About a month ago, I asked whether Carlos Correa might’ve already become baseball’s best shortstop. Correa got off to a wonderful beginning, with positive signs all over, while there were indications that Troy Tulowitzki was down a step or two. Nothing now has changed about my evaluation of Correa, as I still think he’s fantastic, but if you just look at the numbers, Correa might not even be baseball’s best shortstop rookie. In basically identical playing time, Correa finds himself a hair behind Francisco Lindor in WAR. In the second half alone, Lindor’s posted a WAR of 3.0, tied with Bryce Harper and fourth overall among position players. The defense, as expected, has been there. Lindor is a gifted defensive shortstop. But he’s also been hitting, after a cold first few weeks. This was less expected.

It’s a reason why the Indians are hanging around the fringes of the wild-card race. Not that they’re likely to get there, but they are mathematically alive, with an improved roster that deserves better than its standing. Lindor is at the middle of the Indians’ little surge, and given his emergence, it’s time we take a look at his abilities. In a short amount of time, the 21-year-old has flashed his whole skillset.

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Over the last few years, Matt Carpenter developed into one of the game’s most underrated stars by exceeding at the skill set embodied by the likes of Mark Grace and Joe Mauer over the last few decades; be extremely selective at the plate, rarely strike out, hit a ton of line drives, and create value through elite levels of walks and doubles.

From his rookie season of 2012 through the end of last season, no one in baseball took a higher percentage of pitches than Carpenter, and he ranked 14th overall in contact rate when he did offer at a pitch in the strike zone. Carpenter’s unwillingness to chase pitches out of the zone, and his ability to rarely whiff on swings in the zone, allowed him to post nearly even walk and strikeout rates in an era when pitcher dominance has become the norm. While he wasn’t a big power guy — he hit just 25 home runs during those three seasons — he made up for it by posting one of the highest line drive rates in the game, which allowed him to rank in the top 10 in doubles, so he wasn’t just a slap-hitting singles machine like some other elite contact batters.

This year, though, Matt Carpenter is different.

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Cody Allen has had, in his own words, “kind of a weird year.” The Cleveland Indians closer has 30 saves and has given up just a pair of home runs in 59 innings. Meanwhile, his ERA (3.51) is nearly a run and a half higher than it was a year ago (2.07) while his FIP (1.96) is more than a full run lower (2.99). His .366 BABIP is exactly .100 points higher than it was in 2014.

Allen is aggressive. His fastball, which he throws 62.4% of the time, is averaging 95 mph. His spiked curveball, which he throws 36.7% of the time, is averaging 85.9 mph. The 26-year-old right-hander – now in his fourth season – has come out of the Cleveland bullpen 60 times in the current campaign.

Allen talked about his statistical season, and his two-pitch power mix, when the Indians visited Boston in August. Read the rest of this entry »

Television deals get a lot of publicity when it comes to looking at Major League Baseball finances. National television deals that went into effect in 2014 give MLB $1.5 billion per year through 2021, and local television deals have increased over the years providing more money to clubs to provide their product to those not physically witnessing the games. Despite those big figures, all teams still see a large portion of their revenues from doing business the old-fashioned way — putting butts in the seats.

Television revenue, particularly locally, is one way that the large-markets have a big advantage in revenues. Those same teams in New York, Los Angeles and Boston also have some inherent advantages in creating local revenue due to a larger base of potential ticket-buyers, in theory leading to higher prices and greater revenues. Teams in smaller markets likely cannot bridge that gap entirely, but they do have one option in an attempt to bridge that gap, and that is to win baseball games. The Kansas City Royals saw a surge in the standings from the get-go this season following their playoff success last year — and teams like the Pirates have also benefited from winning — but small markets are not alone in their ability to increase revenue through wins: both the Blue Jays and Mets are also seeing increases in attendance, and in turn, revenue.

On the season, the Dodgers, with their massive stadium and fanbase, are once again leading the league in attendance, per Baseball Reference.

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Lately there’s been some talk about Yoenis Cespedes as an MVP candidate. Jon Paul Morosi wrote a piece advocating for Cespedes at Fox yesterday, Richard Justice wrote a similar piece for MLB.com, and those are just the ones I saw in between cleaning up randomly placed pockets of cat vomit and carting my kids around town to their various appointments. So there might be more. Articles, not cat vomit. There is definitely more cat vomit.

To check, I did that thing where you start typing a search into Google then stop and let it suggest what you might want. Here’s what my Google suggested when I typed in “Yoenis Cespedes.”

So this is now a thing, apparently. Yoenis Cespedes: MVP candidate.

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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-)
Owing to how he’s afflicted by indolence and riddled with lethargy, the author hasn’t attempted to record such a thing. It appears, however, that tonight’s Blue Jays-Yankees game is the first encounter of the season in receipt of a perfect NERD score — NERD being the fake acronym applied by a younger version of the author to the flawed algorithm used to determine a baseball game’s aesthetic appeal. The reason for this game’s appeal, mostly: the respective proximities of each club both to the top of their division and also to each other. And secondly, too: the respective talents of Toronto left-hander David Price and New York right-hander Luis Severino.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio?

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I’ve written about a few changes like this lately. I wrote about Ryan Goins, whose hot streak coincided with a new unwillingness to swing the bat. I wrote about Joey Votto, whose Bonds-esque second half has come with greater discipline and a preference for very particular strikes. In Goins’ case, the analysis was done in response to improved performance. In Votto’s case, the analysis was done in response to improved performance. There’s nothing quite like that here, no red-hot offensive tear commanding broader attention. Maybe that’s still to come, but I think the observation is interesting enough regardless of everything else.

Evan Gattis is patient now. He’s not Joey Votto-patient. He’s not Matt Carpenter-patient. His patience is relative, but compared to what he’s been, this is a whole different type of hitter. As always, you have to wonder how much of this is actually nothing. Sometimes the numbers we look at aren’t reflective of any deeper truths. But this isn’t based on outcome data. This isn’t based on the usual things that bounce around. This is about swinging. Hitters who like to swing will swing; hitters who like to wait will wait. Gattis has been a swinger. Now Gattis is more of a waiter. This is interesting because of how unexpected it has been.

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