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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.

Dollars & Sense keeps you up to date on the smaller stories that are important but may not justify a separate post. Today, we have news on attendance through the first quarter of the seasons and expanded in replay in 2014.

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FanGraphs is proud to be a sponsoring partner of the third Saber Seminar, a great event held each year in Boston. The two-day gathering will be held on August 17th and 18th on the campus of Boston University, and the list of 2013 speakers is pretty amazing. Along with a former Major League pitcher, current executives, scouts, and a wide range of insightful people from various industries associated with the sport, Bill Petti, Dave Allen, and myself will represent FanGraphs at the event, and you will probably find a few other FG personalities hanging around as well.

I attended the event last year, and it was one of the highlights of the year for me. There were some really great research presentations — one of the people presenting this year as a member of the Royals front office presented last year as a grad student, so I think you can guess that his presentation was pretty neat — and a lot of fascinating discussion with many of the brightest people in and around the sport. If you’re going to be in the Boston area that weekend, I highly recommend attending, and it’s probably worth traveling to Boston that weekend to take part even if you’re not a local.

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“Stabilization” plate appearance levels of different statistics have been popular around these parts in recent years, thanks to the great work of “Pizza Cutter,” a.k.a. Russell Carleton.  Each stat is given a PA cutoff, each of which is supposed to be a guideline for the minimum number PAs a player needs before you can start to take their results in that stat seriously.  Today I’ll be looking at the issue of stabilization from a few different angles.  At the heart of the issue are mathy concepts like separating out a player’s “true skill level” from variation due to randomness.  I’ll do my best to keep the math as easily digestible as I can.

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

1. Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Washington at San Diego, 22:10 ET
First of All, Concerning a Regret of the Author’s
The author would be remiss not to mention how he’s ashamed of having used the phrase “doubling down” in the title of this post, which expression (i.e. “doubling down”) appears to be some manner of card-playing terminology, but which the author has only ever encountered colloquially, and from which expression he’s derived little pleasure previously.

Moving On, With Regards to This Game
Starting this game for San Diego is Burch Smith, to which right-hander’s major-league debut the author dedicated the largest part of his Notes column this past Saturday and about which right-hander’s debut one might reasonably use a word like “Ick” or “Yeesh.”

Burch Smith’s Debut, His Line from It
Here’s Burch Smith’s line from his debut on Saturday (box): 1.0 IP, 10 TBF, 2 K, 2 BB, 2 GB on 6 batted-balls (33.3% GB), 6.46 xFIP.

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As I’ve mentioned previously, top prospects tend to be a rare breed at the Triple-A level. Triple-A players tend to be guys about which we have a pretty good idea, and if they’re really good prospects, they probably aren’t long for the level. So when a night features two top prospects on the mound, it’s a good idea to go. This time meant seeing Adam Morgan from the Phillies organization and Daniel Corcino of the Reds organization. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam answers listener questions about catcher framing, a very unusual reliever, and cautionary MRIs.

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8th inning, Angels lead the White Sox 4-2. Dane de la Rosa starts the inning.

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In a Friday matinee, the sensational Matt Harvey will take the mound for the Mets against the Cubs in Chicago. Though the Cubs are hardly to be considered a daunting opponent, Harvey’s right-handed, and the Cubs hitters to be worth a damn so far are the left-handed Anthony Rizzo, the left-handed Luis Valbuena, the left-handed Nate Schierholtz, and the left-handed David DeJesus. At a glance, you might figure this could be a tougher matchup for Harvey than it seems.

And it might well play out that way, because, baseball. The other day, after Dave Cameron ripped the Mariners for starting Raul Ibanez against CC Sabathia, Ibanez singled and homered. Hilarious! There’s absolutely not a single way to know how a given player is going to perform on a given day. Harvey might be aces, Harvey might be awful, or he might be somewhere in between. But if we’re going to think about the probability, we shouldn’t be worried about Harvey facing the Cubs’ lefties. Because to this point in his career, Harvey’s been doing something unusual.

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This is a slightly different type of article. I will look at how a single franchise has filled a single spot on the diamond. The Braves have had a pretty good track record with center fielders, developing three of the top fifty center fielders of all time, Wally Berger (#46), Dale Murphy (#37), and Andruw Jones (#9).

But when they didn’t happen to draft or sign a historically good CFer, their approach became much more patchwork. Center field is one of the most important positions on the field, and one of the most difficult to fill. Here’s how the Braves did it.
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