FanGraphs Baseball

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
Toronto at New York AL | 19:05 ET
Sanchez (162.1 IP, 84 xFIP-) vs. Cessa (36.2 IP, 109 xFIP-)For much the same reason these same two teams were featured yesterday, they appear here again — largely owing, that is, to the considerable consequences of each of Toronto’s games right now. The author has expressed this previously in terms of the club’s probability of winning their division (51%) or qualifying for a wild-card spot (37%) or doing neither. At his site, The Baseball Gauge, Dan Hirsch provides another means by which to understand the same concept — namely, by championship leverage index (CLI). Just as leverage index measure the import of a particular moment in a game (where 1.0 is average and greater than 1.0 equals greater import), CLI measures the import of a game relative to a club’s chances of winning the World Series. The Blue Jays currently possess the league’s highest mark by this measure, a 2.31. Boston is second (2.28). And even Toronto’s opponent tonight, the Yankees, feature a slightly above-average figure (1.04).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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I read new baseball stories every day, and I forget most of them the instant I’m finished reading them, but I remember many of the players and anecdotes that taught me something I hadn’t thought about before. One of the stories that’s stuck with me is the tale of Carlos Gomez’s transformation. Gomez has always been fast, and because Gomez has always been fast, he was instructed earlier in his career to try to put the ball on the ground. Gomez, eventually, figured out he’d be better by tapping into his power, instead of trying to be a speed-only player. Fast players commonly end up being trapped. They run well, so that just ends up the focus.

You’re not going to find Trea Turner in a trap. An excerpt from an enjoyable article by Jorge Castillo:

[College coach Elliott] Avent isn’t the only confidant to relay this kind of advice to Turner. If not bunt, at least focus on putting the ball on the ground, the consultants advise. If the Washington Nationals’ rookie sensation can do that, he can leg out a few extra hits, the theory goes. And the more he’s on base, the more he can terrorize defenses with his speed. Turner listens and scoffs.

“People tell me that,” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Shut up.’?”

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This is a series of scouting thoughts on high-school prospects eligible for the 2017 MLB Draft based on observations from summer showcases. Today’s positional group is middle infielders. Links to other positional groups appear below.

Previous editions: Catchers / Left-Handed Pitchers.

If this is the first post in the series that you’re checking out or just need a refresher, the players who have full paragraphs below are listed in the order I prefer them based on my summer looks. That order will very likely undergo changes between now and June. This year’s group of middle infielders is a little cloudy. The top two prospects for me who are arguably capable of playing SS/2B are likely to be picked at other positions; other than those two players, the group lacks a splashy talent worthy of top-10 or -15 consideration.

Scarce though quality shortstops may be, we’ve been fortunate to have at least one talented enough to merit top-20 consideration in each draft this decade (’10: Manny Machado, ’11: Francisco Lindor: ’12: Carlos Correa and Addison Russell, ’13: J.P. Crawford, ’14: Nick Gordon, ’15: Brendan Rodgers, ’16: Delvin Perez would have gone top 10 if not for failing his pre-draft drug test and Gavin Lux went 20th overall), but that streak may end this season. Players “of note” in the second section are listed in alphabetical order.

Royce Lewis, ATH, J Serra HS (CA)

Height: 6’2, Weight: 188, Commitment: UC Irvine

Lewis played all over the place throughout the summer and is such a good athlete that I think, with time, he could make it work at whatever position he was asked to, save for maybe shortstop. I like him best in center field but also saw him work at second base, where his actions, especially around the bag, are raw but workable. Regardless of position, I think his bat is worthy of first-round consideration. I’ll talk more about Lewis when we cover the outfielders because that’s where I think he ends up, but there’s a non-zero chance he’s drafted as an infielder and I wouldn’t disagree with it.

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Like any multi-billion dollar business, Major League Baseball is consistently defending itself from at least a handful of different lawsuits at any given time. And while we at FanGraphs attempt to keep you, the loyal reader, appraised of any major happenings in these cases, throughout the year a number of less noteworthy developments occur in these suits that, while potentially significant, nevertheless do not warrant a standalone write-up of their own.

The purpose of this post is to update you on several such recent developments in two ongoing lawsuits against MLB, those challenging the league’s minor-league pay and fan-safety practices, respectively.

Minor-League Wage Litigation

Back in July, I discussed the significant victory that MLB secured in the litigation challenging its minor-league pay practices under federal and state minimum-wage law. Specifically, as I noted at the time, the court refused to certify the case as a class-action lawsuit due to several important differences between the work experiences of, and compensation received by, minor-league players.

Given the significant setback that this decision represented for the minor-league players — removing more than 2,000 players from the case — it appeared inevitable that the plaintiffs would seek to have the decision overturned on appeal. Rather than immediately pursue an appeal to a higher court, however, the plaintiffs have instead opted to take a second crack at convincing the trial court to approve the case for class-action status.

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Last Tuesday, I published a post examining the hitters in this year’s Cape Cod summer league through the lens of my KATOH projection system. Today, I’m back to look at the pitchers. As I did with minor-league players and college players, I deployed a series of probit regressions to see what stuck when it came to forecasting major-league performance for Cape League players. I used those results to generate an expected WAR total — in this case, through age 28. These projections are far from gospel: scouting the stat line is always dangerous, and it’s even more dangerous than usual at the college level, where the samples are small, the players are raw, and the quality of opposing pitching runs the gamut. Nonetheless, statistical performance is an often overlooked component of prospect evaluation, and the performers often go on to exceed expectations.

A couple of caveats. Due to the poor quality of publicly available historical summer-league data, these projections do not directly account for pitchers’ home-run rates, which is obviously less than ideal. Secondly, these projections take into account only what these players have done this summer. Ideally, they’d account for college stats and summer-league stats. I do plan to link these two data sets at some point, but, unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.

Below, you’ll find a few notes on performances whom I deemed noteworthy. Below that, you’ll find a giant table for all hitters who recorded at least 75 batters faced (BFs) in the Cape Cod League this year. The two rightmost columns refers to each prospect’s ranking on Baseball America’s Cape Cod top-30 list and Frankie Piliere’s top-150 list from D1 Baseball.

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While the 2016 season has a month left to go, over the weekend, Corey Seager completed his first full year in the big leagues. He was called up to the majors on September 3rd of 2015, so he’s now spent a little more than 365 days as a Major League player, and has played almost exactly one full big league season. And it is hard to imagine how it could have gone much better.

Since the day he got to the big leagues, Seager has performed like an upper-tier superstar. Over the last calendar year, his +8.4 WAR ranks third-best in baseball, behind only Mike Trout (+10.1) and Kris Bryant (+9.0), and as he’s played at an MVP-level since arriving in Los Angeles. He might not be as elite an athlete as Trout or even more-heralded young shortstops like Carlos Correa, but he’s shown the kinds of bat-to-ball skills that make for pretty special hitters.

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This week, we’re going to run a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. These posts are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.

Other cases: Mike Trout for AL MVP.

Mike Trout leads the American League in every major calculation of WAR: Baseball Prospectus’ version, Baseball-Reference’s version and our very own version right here at good ol’ FanGraphs. This unsurprising fact is true because the guy is so damn good at every aspect of baseball. He gets on base. He hits for power. He’s a shockingly productive base-runner. The only area in which he lags a bit is in defensive value, but his offense puts him so far above the competition that no one can surpass Mike Trout’s overall production on the field right now.

That said, let me tell you why Mike Trout isn’t the Most Valuable Player in the American League.

It’s not an easy argument to make. Sure, numbers can be manipulated but not to a degree that allows a straight-up objective argument for any American League player being better than Trout. Comparable? Perhaps. But better? That argument doesn’t exist. We’re here at FanGraphs because we like numbers and objective truths — and all of those indicators point to Mike Trout as the best player in the American League this season. But… I can’t believe I’m about to write these words in this cliché order… let’s talk about the meaning of the word valuable. I think there’s a remarkably valid interpretation of that word which makes this year’s most deserving AL Most Valuable Player candidate a diminutive second baseman from Houston.

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Yes, it’s true that this is the year of the second baseman. As a group, second basemen are putting up better offensive numbers than they have in nearly a century, and are outhitting their defensively challenged counterparts in left field for the first time in the history of the live-ball era, dating back to 1920. And yes, it’s true that power across the sport is nearly at an all-time high. The league’s power output has returned to peak steroid-era levels, with this year’s isolated slugging percentage and home runs per plate appearance trailing only the year 2000 as the most power-laden season in the game’s history.

Those trends are real, and they should help shape the way we evaluate hitter’s performances in 2016. But don’t let those trends fool you: Brian Dozier is truly having a season for the ages.

The Minnesota Twins’ second baseman clubbed three home runs against Kansas City on Monday afternoon, bringing his season total to 38. Only Mark Trumbo has hit more homers than Dozier for the season; only David Ortiz has a higher ISO. Dozier’s homered eight times in the last week and has been baseball’s most valuable player in the second half according to WAR. His .298 ISO is the highest unadjusted figure in the expansion era (1961-present) for a second baseman and the highest by any second baseman not named Rogers Hornsby in baseball history.

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This week, we’re going to run a series of posts laying out the case for the most compelling candidates for the American League’s Most Valuable Player Award. These posts are designed to make an affirmative argument for their subject and are not intended to serve as comprehensive looks at every candidate on their own. The authors tasked with writing these posts may not even believe their subject actually deserves to win, but they were brave enough to make the case anyway. The goal of these posts is to lay out the potential reasons for voters to consider a variety of candidates and to allow the readers to decide which argument is most persuasive.

Two-and-a-half months from now, after the World Series is over and clubs are in full offseason mode, the BBWAA will announce its end-of-season awards winners live on MLB Network. Given the way the public conversation is going and the way voters have traditionally cast their ballots, it appears likely that someone other than Mike Trout will win the American League’s Most Valuable Player honors.

The MVP award traditionally goes to the best hitter on a playoff team. It’s not a hard-and-fast rule, but it’s been 13 years since a player won the AL MVP award without making the playoffs, and only one pitcher has won since the strike. Not every BBWAA writer believes in this particular definition of MVP, but enough of the population does to ensure its continued observance. National League voters have been a little more forgiving about making the playoffs, but Trout doesn’t play in the NL.

The Angels are not going to make the playoffs even if they win all of their remaining games, so Trout’s odds of actually winning the award are minimal. Unless the group of writers chosen to vote for AL MVP this year is particularly unrepresentative of the BBWAA as a whole, someone like Josh Donaldson or Mookie Betts will win. Donaldson and Betts have had excellent seasons and should be recognized for their performance, but if you apply any reasonable criteria beyond team performance, Mike Trout should be the AL MVP.

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