FanGraphs Baseball

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On Tuesday night, the Texas Rangers swung a deal to acquire Will Venable from the San Diego Padres. In return for Venable, the Rangers sent catcher/outfielder Marcus Greene to San Diego, along with a player to be named later. Here’s what my fancy computer math has to say about Greene and his future outlook.

Greene has played exclusively in Low-A Hickory this season, where he logged 25 games before he underwent Tommy John Surgery in June. The 20-year-old hit a strong .218/.365/.500, thanks to an impressive combination of power (.282 ISO) and walks (17% walk rate). On the downside, he struck out in a concerning 24% of his trips to the plate in Hickory. This performance yielded a KATOH forecast of 1.9 WAR through age 28, with a 54% chance of cracking the majors. Due to Greene’s increased strikeout rate, this is a sizable step down from the 4.7 WAR forecast yielded by his 2014 numbers, which primarily took place in the Northwest League.

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Brandon Crawford’s big power breakout has been a big part of the Giants’ good work so far this season despite an iffy rotation. Jeff Sullivan did a great job pointing out the changes he saw in Crawford’s swing, and the player agreed with most of his analysis. But Sullivan also pointed out that pitchers were in the middle of adjusting to the player, and it’s been Crawford’s adjustment(s) back to their adjustment that has helped him sustain the power into the late months.

One was mechanical, the other had to do with approach. Taking the two together really makes Crawford’s new power level seem sustainable, though.

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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
San Francisco at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Peavy (56.0 IP, 115 xFIP-) vs. Morton (88.2 IP, 100 xFIP-)
It’s a truth as old as Abe Vigoda: what the braying masses most want to observe is a pair of contestants, compelled by force or profit, to compete in a game with real consequences for both the winner and loser. What one finds in the Giants and Pirates is the baseball clubs whose wins and losses currently hold the greatest consequence. Regard, below: a table featuring the five teams whose odds of reaching the divisional series* are closest to 50% — which is to say, furthest from certainty. DIV% denotes current divisional-series odds; DIFF, the absolute value (in percentage points) from 50%.

The viewer is invited to examine the faces of each player for the presence of Shuddering Desperation — an expression which resembles the sort one might also wear after eating a burrito made with spoiled sour cream.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: San Francisco Radio or Television.

*By the season-to-date stats method, which seems to best reflect how the human brain perceives the drama of playoff contention.

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Kiley McDaniel put out his 2015 In-Season Prospect Update on Wednesday, which got everyone up to speed on the game’s most noteworthy prospects. Among other things, Kiley included an ordered list of the top-26 prospects in baseball. To follow suit, I put together an updated top-100 list, according to my KATOH system. Additionally, I produced KATOH forecasts for Kiley’s top 26, the 18 players on his “Minor-League Pop-Up Guys List.”

I know you probably know this, but I’d like to reiterate that you shouldn’t think of this as “Chris Mitchell’s Top 100 List,” and certainly not “FanGraphs’ Top 100 List.” This is simply the output from a flawed statistical model that fails to take into account many of the factors that go into evaluating a prospect. In particular, it ignores a player’s physical tools. As always, you should never choose between beer and tacos if you don’t have to.

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There’s a new trend in baseball: fire your outgoing GM on a Tuesday. Two weeks ago, it was Dave Dombrowski getting the axe in Detroit, and last week, the Brewers announced they were going to move Doug Melvin out of the top spot in baseball operations department. Yesterday, the Red Sox joined the Tuesday makeover party, announcing that they were bringing in Dombrowski to serve as their President of Baseball Operations, and as a result, current GM Ben Cherington would be leaving the organization.

So, as we’ve done the last few weeks, let’s take a look at what led to the fall of the Red Sox GM.

Cherington’s story is quite a bit different than either Dombrowski’s or Melvin’s, with both higher highs and lower lows than either managed to reach. Promoted to the GM position after Theo Epstein left for Chicago following the 2011 season, Cherington’s initial impression in Boston was a train wreck. The team dropped from 90 wins in Epstein’s final season to 69 wins in Cherington’s first year, and there was so much internal strife that the team fired manager Bobby Valentine less than a year after they hired him.

But during that miserable last place run, Cherington and his staff did one very wise thing, trading Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford to the Dodgers for a package of prospects and a mountain of salary relief. It was Cherington’s first big move as a GM, and clearing the roster of dead weight contracts gave the team the flexibility they needed to overhaul the team in quick order. That winter, the front office reallocated that money to sign a series of mid-level free agents, and hit on just about every single one; Shane Victorino, Stephen Drew, and Koji Uehara were significant contributors, and even depth pieces like David Ross and Jonny Gomes helped the team come together.

The result was a worst-to-first turnaround that resulted in a World Series title, the organization’s third championship in 11 seasons after not winning one for 84 years. Cherington’s spread-the-wealth plan was a massive success, and seemed to put him on the path to a long run with the club. And now, less than two years later, he’s being replaced. How did it all go so wrong?

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Fresh off of the worst start of his career, Felix Hernandez is in the rundown for every baseball show on television. Often so far, the producer’s notes have asked the analysts to wonder if the team left their ace in too long, and what that means about the relationship between the player and his management and coaches. Here’s another reason to wonder if he was left in too long: is he hurting?

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Since I made you wait a little longer than I intended for a mid-season/trade-deadline prospect rankings update, I decided to expand upon the form with four lists instead of just one. Each of these lists uses tiers like my other lists, but each list is also ordered by preference within each tier. I’ve also started using Present Value (PV) in addition to the normal Future Value (FV) as a better way to show how close a prospect is to reaching his ceiling, or being ready for a call-up. See this article for more about FV and the 20-80 scouting scale in general.

The first list is the standard top-prospect list with the standard 130 at-bat/50 innings pitched qualifications, so prospects in the big leagues are eligible for the list. That said, a few players like Kyle Schwarber and Daniel Norris are about a week from losing their prospect eligibility and are in the big leagues, so I moved them to another of the lists below in anticipation.

The second list features players who were eligible for the Top 200 Prospect List last year that didn’t make it, but would do so comfortably now. Think of this as the minor-league version of “pop-up guys” that you’ll hear referred to more often in the draft: players that improved greatly in a short period of time. The standard for being listed is 50 FV, which was the 80th through 143rd prospects on the preseason list, but, for reasons I’ll explain below, should be even higher this year.

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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
New York NL at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Syndergaard (105.2 IP, 81 xFIP-) vs. Jimenez (131.0 IP, 89 xFIP-)
There’s no way to measure it precisely, but it’s probably not entirely inaccurate to suggest that, among major-league fanbases, Mets’ supporters feature probably one of the greatest capacities for disappointment. Nor, it should be said, is their disappointment typically unwarranted. Indeed, despite benefiting from one of baseball’s largest markets, the club has qualified for the postseason only once since 2001. Whatever the sources of displeasure, however, rookie right-hander Noah Syndergaard is decidedly not among them. His combination of physical brilliance and actual performance conspires to produce a potent antidote to the club’s flagrant weakness.

With regard to whatever other trouble might afflict the Mets supporter, he or should ought to benefit from the wisdom contained in the following aphorism, care of Romanian pessimist Emil Cioran and found within in his text The Trouble with Being Born.

To be “happy” you must constantly bear in mind the miseries you have escaped. This would be a way for memory to redeem itself, since ordinarily it preserves only disasters, eager — and with what success! — to sabotage happiness.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

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