Fans of Major League Baseball have long held an emotional investment in favorite players and teams, spending time and money on the sport and receiving widely varying emotional returns depending on results. If Fantex and Los Angeles Angels starter Andrew Heaney get their way, fans and investors will soon be able to invest in the future earnings of the Angels left-hander. Heaney and Fantex, a company that has previously struck similar deals with multiple NFL players, have agreed to a contract that will pay Heaney $3.34 million in exchange for “10 percent of all future earnings related to his brand, including player contracts, corporate endorsements and appearance fees,” according to Ken Rosenthal. A deal like this will attempt to provide pre-arbitration players like Heaney a form of insurance against future injury or a downgrade in performance without signing a team-friendly contract that keeps players from free agency. While this concept has been around for quite some time, in practice, these deals are still in their infancy and come with some drawbacks.

Almost two years ago, Fantex made news by announcing an agreement with star running back Arian Foster of the Houston Texans. The deal, similar to the one for Heaney, would have paid Foster $10 million in exchange for 20% of Foster’s future earnings. Before the parties could follow through on the deal, Foster was injured and the IPO never got off the ground. The deals with Fantex are subject to getting enough investors to pay for the initial guarantee to the players. For Heaney to get paid, enough investors must first meet the IPO amount, in this case $3.34 million.

In some ways, this model may look like a long-term version of daily fantasy games, where fans can put forth a relatively small sum of money in the hopes that a player will play well and provide a return on the money they have deposited. I spoke with Fantex co-founder and CEO Buck French about the potential comparisons and he was quick to refute them, stating that they do not consider themselves in the same market. “[Daily fantasy sports] is totally different. It’s not investing. Either you win or you lose… A single game outcome will determine whether you win or lose.” French cited a Wall Street Journal article stating that 1.3% of daily fantasy players win 91% of the profits in the first half of the MLB season. French said that, in Fantex, people “invest in future cash flow stream and collect dividends. They aren’t trying to beat out a whole bunch of people.”

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Houston at Texas | 20:05 ET
Kazmir (164.1 IP, 96 xFIP-) vs. Hamels (177.1 IP, 86 xFIP-)
What this game represents is an encounter between the two clubs in all of baseball most closely situated atop their respective division’s standings. Had the pair met a month ago, meanwhile, that’s not at all what this game would have represented — owing, that is, to how Texas was five games behind Houston and the Los Angeles Angels were also in second place. What one learns is that circumstances can change dramatically in a month. Like how they can change dramatically for an animal which endures a gestation period of a month or less. Or like how they can change for someone who has a single life-changing day, but for some reason — due probably to a neurological disorder about which Oliver Sacks has written — experiences time at roughly 1/30th the rate of the typical human.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas Radio.

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Now that the minor league regular seasons have come to a close, and we’ve reached the ides of September, most of the noteworthy roster-expansion call-ups are behind us. Nearly all of the players who were expected to have substantial impacts on the pennant races came up on the first of the month or shortly thereafter. However, a few more prospects were promoted over the weekend, as minor league clubs were eliminated from their respective playoffs. The most notable of the rookies called up over the weekend was probably Gary Sanchez, a catcher in the Yankees organization.

Sanchez has been on the prospect radar for a few years now, ever since the Yankees gave him a big bonus to sign out of the Dominican as a 16-year-old back in 2009. Sanchez hit an excellent .286/.350/.496 (134 wRC+) over his first three seasons in the minors, but followed it up with a less impressive .261/.329/.405 (107 wRC+) between High-A and Double-A in 2013 and 2014. The primary culprit for the change was a drop-off in power, which manifested itself in substantially lower isolated power figures. However, Sanchez’s pop made a comeback in 2015, during which he split time between the Double-A and Triple-A.

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Episode 594
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the hugely woebegone guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

This edition of the program is sponsored by Draft, the first truly mobile fantasy sports app. Compete directly against idiot host Carson Cistulli by clicking here.

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 1 hr 24 min play time.)

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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Houston at Los Angeles AL | 15:35 ET
Fiers (155.0 IP, 103 xFIP-) vs. Heaney (84.1 IP, 105 xFIP-)
This game represents an opportunity not only to survey, in Houston, a club currently involved in the league’s tightest divisional race — not only that, but also the first occasion on which to observe Angels left-hander Andrew Heaney since he became the first major leaguer to offer publicly a chance to invest in his success. Following an agreement with Fantex, Heaney will receive “$3.34 million in exchange for 10 percent of all future earnings,” according to Ken Rosenthal. Whether the same opportunity will be made available for major-league webloggers, the company remains not so much quiet as they don’t ever return your phone calls even though you left probably seven or ten messages on their voicemail last week and sent several emails with the word “Urgent” in the subject.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston Television.

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Ben Revere puts the bat on the baseball. His 4.0 swinging-strike% is fourth lowest among qualified hitters, with only Michael Brantley, Daniel Murphy and Ben Zobrist whiffing less often. His 97.2 Z-Contact% is topped only by Murphy’s 97.7.

Putting balls in play is working out well for the left-handed-hitting former Phillie. Revere is hitting .342/.390/390 since joining the Blue Jays at the trade deadline, and last year he led the National League with 184 hits.

Revere has a low walk rate – 5.5% – but not because he lacks discipline. His Z-Swing% is 58.4, which is 12th lowest among qualified hitters. Speedy and lacking power, he isn’t a hitter you want to issue free passes to.

“I’m not going to get pitched around,” Revere told me last weekend. “Pitchers are like, ‘Don’t let this guy get on with an easy ticket, ’cause he ain’t gonna beat you with the long ball.’ Whether it’s off-speed or fastballs, they’re going to go straight at me.”

Revere went deep yesterday for just the fourth time in over 2,500 big league plate appearances. He was told to hit the ball the other way coming up through the Twins system, and his approach has essentially stayed the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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 | TBA
Stroman (Season Debut) vs. Nova (74.0 IP, 115 xFIP-)
With their victory over the Yankees on Friday, the Blue Jays have put some metaphorical space atop the AL East between themselves and that same New York club. As for literal space, that remains mostly the same. In either case, what today represents, besides another encounter between two clubs competing for the division lead, is the season debut of beloved Toronto right-hander Marcus Stroman. This past February, Jeff Sullivan found that basically every pitch in Stroman’s repertoire is most similar to some kind of ace’s best pitch: Roy Halladay‘s sinker, Johnny Cueto‘s four-seamer, Jose Fernandez’s curveball, etc. A month later, Stroman had torn his ACL and was doubtful to return at all in 2015. The clear lesson: don’t permit Jeff Sullivan to render your name into print form.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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Each week, we publish north of 100 posts on our various blogs. With this post, we hope to highlight 10 to 15 of them. You can read more on it here. The links below are color coded — green for FanGraphs, brown for RotoGraphs, dark red for The Hardball Times, orange for TechGraphs and blue for Community Research.
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Devised originally in response to a challenge issued by viscount of the internet 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
Price (196.1 IP, 83 xFIP-) vs. Severino (35.1 IP, 94 xFIP-)
On account of how yesterday’s version of this same precise matchup — which was also that day’s most highly rated game — on account of how it was postponed, it follows that all of the remarks which appear in that edition of these scores remain relevant today. It’s a reflection of that repetition which humans must constantly endure, this postponement.

In conclusion, here is “Monday” by dead Italian polymath Primo Levi:

Is there anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it’s supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There’s nothing sadder.

Except perhaps a cart horse
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.
Its whole life is walking.

And a man? Isn’t a man sad?
If he lives in solitude a long time,
If he believes time has run its course,
A man is a sad thing too.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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