Morning Mound Visit: sabermetrics news - 7/10/18

FanGraphs | Jeff Sullivan: It’s very possible that Nathan Eovaldi is the most valuable pitcher on the market, largely because the Rays finished what the Yankees started in revamping his stuff. He added a cutter before his Tommy John surgery, decreased his four-seam usage, and then with Tampa, increased the height of his fastballs for even more effective velocity.

The Ringer | Ben Lindbergh: Lorenzo Cain was at a funny age for free agency—32 years-old—but boy has he proven that age and slim market wrong. Combining a better two-strike approach with ever-declining chase rates makes this already-great center fielder a near-MVP caliber one.

MGL On Baseball | Mitchel G. Lichtman: MGL made a top-ten of valuable players in baseball, and four of them are catchers. Why? It’s obviously because of framing, which leads to the question: is it possible that framing is that valuable? When you crunch the numbers using Tom Tango’s WOWY, you can see that with the extra allowed walks (and batted balls/hits!), there is something like a 7.6 run standard deviation for catcher framing talent, meaning the gap between two standard deviations above and below is something like three (!) wins.

MLB.com | Mike Petriello: There were plenty of surprises for players who have (or might) make the All Star team—Blake Snell, Max Muncy, Ross Stripling, and Eddie Rosario are all players you never would have expected to be in the running at all.