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

1. Venezuela Winter League Emergency Leaderboard Update
2. Video: Carlos Rivero
3. Contract Crowdsourcing: Three Left-Handed Relievers

Venezuela Winter League Emergency Leaderboard Update
Emergency SCOUT Leaderboard Update
Below is an emergency update of the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Venezuela Winter League. SCOUT+ is calculated using regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates, where 100 is average and above 100 is above average.

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Casey Janssen doesn’t have a problem with the save rule, nor does he have much trouble earning saves. The Toronto Blue Jays right-hander racked up 22 of them after being the handed the closer’s role in May. The 31-year-old former set-up man appeared in 62 games overall, logging a 2.54 ERA and 0.864 WHIP while walking just 1.6 batters per nine innings. He talked about his successful transition, including reliever usage and the myth of closer mentality, during a mid-summer visit to Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: You were recently charged with an earned run that wouldn’t have scored had the runner not taken an extra base on defensive indifference. Is that fair?

Casey Janssen: I don’t know if there is anything productive I could say about that other than it stinks and it’s part of the game. It’s been a rule for so long that I don’t see them changing it anytime soon. It’s not an error, so I have to imagine it has to be an earned run. As a pitcher, you just accept it.

DL: Is it fair to have a reliever come in, blow a multi-run lead, and ultimately get credited with the win? Should the official scorer have the discretion to give it to someone else?

CJ: I don’t like that idea. I’m kind of a traditionalist, I guess. Unfortunately — or fortunately — if you do have that happen to you, you’re the pitcher of record. It’s your win, just as much as if you throw one pitch and get hit with the loss.

DL: What do you think of the save rule as currently structured?

CJ: I’ve got no problem with it. I think it’s pretty fair and makes the most sense. I’m fine with most rules, but if there was one I’d like to see changed, it would be the wild-pitch third strike. Read the rest of this entry »

The big mystery in Thursday night’s Game 2 of the World Series is what the Giants might get from the struggling Madison Bumgarner. Bumgarner posted strong overall numbers this year, but he seemed to wear down. Now the Giants say they’ve worked on a mechanical tweak and he should be more effective. It’s certainly intriguing, although one recalls that the Tigers said they worked on a mechanical tweak with Jose Valverde, and then Valverde did what he did in Game 1. Sometimes it’s nonsense. Sometimes it’s not nonsense, but it doesn’t make much of a difference. It’s a mystery, basically, again.

Less of a mystery is what the Tigers might get from Doug Fister. As Justin Verlander and Barry Zito have established, there’s always mystery when you’re talking about individual starts, but Fister is more of a known entity at the moment than Bumgarner is. Fister’s just a guy who’s quietly become one of the better right-handed starting pitchers in all of baseball. As bad as the Tigers might feel about losing a Verlander start, they have the consolation of knowing the rest of their starting rotation is really good, too.

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I think my favorite fun fact Wednesday night came from Sam Miller on Twitter. The Giants, of course, hit only 31 home runs at home all season long, far and away the fewest in baseball. Only three Giants players hit at least three. Granted, those totals were seven, seven, and five — not three, three, and three — but this provided some context. It was more or less within this context that Pablo Sandoval went deep three consecutive times to start off Game 1 of the World Series. And he did it in late October in a game started by Justin Verlander. Maybe a little more impressive than Albert Pujols homering three times in a playoff game in Texas in a game started by Matt Harrison. Apparently I’ve decided to support Sandoval’s performance by denigrating other, similar performances.

In a game where the story was supposed to be about the mismatch between Verlander and Barry Zito, it was Sandoval who completely stole the show, and it was Sandoval who seemed to get Joe Buck legitimately excited with dinger number three. He hit one out to center, he hit one out to left, and then he hit one out to center again. Sandoval would finish 4-for-4, singling off Jose Valverde, but if anything, considering the rest of the night, Valverde successfully kept Sandoval in check. It might’ve been the highlight of Valverde’s Game 1 appearance.

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Headed into last night, the Tigers were the favorites to win the World Series in large part because they had Justin Verlander, and people tend to favor teams who have ace starters in the playoffs. Last night, however, Justin Verlander did not pitch like an ace, and the Giants jumped on him for five runs in four innings of work – as many as he’d allowed in his previous seven starts combined.

So, what went wrong for Verlander last night? At the risk of oversimplification, his problems can essentially be traced to two factors:

1. Bad location
2. Good hitting

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Ben and Sam discuss the unpredictable outcome of World Series Game One and observe that Delmon Young is starting to look a lot like Stanley from The Office.

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Tim Lincecum pitched out of the bullpen again for San Francisco in their Game One victory over the Tigers. It’s starting to feel natural. Perhaps it’s because the Lincecum we’ve seen out of the bullpen bears a much starker resemblance to the Lincecum of lore than the one we’ve seen out of the rotation this season.

After rolling through 2.1 perfect innings (including five strikeouts) in Game One, Lincecum now owns a 0.84 ERA and 0.75 FIP out of the pen thanks to this fantastic line:

10.2 IP, 3 H, 0 HR, 1 R, 1 ER, 14 K, 1 BB

With Lincecum’s lone start a dud — 4.2 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 3 K in the Game Four NLCS loss to St. Louis — it’s time to ask the question (again): Does Tim Lincecum belong in the bullpen?

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