FanGraphs Baseball

Before anybody snarks about the quality of Trevor Bauer’s pitching, and whether or not he’s good enough for us to value his thoughts on pitching, know that he’s fully aware of his limits, and was even before conceding six runs to the Yankees last night.

“I don’t throw hard enough. My pitches aren’t strikes often enough. My pitches aren’t consistent enough. I’d almost rather not be a pitcher than be a mediocre pitcher,” he admitted to me. (I had to tell him he was decidedly above-average when it came to whiffs and strikeouts, at least.)

But this is exactly what makes him well qualified to study the art of pitching. He isn’t blessed with a Felix Hernandez changeup, or Clayton Kershaw‘s command, or even teammate Corey Kluber’s breaking ball. He knows that.

And so what brings him satisfaction? Studying pitching. Working hard to figure things out. Getting better, with the help of our best tools.

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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 AL at Toronto | 19:07 ET
Nova (46.0 IP, 109 xFIP-) vs. Price (161.0 IP, 84 xFIP-)
There’s a barbershop on Rue Beaubien in Montreal, very close to where the author is currently staying in that city, that’s full perpetually of young Latin American men and which features — somehow also perpetually — a live broadcast either of a Blue Jays or Yankees game on the shop’s large flat-screen television. How the proprietors of this business have influenced the space-time continuum in such a way so as to facilitate constant live feeds of the two aforementioned clubs — this is an unsolved mystery. Of less mystery is whether, when walking past the shop tonight, the author will find the aforementioned flat-screen tuned to the Yankees-Blue Jays game. Indications are that he will.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Toronto Radio.

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The Saber Seminar — my favorite baseball conference of the year — takes place in Boston next weekend. Ticket sales end Monday, so this is your last chance to get in on the action. If you’re on the fence about attending, perhaps this recently released schedule will help:

Saturday:

Presentations by FG/BP writers:

Jonah Pemstein, Bill Petti, Jeff Zimmerman, Bryan Cole, Harry Pavlidis, Rob Arthur, Jonathan Judge, and Dan Brooks.

Four separate Q&As with Red Sox staff:

Ben Cherington, John Farrell, Tom Tippett, Jared Porter

Other neat stuff!

Sunday:

Presentations by cool people:

Wendy Thurm, Alan Nathan, and a series of abstracts that are always really interesting.

Q&As with members of the Royals front office, plus a player development panel with Red Sox personnel.

Media panel with some great writers and myself.

And if you stick around to the bitter end, I take questions and make jokes.

Seriously, it’s a packed schedule, and you won’t regret attending. A ticket is just $140, or $65 if you’re a student, and every dime received goes to The Jimmy Fund, so you’re not only getting a deal, you’re getting a deal and supporting cancer research at the same time.

If you’re in Boston next weekend, this is a no-brainer. If you’re anywhere near Boston, you should strongly consider making the trip in. If you’re nowhere near Boston, it’s probably still worth getting on a plane. If you’re reading FanGraphs, you like baseball, and if you like baseball, you’ll really enjoy this conference. Come hang out with us next weekend.

Episode 586
Jonah Keri is a contributor to Grantland, author of real books (including, most recently, Up, Up, and Away regarding the Montreal Expos), and also apparently a sometime guest on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight. What else he is, is both (a) a native of Montreal and also (b) a 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 38 min play time.)

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Nelson Cruz leads both leagues in home runs, and he ranks second behind Bryce Harper in SLG. Neither is a surprise. The Seattle slugger left the yard 40 times with Baltimore last season, and moving to Safeco Field wasn’t going to squelch his production. Per ESPN Home Run Tracker, 22 of the 34 bombs he’s hit this year have traveled more than 400 feet. Nine of them have gone at least 440 feet.

One thing has come as a surprise: Going into last night, the career .274 hitter had a .324 batting average, and he was tied with Prince Fielder for the most base hits (140) in either league. Once one-dimensional, the former Texas Ranger has morphed into more than just a basher.

It’s been a long process. In many respects, Cruz has been a late bloomer. Read the rest of this entry »

I watched Hisashi Iwakuma’s no-hitter, and I wrote about it, and in writing about it, I included the following screenshot:

That’s Jesus Sucre, setting up for a high fastball to Manny Machado. The pitch was executed well, and Iwakuma got his out. Now, writing about the no-hitter didn’t leave me much space to analyze individual matchups, but something I noticed was that Sucre set up high against Machado pretty often. Really, he just set up high pretty often, more often than in the average Iwakuma start, but it was the pitches to Machado that caught my eye, and it made me curious. Does Machado have a vulnerability upstairs, like last year’s version of Mike Trout? After finishing the no-hitter post, I turned my attention to Machado’s breakout year. Allow me to spoil the rest of this post: no. There is no high-pitch vulnerability. In fact, quite the opposite!

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Ben and Sam banter about casting news, then discuss the St. Louis Cardinals’ seemingly incredible luck.

One week before the trading deadline, the Baltimore Orioles looked like a team that might sell, coming off a three-game sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees and dropping the opening game of the series against the Tampa Bay Rays. Their record stood at 46-49 and, with 5.5 games and four teams standing in between them and the second wild-Card spot, moving pending free agents Chris Davis or Wei-Yin Chen for prospects looked like a real possibility. Perhaps lost in the frenzy of the Toronto Blue Jays’ moves, the Orioles won seven of eight games, attempted to shore up some of their outfield issues with a trade for Gerardo Parra, and continue (now) to hang around the playoff race even as they continue to fly under the radar.

Free-agent-to-be Chris Davis has had a well-timed run both for himself and his team in the second half, hitting 12 of his 31 home runs in the last 25 games. Davis’ .281 isolated slugging percentage ranks fifth in all of Major League Baseball behind only Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Nelson Cruz, and Mark Teixeira. He has improved as the season has gone on, and has done better at handling high-octane fastballs, per Mike Petriello at mlb.com. Davis has not been alone, either, as Manny Machado moves toward stardom with the fifth-highest WAR in MLB built on an excellent season at the plate that has risen to the level of his incredible defense. Adam Jones has also put up another very good season in center field. With those three players anchored within the first four slots of the lineup, the Orioles have scored a respectable 4.4 runs per game.

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If you’re a regular reader, you may have come across my previous article on the limitations of the StatCast batted-ball data. It’s limited in size, not generating a velocity reading on just over 25% of batted balls. That wouldn’t be a huge deal if that substantial number of missed readings were randomly dispersed across BIP types, but they are not. Weakly hit balls are being missed at a much higher rate: over 56% of batted balls classified as popups were missed, as were over 28% of grounders, likely mostly of the weakly hit variety.

This limits the amount of detailed analysis that can be done, but it doesn’t eliminate it. Since the missed reading rate on fly balls (18%) and liners (17%) is much more manageable — and random — analysis of these two groups might yield some useful results. Today, let’s take a crack at calculating some park factors for the first half of the 2015 season. Read the rest of this entry »

Yankees prospect Jorge Mateo has some serious wheels. In 96 games with Low-A Charleston, the Dominican-born shortstop stole an eye-popping 71 bases. He leads the South Atlantic League by more than 14 steals, despite the fact he was promoted to High-A a little over a week ago. Mateo’s posted gaudy stolen-base numbers in past years too. He swiped 11 bags in just 15 games in the Rookie-level Gulf Coast League last year. The year before that, he lead the Dominican Summer League with 49. If you hadn’t guessed it by his stolen-base totals, his speed grades out as an 80 on the 20-80 scale.

Speed is clearly Mateo’s calling card, but he’s no slouch with the bat, either. The shortstop hit a respectable .268/.338/.378 in 96 games in the South Atlantic League, and has hit .464/.500/.714 in 30 plate appearances since his promotion to High-A, giving him a wRC+ of 116 on the year.

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