Every baseball season is crazy, and the crazy can never be completely summed up in one sentence. There’s just too much of it, in too many places, and no one wants to read that long of a sentence. But here’s a sentence that captures some of the 2013 crazy to date: on August 27, the Pittsburgh Pirates have traded for Marlon Byrd. Suggested, by that sentence, is that the Pirates are in the playoff hunt, hence their desire to make an upgrade. Suggested, also, by that sentence, is that Marlon Byrd is an upgrade, in this season. It’s been weird. It’s always weird, but it’s been weird.

If you’d like all of the details, Anthony DiComo has many of them. The Pirates are adding Byrd, John Buck, and some cash from the Mets. The Mets are adding Dilson Herrera and a player to be named player from the Pirates. The Pirates recently put Starling Marte on the disabled list, and they recently lost their backup catcher for the season. They’re still in great shape to at least play in the one-game wild-card playoff, and by making this swap in August instead of September, Byrd and Buck will be postseason-roster eligible. It’s easy to understand the Pirates’ motivation, and it’s easy to understand the Mets’ desire to get something young for a month of two veterans.

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If you use FanGraphs regularly, you’re probably aware of the WAR framework, and the general ideas behind it. Basically, WAR attempts to sum up the value of a player’s hitting, baserunning, and defense and then compare it to what a replacement level player would have done with the same amount of playing time. While WAR is certainly not perfect, it works pretty well, and it tries to answer the question that baseball fans are frequently asking.

But it doesn’t every question, of course, and sometimes, we ask questions that WAR wasn’t designed to answer. For instance, questions of context are outside the scope of the metric, as it was intentionally created to be context neutral, identifying just the number and value of positive and negative events without including the situation they occurred in. WAR considers every home run to be equally valuable, whether it comes with the bases empty in a blowout or the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth.

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The state of Arizona is known for having numerous varieties of poisonous snake. The Arizona Diamondbacks have something even more potent. The big league club boasts one of the most impressive collections of young pitching in Major League Baseball.

And the rich continue to get richer.

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Back in March, Khris Davis described his power as his secret weapon. “Me being kind of small, no one looks at me and is like, ‘He’s got power,’” Davis told Brewers.com beat writer Adam McCalvy. “I do, but it’s kind of a secret.” Now that he has mashed eight homers in his first 93 big league plate appearances, it’s safe to say that his secret is out. He’s even stole the spotlight from the other Chris Davis, which is tough since the Orioles’ Davis is still humming right along. The question is, how much longer will the Brewers’ Davis get to keep sharing his secret weapon?

These days, it’s hard to sneak onto the major league radar, and maybe Brewers fans were well aware of Davis. After all, he entered this season hitting .294/.400/.513 across four minor league seasons, the last of which concluded with a very similar line in 140 plate appearances in Triple-A. Still, Davis has always had a poor defensive reputation, and that kept him from sniffing any prospect lists heading into this season. None of the major prospect outlets — Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Bullpen Banter, ESPN or here at FanGraphs even mentioned Davis in their top 10/15 prospect lists this spring. Along with the bad defense, he may have appeared a touch old for his leagues, and he also seemingly had no opportunity in a Brewers outfield with three set starters in Ryan Braun, Carlos Gomez and Norichika Aoki.

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Yesterday, it was reported Matt Harvey may need Tommy John surgery because of a torn UCL in his right elbow. Some people may say they saw the injury coming and the Mets were crazy to let him throw over 175 innings this season, but the evidence doesn’t really support those ideas. After looking over the history of other 24-year-olds, it appears that the pitcher’s ability to throw hard and recent small velocity drop were the only identifiable injury indicators.

Myself and others have looked at many indications of a pitchers chances of getting hurt. High increase in innings for a young pitcher (Verducci Effect). Velocity and Zone% drop (PAIN Index). Inconsistency in release points and velocity late in a game. High breaking ball usage. Bad Mechanics. High fastball velocity.

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

1. Danny Salazar Night in America
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Danny Salazar Night in America
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce — for the benefit of everyone in America — how young and hard-throwing Cleveland right-hander Danny Salazar is starting tonight against Atlanta at 7:10pm ET.

Regarding Danny Salazar, Some Salient Facts
Some salient facts regarding Danny Salazar, presented by means of unordered list, are:

• He’s got the second-best xFIP- among all pitchers with 20-plus innings recorded as a starter; and

• He’s got the second-hardest fastball, on average, among that same population; and

• He throws a split–changeup that late fifth-century Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius anticipated probably in the composition of his Mystical Theology.

Regarding Pseudo-Dionysius, How He’d Describe Salazar’s Split-Change
Were he to describe Danny Salazar’s split-change, fifth-century Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius would likely feel compelled to employ some or all of the following phrases:

• “Darkness which is beyond light”; and

• “Unknowing which is enshrouded under all that is known and all that can be known”; and

• “The superessential Radiance”; and

• “A science both vast and minute”; and

• “The summit of the divine ascent.”

Regarding the Present Author, How He’d Describe Salazar’s Split-Change
Were he to describe Danny Salazar’s split-changeup, the author would plagiarize Pseudo-Dionysius, probably.

Action Footage: All of Danny Salazar’s Most Recent Strikeouts
Here’s video of all Danny Salazar’s seven strikeouts from his most recent start, against the Los Angeles Angels:

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
San Diego at Arizona | 20:40 ET
Ian Kennedy (149.1 IP, 113 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces Undecided. The latter of those names (i.e. Undecided) would almost certainly be forbidden by Danish naming conventions.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Radio, Perhaps?

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.2.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Nathan Eovaldi	MIA	7	1	5	3	5	WAS	R. Ohlendorf*	19:05
Kyle Lohse	MIL	4	3	4	6	3	PIT	Jeff Locke	19:05
Andy Pettitte	NYA	5	3	3	6	0	TOR	J.A. Happ	19:07
Tommy Milone	OAK	4	7	6	7	6	DET	J. Verlander	19:08
C.J. Wilson	LAA	4	8	6	10	6	TB	R. Hernandez	19:10
Wei-Yin Chen	BAL	3	9	5	9	4	BOS	Felix Doubront	19:10
Danny Salazar	CLE	10	7	9	8	10	ATL	Alex Wood	19:10
Kyle Kendrick	PHI	3	0	4	7	5	NYN	Jon Niese	19:10
Paul Clemens*	HOU	5	4	4	1	5	CHA	Jose Quintana	20:10
James Shields	KC	5	8	4	4	2	MIN	Kevin Correia	20:10
Mat Latos	CIN	8	3	6	3	5	STL	Joe Kelly	20:15
Yusmeiro Petit*	SF	7	4	4	7	1	COL	Chad Bettis	20:40
Ian Kennedy	SD	4	6	5	3	5	AZ	Undecided	21:40
Travis Wood	CHN	3	5	6	3	10	LAN	C. Kershaw	22:10
Derek Holland	TEX	8	3	7	4	7	SEA	H. Iwakuma	22:10

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are in a dogfight for the National League Central title, and the resurgent A.J. Burnett is a big part of the team’s success. Since coming over from the Yankees, the right-hander has put up close to 350 strikeouts with a near-3.00 ERA. All this, and he throws two pitches 95% of the time. Burnett knows he doesn’t have the largest arsenal — he enjoys his reduced repertoire — but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t added a few wrinkles as he’s matured.

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Ben and Sam try to come to terms with Matt Harvey’s elbow injury, then discuss a player poll about Alex Rodriguez.

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Episode 375
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 discusses the mediocrity of the LA Angels and the consequences of same.

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 43 min play time.)

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