Wire Taps: Advanced stats and the Cy Young; Wet grounds rainout; The Phillies have flamethrowers

MISSING: Consistent baseball.
LAST SEEN: 2017
IF SEEN: Please make it happen so we can get this over with.

Here’s what’s Phresh in Philly.

Defense, Contact Quality, and the NL Cy Young (Fangraphs)
There are quite a few questions on the *right* stats to use for the Cy Young race; based on the basics and the peripherals, it looks like Jacob Degrom, but the more advanced the stats get, well, the more confused you get.

Philly's Grounds Crew Uses Flamethrowers To Dry Wet Field, HAS FLAMETHROWERS (Deadspin)
HOW LONG HAVE THEY HAD THEM? HAVE THEY BEEN HIDING THEM FROM US?

"Wet grounds" postponement adds to Nats' bizarre week (MASN)
It wasn't a rainout; the field was just unusable. Like, “pudding” and “cake” unusable.

Nationals-Phils rained out, traditional doubleheader Tuesday (USA Today)
"Nationals star Bryce Harper playfully pretended to slip as he walked out to the first base area. He then grabbed a rake and pushed for a few seconds and reached into a bag to sprinkle a drying agent on the field."

30 players having down years in 2018 (MLB.com)
(It’s Stephen Strasburg.)

Nationals-Phillies postponed after failed attempt to dry field: ‘Everybody saw the flamethrowers’ (WaPo)
“The field wasn’t tarped Friday night because we were supposed to get a very small amount of rain. If you tarp the field 24 hours a day, it will turn brown and it will die, so it’s an on-off situation,” said Howard Smith, a Phillies senior official. “We didn’t tarp it Friday night. In retrospect, had I known it was going to be this much rain, we would have tarped it. We didn’t, damage was done, and now we’re just playing catch-up.”

Nationals-Phillies series preview: Will it end up a wash? (WaPo)
"The forecast for Philadelphia this week is nowhere near as ominous as it was in Washington over the weekend, but that’s like saying the Rockies are not as formidable as Everest."

Corredor Grand Slam Sends Potomac to Mills Cup Finals (Nationals Prospects)
Potomac will play Buies Creek in the Mills Cup Final, but there is always the looming threat of the massive hurricane off the East Coast.