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FanGraphs | Travis Sawchik: Corey Dickerson has seemingly improved from jumping from the Rays to the Pirates, and it’s because of his adjustments to fastballs up in the zone. By giving himself a more upright and flexible stance, he is able to slap the four-seamer in the upper part of the zone in a way he has never before. He’s already at 1.4 fWAR and 120 wRC+ on the year, something I’m sure the Rays regret.
Baseball Prospectus | Rob Mains ($): Is there a difference between True Average, OPS+, and wRC+? In some respects to their calculation, yes, but in reality, their correlations are so high (all above .9) that it doesn’t really matter.
Tangotiger Blog | Tom Tango: Tom Tango continues to go on about the difference between one-dimensional and two-dimensional metrics, the latter being Wins Above Average, and the former being Wins Above Replacement, which uses a “zero point” to make it one dimension. It’s a worthy conversation to have because a lot of sabermetricians actually prefer WAA over WAR for a variety of reasons.
The Athletic | Eno Sarris ($): So far in his debut, Madison Bumgarner has been missing... something. And that “something” is probably velocity. His average and max velocity has dropped, and while his curve is probably still similar, a lessened fastball hurts its effectiveness, too. It could be his spring-like warm-up, so it’s worth keeping an eye on.