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

1. Status Update: Scott Kazmir’s Status, Updated
2. Video: Scott Kazmir Striking Out All the Yankees in 2008
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Puerto Rican League

Status Update: Scott Kazmir’s Status, Updated
Scott Kazmir, who last pitched at the major-league level (for 1.2 innings) in 2011 and last pitched effectively in something more like 2008, currently resides atop the SCOUT pitching leaderboard for starters in the Puerto Rican League. The left-hander, who’s still just 28 years old, pitched for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League this year, posting a 51:33 strikeout-to-walk ratio in in 64.0 innings (14 starts).

Through five starts and 22.2 innings for Carolina in Puerto Rico, Kazmir has recorded a 27:8 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 2.27 GO/AO — which latter figure probably translates into something like a 50% or 55% ground-ball rate.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the first set of 2013’s projections — for the World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Other thing: Szymborski himself will be chatting at Noon ET today in these very same electronic pages, and will happily answer any questions readers have regarding the projections themselves.

Batters
The Giants’ success is tied pretty strongly to the health and success of Buster Posey — not merely because only one player (i.e. Mike Trout) posted a higher WAR than Posey in 2012, but also because San Francisco’s catching corps lacks anything like impact talent. At 23, Hector Sanchez certainly has some promise, but even approaching Posey’s production would be a considerable challenge.

Of some interest will be how well the club is able to account for the departure of Melky Cabrera. While they were obviously able to win a championship following his suspension, Cabrera was also integral to the Giants’ regular-season performance, posting a 4.6 WAR in just 113 games (501 plate appearances). Manning the corners now will be Hunter Pence in right field and (likely) a platoon of Gregor Blanco and Andres Torres in left. ZiPS is optimistic neither about Blanco’s ability to match his career-high 2.4 wins from 2012, nor Pence’s ability to earn the entirety of the ca. $14 million he’s likely to receive in arbitration.

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Ben and Sam answer listener emails about R.A. Dickey, the Red Sox, and more.

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Because of what he does, we know a lot more about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average stranger. We don’t so much know anything about Nakajima’s personality, but we know about his performance at work. Yet because of what he does and what he’s done, we also know a lot less about Hiroyuki Nakajima than we know about the average major-league baseball player. It isn’t necessary to have profiles for every player who plays in Japan, but now that Nakajima has signed with a major-league organization, people want to know more. People want to know what Nakajima’s going to be, before Nakajima makes it evident with his performance what he’s going to be.

We know that Nakajima has signed with the Oakland A’s, for two years and $6.5 million. Nakajima was a free agent, able to sign with anyone. We know that Nakajima is 30, and right-handed, and a shortstop, and projected to be Oakland’s regular shortstop as long as he’s not terrible. We know that Nakajima has a killer bat flip. We know that my Firefox initially identified “Nakajima” as a typo and suggested “Nakedness” as an alternative. And we know Nakajima’s Japanese statistics. When attempting to evaluate a player you’ve never seen, or even a player you have seen a bunch of times, nothing’s more important than the numbers.

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I recently became fascinated with the strike zone and its effective boundaries. The strike zone laid out in baseball’s rule book is simple; it extends a total of 17 inches across the width of home plate, between the hitter’s knee and midsection and covering the entire depth of the plate. The strike zone as it actually gets called by umpires is complex. It shifts quite significantly depending on the handedness of the hitter for one.

That’s not the whole story though, not even close. The dexterity of the hitter isn’t the only significant variable in how the strike zone is called. Compare the following two strike zone heat maps, fitted from 2012 data on called pitches to right-handed hitters.

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Kyle Kendrick is generally underrated in the realm of back-end starters, but the Phillies still came into the offseason seeking rotation depth behind Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, and Cole Hamels. That need grew even greater two weeks ago when the team used Vance Worley to acquire Ben Revere. With veteran back-end arms aplenty on the free agent market, Philadelphia managed to find a bargain in former National (and rival) John Lannan.

Lannan, as Phillies fans surely remember, started his big league career by breaking Chase Utley’s hand with a pitch back in 2007. The bad blood has lingered for years, and the Fightin’s have done a damn good job of exacting revenge over the years — Lannan has pitched to a 5.53 ERA (~5.80 FIP) against the Philadelphia compared to a 3.80 ERA (~4.30 FIP) against everyone else. The 28-year-old southpaw has responded by hitting more than twice as many Phillies (11) than players on any other team. Think of it as a light version of Pedro Martinez vs. the Yankees.

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It’s not often that a club has the opportunity to acquire the reigning Cy Young award winner but the Toronto Blue Jays did just that when they acquired R.A. Dickey from the New York Mets on Monday. Understandably, the Blue Jays paid a steep price for the veteran knuckleballer. Along with the top prospect in their system — Travis d’Arnaud, whom I wrote about earlier — the Jays also flipped prospects Noah Syndergaard and Wuilmer Becerra to their National League trading partners.

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Travis D’Arnaud has always been a highly-regarded prospect. Even before his numbers took a leap forward in Double- and Triple-A, scouts liked his approach at the plate and thought his athleticism would bode well for his developing defense. He was the Mets’ prerequisite for any R.A. Dickey trade, and getting him was an important position-player prospect piece in their rebuilding plan.

And yet, there are plenty of reasons to doubt him, reasons that go beyond his specific track record or the general fact that he is a prospect.

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