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

1. SCOUT Leaderboards for Both the Class-A Leagues
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

SCOUT Leaderboards for Both the Class-A Leagues
Regarding What This Is, First of All
What follows are the SCOUT Leaderboards for both the Class-A Leagues (the Midwest and South Atlantic ones, that is) combined.

Regarding a “SCOUT Leaderboard,” What That Is
SCOUT is metric designed to assess performance in those instances — like in a minor league, for example — where small samples are ubiquitous. A high SCOUT+ is good for a hitter; a low SCOUT- is good for a pitcher.

More on SCOUT, How It’s Calculated
SCOUT uses regressed, defense-independent inputs to calculate FIP-like stats for both pitchers and hitters. Click here to learn more about it.

Regarding SCOUT, One of Its Benefits
A benefit of SCOUT is, because both SCOUT+ and SCOUT- are presented relative to league, it allows one to compare the relative performances of players across multiple leagues — like in what follows, for example.

Regarding These Numbers
All the following numbers are final for 2012.

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Ben and Sam discuss the Giants’ starting rotation and decide what it would take to trust Barry Zito, then talk about how they decide which teams to root for.

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Episode 244
David Laurila, curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, talks with Red Sox left-hander and very articulate gentleman Craig Breslow.

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 12 min. play time.)

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Episode 243
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• Contention — who is and isn’t in it.
• Pythagorean records — how they are and aren’t useful.
• The play-in game — how to optimize a roster for it.

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 31 min. play time.)

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Perhaps inspired by teammate Mariano Rivera’s vow to come back in 2013 after suffering an injury, Andy Pettitte is apparently considering a 2013 return in the wake of his injury-limited innings this season. Pettitte’s numbers this year (3.22 ERA, 3.41 FIP, albeit in a small, sub-60 inning sample so far) would be good for any pitcher. They are even more amazing considering that Pettitte turned 40 in June and did not pitch in 2011. Few pitchers have done what Pettitte is considering doing, let alone left-handed starters. Rather than doing a detailed (and premature) analysis of Pettitte’s 2013 outlook, it might be interesting to see how some 40-year-old southpaws have done in the past when coming back for their age 41 seasons.

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With a 1.73 ERA including a 172/58 strikeout-to-walk ratio across two levels, Cincinnati Reds prospect Tony Cingrani was arguably the best pitcher in minor league baseball from a statistical standpoint. That success earned the left-hander a call up to the show where Cingrani has struck out eight, while walking only a single batter in four-plus innings pitched. Drafted in 2011, the former third round pick has made a meteoric rise to the big leagues. To put it in perspective, the only 2011 first round pick to reach Major League Baseball faster was Arizona Diamondbacks Trevor Bauer.

Video after the jump

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Every year around this time fans, broadcasters, and baseball people get into the whole expanded rosters debate. Some don’t like that the final month of the season is played under a different set of rules while others don’t mind the extra players. What always seems to get lost in the shuffle is that very few September call-ups actually have an impact when they’re brought up. Most are relegated to mop-up relief innings or pinch-running duties, minor roles like that, but every once in a while someone will come up and become an instant difference maker.

Perhaps the greatest September call-up in recent memory is Francisco Rodriguez, who went from dominating the minor leagues — 13.0 K/9 and 3.0 BB/9 with a 2.27 ERA in 83.1 innings between Double-A and Triple-A — to a key setup cog for the World Champion Angels in 2002. K-Rod pitched so well in his 5.2-inning trial (13 strikeouts and one unintentional walk) that the Halos squeezed him onto the playoff roster, where he threw another great 18.2 innings (28 strikeouts and five walks). The Angels struck September call-up gold that season.

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In a couple of weeks, we’re going to be treated to a couple of one-game, winner-take-all showdowns to determine the final playoff team in each league. The addition of the wild card play-in game changes the context of the playoff races in a new and meaningful way, and also creates some interesting questions for a handful of teams. While MLB has had tie-breaking games before, they’ve never been known to be necessary until the final day of the regular season, and teams simply had to make adjustments to play an unscheduled game at the last minute.

Now, however, it’s likely that one or more teams are going to head into the final few days of the regular season essentially certain that they’re going to be involved in the play-in game. For instance, the Braves currently have a seven game lead over St. Louis in the wild card race, and even after sweeping Washington this weekend, they’re still 5.5 games back in the NL East. CoolStandings currently gives the Braves a 96.3% chance of winning one of the two wild card spots, but only a 3.6% chance of winning their division. Barring some kind of epic collapse by either the Braves or Nationals, Atlanta is going to be one of the two NL teams in the play-in game, and they can start planning for that game right now.

And, as part of that planning, they should seriously consider the idea of skipping the starting pitcher entirely.

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The 2013 MLB schedule was released last week. On Thursday, my colleague Alex Remington addressed several issues raised by the schedule, most notably how season-long interleague play may affect how American League teams use their designated hitter. Alex also touched on the unbalanced schedule issue; that is, that teams within each division will play each other 19 times, thus resulting in an easier schedule for the American League Central teams, if you believe that the American League Central will be as weak in 2013 as it has been in 2012.

The American League Central has another advantage, born of the proximity of its teams to each other, at least geographically. None of the teams in the Central will travel more than 30,000 next season, while every other team in the league — save for the Orioles — will travel more than 30,000 miles. And the disparity between the least-traveled team (the White Sox) and the most-traveled team (the Mariners) is startling: Chicago will travel only 22,695 miles in 2013 while Seattle will travel more than double that, at nearly 53,000 miles.

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