When you’re a speedy 5-foot-6 second baseman with a line-drive stroke, Jose Altuve comps come with the territory. When you’re drafted by the Houston Astros, they are pretty much inevitable. The player in question is Tony Kemp.

A fifth-round pick this year out of Vanderbilt, the 21-year-old Kemp is looking to forge his own identity in pro ball. He did so as a collegian. The Nashville native was the 2013 Southeastern Conference Player of the Year and a first-team selection on Baseball America’s All-America team. In his junior season with the Commodores, he hit .388/.480/.496, with 32 stolen bases. In his first month with the short-season Tri-City Valley Cats, he is hitting .314.

Kemp — who differs from Altuve in that he swings from the left side –talked about his game a week after his debut. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve updated the site with 2013 park factors, which you can see on our FanGraphs Guts! page. These will be updated daily for the rest of the season and we will have the more granular park factors for 2013 updated shortly (on a weekly basis) as well.

To explain a little more about our park factors, we use up to 5 years of data to calculate park factors using Patriot’s method. When a park makes significant changes to their layout, or it is just a brand new park, we use only data from the changed or new park.

In the case of Safeco Field and PETCO Park, which had significant fence movement, we are only using 2013 data to calculate the park factors. With just this season’s worth of data, the park factors for these parks are being heavily regressed (90% towards 100, a neutral park).

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

1. A Maybe Useful Preview of Today’s Futures Game
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Maybe Useful Preview of Today’s Futures Game
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to alert the reader to how the Futures Game — which features (more or less) the best prospects from the United States playing against (more or less) the best prospects born abroad — is scheduled for today (Sunday) at 2pm ET.

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

1. Regarding Corey Kluber’s Changeup
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Regarding Corey Kluber’s Changeup
A Largely Uninteresting, But Still Factual, Point Regarding the Author
The reader will likely not be fascinated to learn, but the author is compelled to announce anyway, that he (i.e. that same author) was forced to compose the greater portion of these Notes at 2:00am CT at a Comfort Inn in Prospect Heights, Illinois — this, after his travel plans from New York City to Madison, Wisconsin, were altered for the less convenient.

While one’s own travel woes are Pressing and Important, it’s also true that another’s (i.e. another’s travel woes) are both Tedious and Wearisome. That being the case, the author will not elaborate on his own any further. He mentions it here primarily as justification for why this edition of the Notes is mostly just regarding Corey Kluber’s changeup.

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Ben Revere has never hit a major-league home run, and that much you probably already knew. Or maybe you knew it before, and didn’t know *today*, with Revere at his highest plate-appearance total ever. He’s only 25, and he’s got a long career ahead of him, but he’s coming up on some records and more and more people are aware of that. The ESPN Home Run Tracker has no record of Ben Revere existing. If you were in an ESPN Home Run Tracker fantasy league, and you didn’t know anything else, and someone drafted Ben Revere, you’d think to yourself, “that isn’t a real player.” Revere isn’t the first player of his sort, but he’s of the greatest interest at the present day.

Because of what Revere’s doing, or not doing, I like to make periodic check-ins, the way I do with Joey Votto’s rate of infield flies. I just confirmed to myself that Revere hasn’t gone deep in 2013, over 330 trips to the plate. For his career, he’s six away from 1,400 plate appearances, and he’s got not a single dinger. He’s tried for a few inside-the-park home runs, but not only are those different — thus far they’ve been unsuccessful. So, I knew this morning Revere hadn’t homered in 2013. That made me wonder how close he’s come.

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Before yesterday’s game, Dusty Baker talked about his line-up choices, specifically his decision to stick with Zack Cozart in the #2 spot in the order despite his .261 on base percentage. From John Fay’s article:

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Bobby Parnell hasn’t been pitching long. As he puts it, he “played a position” when he was little, and hit the mound for the first time in college. Because he threw hard, he kept climbing that mound for three years, was drafted, shuttled through the Mets minor league system, and plunked into his role as a late-game reliever in New York.

Some things — like that gas — stayed the same throughout, but there are a few aspects to his game that have weaved in and out of his game as his career has progressed. Now that he’s getting comfortable at the big league level, it’s all coming together.

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

1. Meeting of the Corey Kluber Society Today
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Meeting of the Corey Kluber Society Today
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce a meeting — in this case, at 7:05pm ET today (Friday) — of the Corey Kluber Society.

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Some time ago, in talking about the upcoming trade deadline, Dave offered Jesse Crain as a potential alternative to the potentially expensive Jonathan Papelbon. Relievers are always in demand around midseason, and Crain was proving himself to be a hell of a weapon. Shortly thereafter, Crain went and landed on the disabled list, and while his value wasn’t completely obliterated, it was dealt a blow and Crain is right now in the rehab process. He’s not the target he was, and he’s going to have to prove himself if he is to get moved.

I’m here now not to offer another alternative to Papelbon, but to just highlight a good reliever who’s available. In case you haven’t been paying attention, Oliver Perez has been pitching really well, and though he’s probably not reliable closer material, Perez throws hard with his left arm, and the things that used to plague him seem to be history. Perez is a lefty reliever on a bad team in his contract year, and if he gets traded — and there’s no reason why he shouldn’t — his new team should end up pleased as punch, whatever the hell that means.

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