Over the weekend, the Baseball Hall of Fame opened its newest exhibit, Diamond Mines, which was created to honor scouts and the history of scouting in baseball. I’m sure the exhibit itself is pretty neat, and if you’re planning on a trip to Cooperstown, you now have something else to look forward to.

But even if you’re not going to Cooperstown, this exhibit is fantastic, because in addition to the physical museum presence, they created an online searchable deposit of historical scouting reports. And it is awesome.

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

1. Featured Game: Seattle at Pittsburgh, 12:35 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Seattle at Pittsburgh, 12:35 ET
Regarding This Game, One of Its Virtues
One of the virtues of this game is how, in Felix Hernandez (50.2 IP, 65 xFIP-, 1.6 WAR) and A.J. Burnett (42.0 IP, 68 xFIP-, 1.2 WAR), it features two of the major leagues’ strongest pitchers.

Regarding This Game, Another of Its Virtues
Another of this game’s virtues is how, owing to Pittsburgh’s excellent center-field camera, it will facilitate a much better angle for watching Felix Hernandez than the right-hander’s home stadium and camera do.

By Way of Example, Harang at Safeco
By way of example, here’s a screenshot from the first inning of Aaron Harang’s May 1st start against Baltimore at Safeco:

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I know it’s not like me to use such a provocative, declarative headline. Truth be told, I’d be more comfortable with “Yuniesky Betancourt Hasn’t Changed a Bit, Probably”, just so I can cover all my bases. But here we are, and I think it needs to be said, on the heels of Betancourt slamming his eighth dinger of the still very young regular season. This is a time for sanity, in the midst of something very much insane.

The Blue Jays are 13-21, and John Buck has ten home runs. The Dodgers are 13-19, and Dexter Fowler has eight home runs. The Angels are 11-21, and Yuniesky Betancourt also has eight home runs. When something early in the season takes you by complete surprise, it’s worth re-evaluating your expectations, rather than sticking to your guns. But just because you re-evaluate doesn’t mean you have to change your position, and if Betancourt’s changed at 31 years old, it’s showing up in only one place.

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The Fringe Five is a weekly exercise (introduced last month) wherein the author utilizes regressed stats, scouting reports, and also his own heart to identify and/or continue monitoring the most compelling fringe prospects in all of baseball.

Central to this exercise, of course, is a working definition of fringe. Currently, for the purposes of this column, it’s any prospect who was absent from all of three notable preseason top-100 prospect lists. (A more robust meditation on the idea of fringe can be found here.)

Since last week’s edition, there have been four total changes to The Fringe Five. Following his promotion to the majors, Corban Joseph was omitted from consideration last week. In the wake of his recent demotion, however, he’s become eligible again for inclusion here, per the author’s mostly arbitrary rules governing the matter. New to The Five is Cleveland right-handed prospect Danny Salazar, who, following an eight-strikeout performance on Tuesday, now has 38 strikeouts in his last four Double-A starts.

Demoted from The Five — for reasons that require no elaboration, declares the present author — are right-handed Rockies prospect Chad Bettis and White Sox middle infielder Marcus Semien.

Those caveats made, let’s proceed to this week’s Fringe Five.

Wilmer Flores, 2B/3B, New York NL (Profile)
Only two qualified Pacific Coast League batters are younger than Flores: uber-prospect Jurickson Profar and other uber-prospect Oscar Taveras. Nor are Flores’ present offensive indicators considerably different than either of theirs. Regard, Profar’s line as of Tuesday: 117 PA, 2 HR, 17 BB, 19 K. And also Taveras’s: 99 PA, 3 HR, 6 BB, 11 K. And now Flores’s: 129 PA, 1 HR, 9 BB, 13 K.

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Ben and Sam answer emails about what it would look like if a hitter got the yips, what Starlin Castro could turn into, errors in sabermetric research, and more.

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Episode 334
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he analyzes things, many of which pertain to baseball.

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 37 min play time.)

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A year ago, one of baseball’s best individual player stories was Kris Medlen, of the Braves. Previously something of a forgotten man, Medlen threw 138 innings as a reliever and then as a starter, allowing just 26 runs and six dingers. The year before, Pirates sinkerballer Charlie Morton made a name for himself by starting 29 times and allowing just six dingers. The year before that, Brett Anderson was outstanding for the A’s when healthy, making 19 starts and riding his sinker while allowing just six dingers. This year, the Royals are looking like an early American League surprise, and one of their best arms out of the bullpen is Kelvin Herrera. But over just 14 games, Herrera has already allowed six dingers, his latest coming on Monday.

Maybe we don’t need to compare Herrera to other pitchers, who don’t have anything to do with him. As fun as it is to compare opposite extremes, if we want to make a point we need only compare Herrera to himself. Already in 2013, Herrera has seen six batted balls fly over the fence. Last season — over a full season — Herrera saw four batted balls do the same thing. Against 17% as many opposing hitters, Herrera has allowed 150% as many home runs, and that’s a thing for us to talk about.

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Scott Diamond throws strikes. The Minnesota Twins left-hander walked just 1.61 batters per nine innings last year, lowest in the American League among qualified pitchers. After beginning the current campaign on the disabled list, his rate is a puny 1.2 in four starts.

The 26-year-old control artist also doesn’t log many strikeouts. In 173 innings last year, his K-rate was 4.68. That ranked him second from the bottom in the A.L., ahead of only Henderson Alvarez. So far this season he’s a tick better at 5.2.

Can Diamond match last year’s success — a 3.54 ERA and team-best 12 wins — with his pitch-to-contact ways? Some are skeptical, but he didn’t exactly rely on smoke and mirrors in his rookie season. He had a respectable 3.94 FIP and his .292 BABIP wasn‘t far from league average. His 53.4 ground-ball rate should be sustainable despite the absence of a two-seam fastball in his repertoire.

Diamond takes the mound tonight against the Red Sox at Fenway Park.

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Scott Diamond on his approach: “I get guys out by throwing strikes. I make them feel uncomfortable by getting ahead and playing the numbers game — the odds of them getting themselves out. We had a pitcher last year, P.J. Walters, who worked a lot with Dave Duncan when he was with the Cardinals. I don’t know if this number is exact, but he said when hitters swing at the first pitch they hit something like .158. If I get ahead early, I have them in a hole.

“My mentality for getting ahead is simply throwing a strike down in the zone. A lot of that is based on scouting guys beforehand. I’m looking at my approach against theirs and seeing where I want to locate. But I’m also keeping it simple in terms of halves of the plate. I’m not locating to a particular sector. A lot of scouting reports say my ball doesn’t move a lot, but based on the reactions I get from hitters, I throw to general sectors and let my ball do what it needs to do.”

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According to Baseball-Reference’s Place of Birth Report, there are 13 major league players currently active who were born in either Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan. Of those 13, only four are position players — Ichiro Suzuki, Norichika Aoki, Munenori Kawasaki, and Shin-Soo Choo. Major League Baseball has historically been more willing to bringing pitchers across the Pacific, and that remains true today. However, the performance of the nine active pitchers currently working in the big leagues suggests that perhaps the discount rate being applied to pitchers from those regions might still be too high.

Here’s how those nine pitchers have done in the first five weeks of the 2013 season.

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