike Fiers having combined to allow 23 runs in 29 innings. And yet, those aren’t the Astros starters I’d be most concerned about right now. Instead, I’m a bit worried about reigning Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel.

From a results perspective, he’s been okay-ish, with a 3.55 ERA through his first two starts. But the underlying numbers during those first two starts are a bit concerning. First, there’s this.

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Shane Greene just had a nice start the other day against the Pirates. He didn’t throw a changeup. He didn’t even throw a curve, according to one pitch-type algorithm. It was all fastballs and… well… breaking balls? Greene features a cutter and a slider, but where one begins and the other ends is tough to decide.

Let’s take a look at all of his non-fastballs from Wednesday, graphed by horizontal and vertical movement and velocity. Maybe you can see two pitches, even if one system saw three. Then flip the tab to see all of his breaking balls over his career. Now how many pitches do you see?

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The Orioles have turned some heads with their excellent start to the year. Although they’ve lost their last two games, they’re still 7-2 and have one of the best records in baseball. Naturally, a team projected to finish last in their division doesn’t open the year with seven straight wins without help from some unlikely contributors. Perhaps none of those contributors has been more unlikely than their new outfielder, Joey Rickard. Rickard’s started all nine of Baltimore’s games thus far, and has gotten on base in every one of them. He’s slashing a smooth .306/.325/.472. With a strong spring, Rickard pried playing time away from Korean import Hyun-soo Kim, and he doesn’t appear to be looking back.

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Mark Trumbo is all about distance. The middle-of-the-order Oriole (and erstwhile Angel, D-Back and Mariner) has averaged 29 home runs in his four uninterrupted seasons. Many have been bombs. He has a 475-footer to his credit and 17 of last year’s 22 blasts carried 400 feet or more. His three this year have gone 412, 415 and 428, respectively.

One thing he’s not is a high-on-base guy. A notorious free-swinger, Trumbo has a career 6.5% walk rate and a .302 OBP to go with his .258 batting average and .460 slugging percentage. It’s not that he wouldn’t like to reach base at a healthier clip. His skill set is simply that of a slugger.

Trumbo — hitting .389/.421/.667 on the young season— talked about his game when Baltimore visited Fenway Park earlier this week.

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Trumbo on maturing as a hitter: “I’d like to think I’ve gotten better in a lot of areas. I’ve had one injury-plagued year (2014) — I played half a season — but I was still on pace to drive in over 100 runs. But as far as managing the count and picking spots — being an overall smarter hitter — I’m more advanced than I was my first two or three years in Anaheim.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly regular-season exercise, introduced a few years ago by the present author, wherein that same author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own fallible intuition to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to the exercise, of course, is a definition of the word fringe, a term which possesses different connotations for different sorts of readers. For the purposes of the column this year, a fringe prospect (and therefore one eligible for inclusion in the Five) is any rookie-eligible player at High-A or above who (a) received a future value grade of 45 or less from lead prospect analyst Dan Farnsworth during the course of his organizational lists and who (b) was omitted from the preseason prospect lists produced by Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, and John Sickels, and also who (c) is currently absent from a major-league roster. Players appearing on an updated prospect list or, otherwise, selected in the first round of the current season’s amateur draft will also be excluded from eligibility.

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There’s no point in lying about what the Phillies are. The fans know the Phillies aren’t going to be very good. The front office knows they aren’t going to be very good. I’m sure even the players understand on some level this team isn’t going to be very good. It’s not about competing in 2016. That’s abundantly clear, and that’s OK, because it’s kind of liberating. Some of the pressure comes off, and you play or watch baseball with development in mind. It’s all about the future, and it’s all about imagining which current players could be a part of a future Phillies contender.

Hello, Vincent Velasquez. It’s not like Velasquez has come out of nowhere or anything, since he was the key to the Ken Giles trade, but he’s been something of a wild card. Velasquez arrived with a lot of uncertainty, just another powerful arm with question marks. Then, Thursday, Velasquez delivered one of the better starts the Phillies organization has seen. By the numbers, that’s not even exaggerating. He was, granted, pitching against the Padres — a Padres lineup without its best hitter — but Velasquez was completely untouchable. Something is becoming clear here in the early going: Velasquez has almost everything working for him.

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With help from Twins fan Aaron Gleeman and Braves fan Alex Remington, Ben and Sam attempt to determine which of MLB’s two winless teams has had the more demoralizing start to the season.

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