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
Cleveland at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Carrasco (56.0 IP, 80 xFIP-) vs. Dickey (95.2 IP, 109 xFIP-)
More than one reader over the past month-plus has suggested — in only the most congenial possible terms, naturally — that perhaps Toronto right-hander R.A. Dickey isn’t entirely worthy of his high marks here. This is a fair sort of criticism to make. If one looks into his or her heart and finds that it’s unmoved by the prospect of R.A. Dickey, regardless of whatever charms Dickey’s knuckleball possesses — this is, essentially, a kind of Truth.

Here’s why Dickey is so well received by the haphazardly constructed pleasure-algorithm featured here. When the author first introduced a sort of prototype of NERD to readers at this site, there was something resembling consensus among those same readers — or at least those compelled to raise their internet voices — that Dickey, who has never possessed great velocity or the promise of youth or excellent fielding-indepedent numbers, ought to receive a bonus for the knuckleball. The solution: to provide a bonus to all pitchers calculated by multiplying the frequency with which they threw a knuckleball (KN%) by five. Since then, only Dickey and (now) Steven Wright have benefited from the adjustment, essentially receiving about extra four points above and beyond their leaguemates.

Ought the knuckleball bonus to be eliminated? Ought it, at the very least, to be decreased slightly? Perhaps. Readers are invited to comment on the matter with civility in the space below. Or invited to dismiss the entire matter as an absurd thing in an ocean of absurd things.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

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Two opposing things can be true, I believe. Superstar players are probably the last to know when they’ve come to the end of the line. Declines can be so gradual they’re tough to detect if you’re just taking things day by day. If you listen to the players, they’ll insist they remain capable, even after they’re probably not. On the other side of the coin, no one loves to bury good players too early more than writers. We’ve all probably done it at some point. I did it way too early to Raul Ibanez. Countless people did it way too early to David Ortiz. We start looking for any signs of age-related decline, and then when one or two show up, we tend to assume that’s it. Good players know how to make adjustments. That’s what allows them to be good players.

So with Alex Rodriguez, right now, we’re…somewhere. Rodriguez says he’ll be okay, and he says he loves to prove doubters wrong. Not that Alex Rodriguez has much of a history of being doubted, but, anyway. Rodriguez has his pride, and he also has terrible numbers. He’s 40 years old! But then, the Yankees’ best hitter is 39 years old. It would be very easy to conclude that Rodriguez is finished. The Yankees have started to put him on the bench. We should probably be more patient — this is still Alex Rodriguez we’re talking about. The talent is in there. It’s just, the numbers paint a picture, and it’s a picture of a changed and worse ballplayer. That much cannot be argued.

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As the regular season’s midpoint approaches, Ben talks to Joe Sheehan about the state of the AL West.

Maikel Franco had one of the better games in baseball Tuesday. Facing the Diamondbacks, he came up in the third inning and doubled, and then he came up in the fifth inning and homered. It’s extraordinarily difficult to have a bad game when you hit a home run. It’s almost impossible to have a bad game when you homer and double. The Phillies would take that performance eight days a week — Franco’s single-game wRC+ easily cleared 300.

There was just one little thing, though. Franco’s a young power hitter, so the fact that he had two extra-base hits shows that that was Franco at his best. Yet there was also a sighting of Franco at his worst. In the end, the Phillies won, and Franco did do his damage, so spirits are high. But Franco did something that’s hard to forget.

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First, Marcus Semien worked hard, every day, with Ron Washington and various tools of the trade in order to improve his defense. He’s now an above-average defender, if you believe the stats — or at least a competent defender, if you prefer your eyes.

The newest evidence of his behind-the-scenes toil comes from his production at the plate. If you look at his overall line, a little bit more patience and power has pushed his weighted, park- and league-adjusted offense up about 10 percentage points. If you look at his overall peripherals, even, it doesn’t look like much has changed. He’s pulling a bit more, but he’s hitting about the same mix of grounders and flies.

You might just chalk it up to getting a little bigger, and picking his pitches a bit better. But if you did that, you’d miss that there’s been a rapid and drastic change to his batted-ball mix this season. It’s almost a tale of two seasons.

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Jay Bruce’s tenure with the Reds has reached the kids in the back seat asking “Are we there, yet?” stage. It feels like he should have been traded a while ago, yet here is, again a trade target and again a player Cincinnati can move to help its rebuilding process. The team has a $13 million option on Bruce for next year, so they theoretically still control him for another year and a half. That said, now is really the time the Reds need to trade him.

Figuring out when the Reds could have traded Bruce isn’t difficult. Determining if they should have is more so. Jay Bruce signed his current contract back before the 2011 season. The deal guaranteed him $51 million, buying out his arbitration years and potentially three years of free agency. The Reds were coming off a division-winning season, and while the 2011 season was disappointing, the team made the playoffs in 2012 and 2013. Heading into the 2014 season, the Reds had reasonable expectations of contending.

That edition of the Reds featured one of the best players in baseball, Joey Votto; a still decent Brandon Phillips; a nice, young player in Todd Frazier; and promising guys like Devin Mesoraco and Billy Hamilton, who were potentially ready to step forward. With a rotation of Johnny Cueto, Mat Latos, Homer Bailey, Mike Leake, and Alfredo Simon — and Tony Cingrani with Aroldis Chapman in the ninth — the team looked like it might have a decent shot at postseason contention. At the very least, there wasn’t the obvious need to blow things up and rebuild. The 2014 season proceeded to become a bit of a disaster, however. Votto got hurt, Phillips got worse, Bailey and Latos couldn’t pitch full seasons, and Jay Bruce had the worst year of his career, putting up a wRC+ of 78, a 40-point drop from his previous four seasons.

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On rare occasion, I’ll interview a player and end up not writing about him — at least not right away — despite fully intending to. This happened with Brock Stewart, who will be making his major-league debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers later tonight.

Stewart was more of a project than a prospect when I talked to him last summer. A sixth-round pick in 2014 out of Illinois State University, the converted infielder was having his ups and downs pitching for Rancho Cucamonga in the High-A California League. But his potential was apparent. Not long after we spoke, it was speculated that Stewart would be part of the three-team, multi-player deal that sent Mat Latos to L.A.

After a sophomore season at Illinois State that saw him hit .330/.402/.496, Stewart thought he’d go on to be drafted as a position player. That changed late in his junior year. The Normal, Illinois, native was scuffling at the plate, and opening eyes in occasional appearances out of the bullpen. One of his coaches suggested that he focus more on pitching, and his father, a pro scout for the Padres (and now the Rays), agreed. Jeff Stewart told his son “a lot of scouts, myself included, think your arm is your best tool.”

The youngster was a little surprised — “I always thought I was going to be playing in the infield for a big-league team someday” — but he heeded the advice. As he put it, “You have to go with the flow, and for me, that flow was toward the mound.” Read the rest of this entry »

We’re cutting the ribbon on the 2016 July 2 Sortable Board. For background on the J2 process or the scouting grades and future value grades on the board, please refer to our July 2 Primer and this piece on the 20-80 scale. I’ll have full scouting reports up on the prospects ranked 11-25 tomorrow and the top ten on Friday and links to the reports will be added.

Some Notes on the Board

Included in the group are all the players currently eligible to sign during this J2 period, as well as those who I anticipate will be eligible at some point in the next eleven and a half months. This includes Cuban players like Randy Arozarena and Vlad Gutierrez, who are both a half-decade older than the others in the class. While I agree that the age gap creates a bit of conundrum, those players are subject to bonus pools and teams are forced to reconcile it in their own evaluations/valuations, so I think it’s important that we do the same here.

The board has 25 ranked players and then a group of others whom I consider to be 35 FVs listed below that in no particular order. The class has more players, and many of them will also be covered in the reports we roll out the rest of this week, but they profile either as org players or are too raw to consider as 35 FV players (or better) based on the sources to whom I’ve spoken.

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Jason Coats has had an unremarkable career thus far. In eight games with the White Sox, the rookie outfielder has one hit in 15 at-bats. He’s basically a spare part. An unheralded former 29th-round pick, he’s ridden the pine since getting his lone base knock a week ago today.

Of course, everything in life is relative. What qualifies as unremarkable to some could be unforgettable to another. Coats has had a pair of those moments in his short time with Chicago. The more recent of them came at Fenway Park.

Hitless in his first 12 big-league at-bats, Coats stepped up to the plate against Boston southpaw Eduardo Rodriguez and smoked a pitch to deep right field. Soaring beyond the reach of Mookie Betts, the ball one-hopped the short fence into the bleachers, not far from the visiting bullpen.

As the ball was caroming, Coats was motoring.

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