On Monday, the Atlanta Braves took Justin Black in the fourth round, the 149th overall pick. It may have been seen as an overdraft by some — Black was seen as a top-500 talent by many draft evaluators but not necessarily a top-150 talent — and it may have been an oblique result of the new draft rules that may incentivize overdrafting to save money. He’s raw and toolsy, and he’s already signed with the Braves. But one of the most interesting reasons for his rawness is: his high school didn’t even have a baseball team, because he grew up in Montana.

I spoke to a Montanan friend of mine, and he explained that this is relatively common in his home state, and leads to interesting solutions. The best high school players can play American Legion ball, as Black did. They can try out for the Billings Mustangs, a single-A team that boasts George Brett and Trevor Hoffman among its alumni. Black even went to Arizona in March to play with a traveling Canadian club team. Black is clearly dedicated and has a lot of confidence — in a predraft interview he said he expected to be drafted in the 3rd or 4th round — but there isn’t a whole lot of precedent for it. In fact, there has never been a great position player from Montana. Ever.
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It’s been a rough few weeks for the Rangers. They got thumped by both the Mariners (21-8) and Athletics (12-1) within the last week and are just 21-22 since an eight-game winning streak in the middle of April. Texas has already lost Neftali Feliz for an extended period of time due to an elbow sprain and today they lost another young hurler, southpaw Derek Holland with left shoulder fatigue according to Jeff Wilson of The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

The 25-year-old Holland had already been battling a stomach virus that reportedly cost him 10-15 pounds and apparently also some giddy-up on his fastball*. He allowed 18 runs in 19.1 innings across the four starts immediately prior to this shoulder issue, contributing to the team’s skid. Scott Feldman — 7.01 ERA and 5.48 FIP in five starts and five relief appearances — is already in the rotation for Feliz, and now Holland’s injury forces Alexi Ogando into the starting staff per Jeff Fletcher of Bay Bridge Baseball. Relief prospect Tanner Scheppers will come up to fill out the bullpen.

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Bobby Bundy, RHP, Baltimore Orioles
Current Level: AA
2012 Top 15 Prospects Ranking: 5th
Current Value: Leveled Off

Dylan Bundy’s big brother started to realize his potential in 2011 at high-A ball but he’s found the going much tougher at double-A in 2012. Bundy, 22, posted a 2.75 ERA in 121 innings last year but his ERA has jumped to 5.46 in 59.1 innings this season. He’s been inconsistent with three good starts and three bad starts in his last six appearances. His strikeout rate has dropped more than 1 K per nine innings from 2011 and his walk rate has increased by more than one base-on-balls per nine. At 6’2” 215 lbs, and with a solid repertoire, Bundy has the chance to develop into a workhorse in a big league starting rotation but he could end up in the bullpen if he cannot become more consistent.

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No relief pitcher has ever been awarded a Gold Glove. But just because something has never been done before, it doesn’t mean it will never happen in the future. Perhaps Gold Glove voters haven’t been presented with compelling arguments in favor of a fantastic-fielding relief pitcher. Or done the research themselves. I’m going to fix that, starting now.

My methodology: I reviewed defense-related statistics for all relievers who’ve pitched at least ten innings this season. I focused on assists, put-outs, rPM (plus/minus runs saved) and DRS (defensive runs saved). I’m familiar with the recent discussion about whether DRS accurately captures a player’s defensive performance when his manager orders the defense to shift. But pitchers don’t shift (at least not yet). So I am comfortable relying on DRS as metric accurately measuring a pitcher’s contribution to saving runs.

I also reviewed video of defensive plays made by the top ten contenders, as ranked by the statistics. I only reviewed those plays available as highlights on MLB.com. I did not review video of every game in which these relief pitchers appeared this season.

Based on the statistics and the video, I’ve identified three relief pitchers in each league as Gold Glove contenders.

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A couple of years ago, I wrote about my experiences with MLB.tv and the PS3, giving a pretty glowing review to the ability to watch baseball on my TV using that system as the intermediary. Interestingly, that post remains one of the most widely read things ever published on FanGraphs, so there’s clearly a pretty decent segment of the population that is interested in this topic. So, today, I’m writing something of a follow-up, because while I still use the PS3 to watch MLB.tv, it’s no longer my preferred option.

About a month ago, we acquired a second television to go in our basement (commence jokes… now), and so I was looking for a low cost yet effective solution for getting MLB.tv onto that TV. I had looked at some TVs that came with a built-in MLB.tv app, but the cost difference between buying a “smart TV” that had internet connectivity seemed to far outweigh the alternative — buying a dumb TV and just hooking a Roku up to it, effectively making it a smart TV. Instead of dropping $1,000 on a TV with the internet built in, I paid half that for the TV and another $90 for a Roku 2 XS.

My only regret is that I didn’t get a Roku sooner.

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Did you know the FanGraphs leaderboards — which already no doubt consume the majority of your time like they do mine — also carry updated minor league data? Yeah, right here:

Under the Leaders tab, yo!

Let us take a moment, you and I, to delve into the numbers of my favorite of the minor leagues, the International League.
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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Expected wRC+ Leaderboards
2. Two Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Expected wRC+ Leaderboards
A Note on Expected wRC+
Last week in these electronic pages, I looked at what I called “Expected wRC+” for batters in May. Expected wRC+ is essentially a version of Bradley Woodrum’s Should Hit formula (itself more or less a FIP for hitters, but with BABIP included) but using regressed (as opposed to raw) home-run, walk, and strikeout rates as the inputs. Also, in this case, BABIP is replaced by expected BABIP (xBABIP), per the formula (adjusted for 2012 league averages) proposed by user slash12 at Beyond the Boxscore in 2009.

The idea here is to estimate something like a player’s true talent over the course of X plate appearances. Indeed, the methodology isn’t flawless: wRC+ is a park-adjusted stat, for example, while the inputs are expressly not park-adjusted. (And, for that reason, Expected wOBA might be a preferable alternative.)

Because today’s slate of games isn’t entirely riveting, I’ve summoned from inside my computer machine the following Expected wRC+ leader- and laggardboards. (Click here to see a spreadsheet for all 385 batters with more than 50 plate appearances.)

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Things have not gone well for Justin Upton this season. After posting an MVP-caliber season in 2011, Upton has struggled to reach the same level this year. The situation worsened on Tuesday, when Arizona Diamondbacks’ Managing General Partner Ken Kendrick criticized Upton’s performance so far this season. Later that night, Upton left out of the Diamondbacks’ starting lineup. Upton told reporters he was not pleased about the situation. And while that should have been the end of it, Upton found himself on the bench again last night. At this point, it seems like the only thing Upton can do to repair the situation is to start producing like his old self.

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Jeremy Affeldt is left-handed relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Some, including me, have referred to him as a LOOGY (Lefty One-Out GuY) over the years, but that’s not entirely the case. This is Affeldt’s fourth season with the Giants, his eleventh overall in the majors. The only season with the Giants in which he’s been more effective against left-handed batters than righties was 2011, as measured by K/BB, wOBA and FIP.
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