After yesterday’s 12-strikeout, no-walk complete game from R.A. Dickey, the league’s best knuckleballer moved into position with the MLB’s fourth-best xFIP, the MLB’s fourth-best ERA, and the 10th-best ERA-minus among historical knuckleballers.

Advanced stats can sometimes fail us with knuckleballers because they produce especially weak contact. In his most recent start, Dickey got 10 ground outs, 1 weak single that may get ruled an error, and 1 infield fly ball. So naturally, FIP and xFIP under-appreciate Dickey to a certain extent, but does that mean he should be in consideration for a Cy Young award?

Yes. Probably very much: Yes.
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Matt Cain is not first on any list of dominating pitchers — not historically, not currently. He doesn’t throw the prototypical mid-90s fastball; he doesn’t bring the hammer curve or sweeping slider that defined hall-of-fame talents like Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson or Roger Clemens.

Instead, Matt Cain deals in low-90s heat, sneaky changeups and get-me-over curveballs. Wednesday night, Cain was able to parlay that arsenal into the 22nd perfect game in MLB history. It wasn’t only the most dominating performance of 2012, it was arguably one of the best starts the game has ever seen, put together behind the setup and execution of his entire array of pitches.

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This is the bracket for the College World Series everyone is talking about. (Click to embiggen.)

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. The College World Series: A Nerd’s Guide, Part I
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The College World Series: A Nerd’s Guide, Part I
A Note on What This Is (And Also What It Isn’t)
The College World Series begins Friday, June 15th, at 5pm ET with a game between Stony Brook and UCLA.

What follows is part one (of two)* of a guide to said event for the sort of person who (a) would read FanGraphs (or, currently is reading FanGraphs, as appears to be the case), but (b) pays basically zero attention to college baseball, and yet still (c) has a passing interest in the Series itself.

*Read part two here.

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Surprising performances have fueled the Chicago White Sox’s rise to the top of the division. Adam Dunn — who looked finished last season — is off to one of the best starts of his career, Jake Peavy is healthy for the first time in years and AJ Pierzynski has already clubbed eleven home runs. And while those performances were unexpected, there’s another player on the White Sox whose play has been even more shocking. At age-28, Alejandro De Aza has blossomed into one of the better center fielders in the game.

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J.J. Hardy receives a lot of accolades for his bat, and rightly so. He hit 30 home runs last season, which tied him with Troy Tulowitzi for the most among big-league shortstops. He also can flash the leather. According to The Fielding Bible, “J.J. Hardy could be the most underrated shortstop in baseball. He makes all the plays that he should and can make the exceptional play on occasion.”

Hardy discussed the ins and outs of playing shortstop when he and his Baltimore Orioles teammates visited Fenway Park last week.

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On The Fielding Bible saying that he gets to more balls to his right than he did when he played for Milwaukee: “I don’t have a reason as to why that might be. It’s not that I worked on it the last couple of years. Maybe I play a little bit farther to the right than I did before, although we don’t really position any differently here. We go over the same scouting reports and I feel that I play guys who are pull [hitters] in the same spots as before.”

On reading the ball off the bat: “I’ve always felt that I read the ball well and get good jumps, because even though the speed isn’t there, I get to a lot of balls. Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Cain just threw the 22nd perfect game in baseball history, which is of course an amazing accomplishment. But, through the way he dominated on the way to his perfect game, Cain actually joined an even more exclusive club – guys who have posted a Game Score above 100 in a nine inning game.

Before tonight, only nine pitchers had ever racked up a game score of 100 or better in nine innings. It was more common back when starters kept going when a game went to extras, but we want to compare apples to apples, so those are out. Sorted by Game Score — an imperfect measure, for certain, but one that does okay for this purpose — here are the 10 best nine inning performances of all time.

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Episode 197
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), isn’t apologizing — not for his behavior on the present edition of the podcast, and not for the terror he’ll likely visit someday upon you and your family.

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 45 min. play time.)

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On Tuesday night in Miami, Clay Buchholz had one of his best performances in recent memory, posting his highest single-game strikeout total (nine) since April of 2010 (when he struck out 10 at home against Texas) and second-lowest single-game xFIP (2.77) in over a year (box).

It’s probably not controversial to suggest that Buchholz has been somewhat mercurial in his brief-ish major-league career. Despite a no-hitter and a more or less successful 2010 campaign, Buchholz has a career xFIP that’s precisely league average.

Still, with a five-pitch repertoire, there’s always the sense that Buchholz has the potential to be something better than league average.

Not only did Buchholz utilize his entire repertoire on Tuesday — throwing a four-seamer, two-seamer, changeup, cutter, and curveball each at last 14 times, per Texas Leaguers’ PITCHf/x data — he actually threw his entire repertoire to Giancarlo Stanton alone, recording strikeouts in each of the pair’s three encounters.

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Many people expected the Nationals to be legitimate contenders this season for the first time since moving to town, but I don’t think many expected them to have the second best record in baseball more than one-third of the way through the campaign. The Nats came into Wednesday’s action with a 37-23 record to go along with their +38 run differential, the fifth best mark in the game. They’ve relied on utterly dominant starting pitching so far, riding a staff that owns baseball’s best ERA (2.94), FIP (3.15), and WAR (8.3).

Great starting pitching only goes so far though, and Washington is really lacking in the run creation department. Their offense owns a .307 wOBA (sixth worst in MLB) and a 90 wRC+ (seventh worst) through their first 60 games, resulting in a 3.90 runs per game average that is the second lowest among teams with a .500+ winning percentage. Bryce Harper has been nothing short of brilliant so far — 153 wRC+ and 1.3 WAR through 172 PA — and Michael Morse’s recent return from the disabled list should provide a boost as well.

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