Giancarlo Stanton is struggling and Giancarlo Stanton’s teammates are terrible. These two things are true. These two might be related. It would make sense that these things are related, because the drop-off from Giancarlo Stanton to the guys hitting behind him is absurdly large.

Stanton has played in 16 games this season, and has hit third in all 16 of those games. The cleanup spot behind him has been a rotation of Greg Dobbs (8 games), Placido Polanco (5 games), and Joe Mahoney (3 games). If you go by the rest-of-season ZIPS projections, Mahoney is the best hitter of the bunch, forecast for a .677 OPS, with Dobbs and Polanco both coming in at .650. Weighted for the number of games played, then, you could say that Stanton has been “protected” by three players with an aggregate OPS projection of .665, a 269 point drop off from his own .934 rest-of-season ZIPS forecast.

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It’s still April and the samples are still small, but we’re over 10 percent of the way into the 2013 season and a few statistics are beginning to stabilize. Approach-related statistics in particular are starting to reach the point where the regression can be a little less aggressive. Swing rate begins to tell a bit of a story after just 50 plate appearances, for instance.

It’s a pretty intuitive result — the batter’s choice to swing is less dependent on pitcher quality and independent of fielder quality. By now, qualified players are in the 75-100 plate appearance range, and so we can get an idea of who is making a big change to their approach this year.

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The Mets boast a quartet of Dominican arms who rank among the top-15 prospects in the organization. Jeurys Familia, Rafael Montero, Luis Mateo and Domingo Tapia are off to strong starts. And with Rainy Lara and Gabriel Ynoa pitching well in Savannah, the core of young, Dominican arms will only continue to grow.

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

1. Three Notable Pacific Coast League Peformances
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Triple-A Pacific Coast League
3. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Three Notable Pacific Coast League Peformances
The leaderboards for the Triple-A Pacific Coast League are below. Here are brief notes on three players from those leaderboards.

• On Wednesday, the author sang the body Wilmer Flores (currently fifth on the prospect-age batting leaderboard below) as part of the second installment of a weekly column called The Fringe Five. In summary: he (i.e. Flores) is only 21 and controls the hell out of the strike zone.

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Some weeks, there are major developments in the business of baseball — like a team signing a new local TV contract. Some weeks, there are little developments on the big developments. My posts tend to focus on the big developments, but that leaves you in the dark on the little developments, unless those little developments become big developments down the road.

This week has been full of little developments in stories I’ve written. Rather than wait until they blossom into big developments — if that ever happens — I’ll run them down here.

StubHub loses fight in California Legislature

On Tuesday,  I wrote about a bill pending in the California State Assembly that would prohibit ticket sellers from placing restrictions on ticket re-sales, like what the Los Angeles Angels have done this season. The Assembly Committee on Arts, Entertainment, Sports, Tourism and Internet Media had a hearing on the bill Tuesday morning and were none too pleased with its provisions. The Committee gutted the bill, and left in only the provision to outlaw computerized ticket-buying software that brokers often use to scoop up tickets to high-demand events. The Committee is stacked with members from southern California, where the entertainment industry holds tremendous sway, so the bill’s demise isn’t surprising.

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Another week, another update on the prospects worth knowing — for both good and bad reasons — from around Minor League Baseball…

Tim Berry, LHP, Baltimore: You can’t get drafted any later than the 50th round… in fact, the amateur draft doesn’t even go that long anymore. But that’s where the Orioles found Berry, an up-and-coming prospect in Baltimore’s system. Prior to the 2013 season, I ranked the southpaw as the 12th best prospect in the system and he’s working hard to ascend that ranking.

Berry, 22, has made four starts at the high-A ball level and has accumulated 27 strikeouts in 22.0 innings of work. He’s also walked just four batters and allowed 16 hits. He has solid control and improving command of a repertoire that includes a fastball with average velocity, a solid changeup and a curveball with plus potential. He’s a prospect that definitely deserves some attention.

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Ben and Will discuss the confusing career of Ike Davis, then talk about whether there are any prospects teams wouldn’t trade straight up for Giancarlo Stanton.

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Episode 329
Dayn Perry is a contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and the author of three books, now — one of them serviceable and one of them, against all odds, something more than serviceable. He’s also the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio.

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 51 min play time.)

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Earlier Thursday, Dave Cameron made a simple observation regarding the Los Angeles Angels and their batch of position players:

Every Angel with 40+ PAs has been an above average hitter this year, except for Josh Hamilton. fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?p…

— David Cameron (@DCameronFG) April 25, 2013

All right, neat. Now keep that in mind as we go forward.

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