- His path to be coming a genuine prospect is truly an interesting story. You can tell he really wants to be a baseball player desperately. Trying out for the Frontier League. Playing in Colombian winter ball despite the genuine danger.

- This guy is smart and funny. He’s going to be fun to root for.

- A major league pitcher with a “rise ball”? That’s fucking cool.

- Submariners are cool. I really wish Quisenberry was still alive to mentor him.

- 79 mph fastball? Yikes! At least he’s got some interesting deception and movement. He’s no Rowdy Hardy.

- This guy knows some baseball stats. “Statistical burden of proof.” Cool. I like smart pitchers. And he does spreadsheets too? I’m in love.

- $572 a month in AA? Christ, that’s even less than I thought.

- It’s cool that he knows about sabermetrics and DIPS, but someone needs to tell him that a submariner who can get a ton of groundballs has a great deal of control over what happens to balls put in play.

Courtesy of fangraphs.com, if you look at first-pitch strike rates of MLB pitchers with at least 50 IP, Chad Bradford has the second highest percentage. Brian Shouse is in the top 15. And when it comes to pitching with your fastball, I love this stat: Bradford, Shouse, Cla Meredith, and Ziegler had the 2nd, 3rd, 10th, and 13th slowest average fastball velocity of the 316 MLB pitchers with at least 50 IP in 2008. All except Shouse were in the top 20 out of 316 in percentage of fastballs thrown this year (and Shouse was 40th).

First of all, how many major leaguers are going to start a sentence with “Courtesy of fangraphs.com…”

Second of all, I think I’m in love.

He’s a submariner, automatically putting him way up the coolness spectrum.

He’s clearly a smart, funny guy. The type you would like to go for a drink with, there are not too many like that in elite sport.

He has a neat backstory as to how he got where he is. And underdog sucesses are cool.

I hope he starts the season in Omaha!

Man, this is awesome. I can’t wait for Part II.

And I also can’t wait for Hayes to be in Omaha so I can attempt to have a nerdy conversation like that with him, but then shy away at the last second and just squeak out a “hi my name is minda and i’m a blogger and a big fan ok bye” and then run away awkwardly. It’s gonna be AWESOME.

Concerns about his BABIP might be lessened if he looked at tRA and tRA* (the regressed version of tRA that tries to get to the season-by-season “true talent” of a pitcher) at his page at Stat Corner.

So far, looks like he’s for real, especially in his AA season.

Also — I can’t believe BP let his comment about fangraphs get through. I wonder how many subs that’s going to cost them?

great interview….totally nailed Rany after the michigan-nw exchange.

“It typically starts with them looking at me as if instead of pitching, I am blowing up a live rattlesnake and twisting it into a balloon animal poodle.”

this Q&A might have been the most enjoyable article he’s ever written.

Chris Hayes for president!