Kris Bryant has a lot going for him: he’s second in rookie WAR this season*, he’s part of a long-term Cubs future that looks increasingly rosy, and he’s part of a positional rookie class that has produced the third-most first-half WAR (prorated to 600 PA) in the past 40 years. In short, he’s been everything the Cubs could’ve asked for, showcasing the power, patience, and stolen bases that were expected out of him once he hit the majors.

*All stats current as of Thursday.

That last tool — speed — might be translating to steals somewhat on the back of manager Joe Maddon’s coaching style, but Bryant’s stolen-base skills have never really been in question. He stole eight bases in just 68 games at Double-A and seven in 70 in Triple-A during 2014; this season, he’s produced right about on that level, with eight in 83 games, and that’s obviously a great return for a player with the potential to hit 30 home runs. No one seems to confuse Bryant with a speed demon, however, as he’s not a player whose skill set is based solely around his ability to run.

That final point is precisely why we’re here, because Bryant is currently leading a category you might not expect him to, and one usually reserved for those speedier players we just mentioned. The category he’s leading isn’t home runs, or ISO, or even K% (though he is close to leading that one). Instead, take a look at the top 15 this season for highest infield-hit percentage:

Bryant doesn’t hit a lot of ground balls. Only about 34% of his batted balls are on the ground (relative to a league average of about 45%.) Bryant’s lack of propensity to hit grounder is just as much a driving factor here as his speed is, because infield-hit rate is simply infield hits/ground balls. However, when Bryant does hit a ground ball, it has resulted in an infield hit almost one in five times, which is something that warrants some attention.

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Brent Morel started at third base for the Pirates on Monday. The same Brent Morel who has a career .272 on-base percentage. He started again at third base last night as well. This must have struck fear into the hearts of Pittsburgh Pirates fans, perhaps giving them some flashbacks to the bad old days. Thankfully, that shouldn’t happen very often, as the prodigal son — Aramis Ramirez — has returned. The Pirates re-acquired him on Thursday evening in exchange for minor-league pitcher Yhonathan Barrios.

When Aramis Ramirez left the shores of the Allegheny, he had accumulated just 3.2 WAR in his 2,253 plate appearances in a Pittsburgh uniform. But with the Pirates’ National League Central rivals in Chicago and Milwaukee, he went on to become the player the Pirates always envisioned him as. Now on the brink of 40 WAR for his career — a bar that has only been crossed by 40 other third baseman in big-league history — Ramirez is back in black and gold, and Neal Huntington and Co. couldn’t have picked a better time to bring him back into the fold.

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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
Washington at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Scherzer (138.0 IP, 76 xFIP-) vs. Locke (103.1 IP, 103 xFIP-)
One finds, not infrequently — within the help-wanted section of his local daily — one finds calls from area employers for a sort of job applicant who possesses what is best described as an “attention to detail.” Indeed, as of Thursday night in America, no fewer than 51 of the classified ads in the Concord Monitor — i.e. the newspaper published most closely to the author’s birth home — no fewer than 51 ads featured that precise arrangement of words.

Of note with regard to the sort of jobs that require an “attention to detail” is that the present author has never, ever been offered one of them. Indeed, rather than detail, the author’s attention is turned much frequently in the direction of things like wine in a box, for example, or like internet comedy videos.

It was probably in the author’s haste to direct his attention towards those latter things that I neglected yesterday, while preparing to introduce a slight alteration to the NERD team-score algorithm, that I neglected to include the proper cell range in a VLOOKUP function which returned each club’s divisional-series playoff odds. As a result, a number of clubs were assessed playoff odds of 0%. As a result of that, their NERD scores were distorted badly.

What I’ve done in the meantime, then, is to correct the great cell-range debacle and to update the team scores duly. Here, by way of illustration, are all the clubs to receive a a NERD of 7 or greater either by the distorted version published yesterday or the corrected one today:

One notes that a number of the scores for American League clubs have increased by two or three points. Unsurprisingly, these were the same clubs accidentally omitted from the aforementioned cell range. What one notes beyond that is the substantial volume of energy invested by the author in this overwhelmingly unimportant endeavor — an endeavor monitored by only a handful of people, it should be said, each of whom is also probably marveling at the curious use of his or her finite time among the living. And yet, what one thirdly notes is that the alternatives aren’t manifestly better and that diverting oneself briefly from the spectre of mortality perhaps actually does represent a rational use of one’s resources.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Washington Radio.

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Let’s accept that, after four starts this season, there are few conclusions that can be reached about Jose Fernandez. After all, we need bigger samples of data, and even then, conclusions mostly have to be pretty soft. After four starts, we know very little. But we’re always allowed to make observations. We can identify hints of things, things that might be true, and so I ask, has Fernandez become more dangerous on the other side of his elbow surgery?

You probably haven’t missed it, but just in case you did, Fernandez rejoined the Miami Marlins not long ago, and one of the Internet’s most favorite pitchers has 32 strikeouts in 26 innings. He’s also issued just three walks, throwing almost three-quarters of his pitches for strikes. And it doesn’t seem like he’s lost any movement or zip. Set a low enough minimum, and Fernandez leads all starting pitchers in out-of-zone swing rate. It’s here that I want to linger. I want to talk about that number, and I want to talk about Fernandez’s best pitch.

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Episode 581
Jeff Sullivan is a senior editor at FanGraphs. He’s also the totally imperiled guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 15 min play time.)

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The A’s figured 2015 would be a competitive year, and though there have been plenty of encouraging signs, at some point there’s just not enough time left to expect bad luck to reverse itself. The Astros, meanwhile, figured 2015 would be a competitive year, but maybe not this much of a competitive year, so they found themselves considering the market of short-term upgrades. So it is that a surprising A’s team and a surprising Astros team have come together on a move: Scott Kazmir is going to Houston, and now the league-wide trade market is open.

He’s not the first big-leaguer to be moved. Juan Uribe got swapped. Mark Trumbo got swapped. Welington Castillo got swapped a couple of times. But this is the first real deadline move, with the A’s conceding that it’s time for them to sell. Kazmir’s a free agent in a few months, but the Astros weren’t turned off by that. If anything, they were seeking that out. Rentals tend to cost less, and Kazmir provides important rotation insurance. The guys the A’s are getting are named Jacob Nottingham and Daniel Mengden. You’re probably not familiar with either, but that doesn’t mean the A’s just got robbed.

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With significant deadline trades, we’re going to attempt to provide an evaluation of the prospects changing teams from both Kiley McDaniel’s scouting perspective and Chris Mitchell’s statistical breakdowns. The numerical breakdown of both players appears below Kiley’s write-ups.

Today, the Houston Astros officially decided to go for it, acquiring Scott Kazmir from the A’s in exchange for for A-Ball prospects RHP Daniel Mengden and C Jacob Nottingham. Both were late cuts from my preseason prospect list list, which by Opening Day, with the Evan Gattis trade and losing Delino DeShields in the Rule 5 draft, included 22 players.

Both players were among the group of six given 35+ FV grades, so they were both in the 23-28 range in Houston’s system entering the year. I don’t have inside info on how the negotiations went down, but I’m guessing Kazmir was long a target for Houston (as they took a run at him this offseason) and Oakland was holding out for a top 10 prospect in the Astros organization. Based on the preseason rankings, this will look like a light return, but given Nottingham’s breakout season, they did indeed land a guy who would have ranked in the Astros top 10 if the list was re-done today.

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Ben and Sam banter about the Astros and then discuss the possible interpretations of Zack Greinke’s scoreless innings streak.

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Brayan Pena is a 33-year-old backup catcher who has amassed 1820 PA across 11 seasons, producing a .259/.299/.352 line and a 75 wRC+. The takeaway point from that first sentence is that Brayan Pena has been among the worst hitters in the league over the last decade, which is probably something you knew about him without any prompting. Pena’s a fun-loving character and he’s passable behind the plate, so he’s made a career for himself in the big leagues despite the very limited offensive production.

Reflecting on Pena is simply a way to put the 2015 White Sox in perspective because the White Sox are essentially hitting like Brayan Pena as a team this year. On the season, they’re hitting .241/.295/.357 (77 wRC+). They’re five percentage points worse than the Phillies (82 wRC+) at the plate without removing the Phillies’ pitchers from the equation. Take pitchers out of the equation and the White Sox’ 78 wRC+ is nine percentage points worse than the 29th place Phillies (87 wRC+). The White Sox offense is historically bad.

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