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

1. CoreyKluberSociety in Bad Decline
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

CoreyKluberSociety in Bad Decline
Regarding the Title of This Post
In 1996, very talented fiction writer George Saunders released his first book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, which book was described that same year in a New York Times review by influential novelist Jay McInerney as the “most accomplished short-story debut since Barry Hannah’s Airships” and, in a postcard sent by Carson Cistulli to Saunders himself three summers later, as “better than Nintendo.”

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

1. Adjusted Strikeout Totals for Every Friday Starter
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Adjusted Strikeout Totals for Every Friday Starter
Introduction
Despite allowing four runs, Texas right-hander Nick Tepesch also struck out nine of the 22 — or, about 41% — of the batters he faced on Friday, the best rate among all of the evening’s 30 starting pitchers. That he did it against the Houston Astros, however — i.e. the club whose batters strike out more often than any other club’s — assuredly renders the feat less impressive.

“How much less impressive?” is a question the author more or less asked himself on Saturday morning — and the one he attempted to answer slightly less early on Saturday morning.

The results of the attempt are published below. What the author has done is to identify the strikeout rate for each team relative to league average. That figure is represented as an index stat, Opp K+, where a lower figure signifies a lower team strikeout rate relative to league average. The author has then divided every pitcher’s strikeout rate from Friday’s game by Opp K+, the result of which is an adjusted strikeout rate for the pitcher, or Adj Pit K%.

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Episode 357
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 58 min play time.)

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Michael Cuddyer just finished going streaking. His 27-game streak, which lasted from May 28th to June 30th, was the longest since Dan Uggla’s 33-gamer in 2011. While he didn’t reach the 30-game benchmark that many sites use, 27 games is nothing to shake a stick at — Cuddyer’s streak was just the 135th of 25 or more games since 1916 that happened during the same season (there were also 18 that spanned two seasons, but I don’t count those. If you have a problem with that you can go suck a lemon). I didn’t have the time to go through all of those streaks, but I did have a chance to take a look at the streaks of 30 or more games, and I thought we could put Cuddyer’s streak into perspective.

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Justin Verlander was excellent yesterday against Toronto, throwing seven shutout innings en route to the Tigers’ 11-1 demolition of the Blue Jays. He was not quite as dominant as the Verlander of 2011 and 2012, but that is a pretty high standard. Actually, the 2013 Verlander has not really measured up to that standard all year. Verlander won both the Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player in the American League in 2011, then was just as good in 2012. He pitched a cumulative total of 489 and a third innings and had a 2.52 ERA during those seasons.

By reasonable standards, Verlander’s 3.54 ERA and 112 innings pitched at the halfway point of the 2013 season is very good. By his own recent standards (as well as that being set by his 2013 rotation mates Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez), it is somewhat disappointing. It is not that Verlander’s 2013 is bad in itself, and it is hardly the Tigers’ main main problem — that would be the bullpen (solution: move Verlander to the ‘pen!). Still, Verlander’s apparent decline might concern some people. My intention is not so much to evaluate Verlander’s current true talent or possible health problems, but to put his recent performance in historical perspective relative to pitchers with similar stretches of success.

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After a hiatus, the FanGraphs Prospect Stock Watch is back and I want to thank everyone who asked about its whereabouts and expressed an interest in seeing it return. Your wish is my command…

Josh Phegley, C, Chicago White Sox

The Chicago White Sox dumped light-hitting backup catcher Hector Gimenez on Thursday. In his place, the organization promoted rookie backstop Josh Phegley — the 38th overall selection from the 2009 amateur draft. The Indiana University alum reached Double-A in his first full pro season but his meteoric rise was interrupted by a serious medical condition, which threaten to end his playing career and affect his way of life. For more on that, check out this piece by MLB.com’s Scott Merkin from 2010. Luckily for Phegley, he’s back and — although it took some time for him to get back into playing shape — finally realizing the potential that caused me to rank him as the organization’s eighth-best prospect as recently as pre-2011.

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

1. SCOUT Leaderboards for Rookie-Level Leagues
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

SCOUT Leaderboards for Rookie-Level Leagues
A Brief Introduction
Featured in this edition of the Notes are the SCOUT leaderboards for rookie-level leagues. Briefly stated, SCOUT represents an attempt to use our knowledge of certain metrics, and at what sample sizes they become reliable, to measure run production/prevention in instances where small samples are all that’s available. Stated less briefly, is the explanation available here.

Other recent editions: Triple-A / Double-A / High-A / Class A / Low-A.

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From 1983-1988, Pat Tabler was a good hitter on some not-so-good Cleveland Indians teams. Bouncing between the outfield and the infield corners, he hit .294/.356/.408. Overall, “Tabby” was a career .282 hitter in 12 big-league seasons. He currently serves as a TV analyst for the Toronto Blue Jays.

Tabler reminisced about his time in Cleveland — including notable brawls and off-the-wall teammates — on a recent visit to Fenway Park.

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Tabler on bench-clearing brawls: “In 1986, we were playing the A’s, who we always had hard-fought games with. Pat Corrales was our manager and he thought Dave Stewart was throwing at one of our guys. He was barking at him and Stew said, ‘Come on out here.’ Corrales did. They met at the first base line and went after each other. Both of them had belts in karate. Corrales went to dropkick, and missed, and Stew smoked him. It was on after that. It was a good fight.

“Another time, against the Royals, Jamie Quirk hit a home run against us. Next time up, Sammy Stewart hit him with a pitch and broke his hand. The following night, with Ken Schrom pitching, Willie Wilson hit a fly ball to center. Read the rest of this entry »

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

1. Best and Worst Base-Stealers, By One Measure
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Best and Worst Base-Stealers, By One Measure
Introduction
With regard to the art and science of base-stealing — and assessing its best and worst practitioners — it’s fair to say that there are two main elements one must consider. First, a runner must steal bases efficiently per attempt. Some combination of empirical study and also Pete Palmer reveal that, depending on the run environment of the league or park or whatever, a runner must generally be successful on something like two-thirds or three-quarters of his stolen-base attempts just to break even in terms of runs gained or lost.

Moreover, to be regarded as a legitimate base-stealing threat, a runner must also attempt to steal rather frequently per stolen-base opportunity. It’s fair to say that, all things being equal, two runners who’ve finished the season 5-for-5 on stolen-base attempts have been equally valuable in terms of runs produced from stolen bases. However, if the former player did so in 100 opportunities while the latter did it in just 20, then surely the latter must be regarded as the more impressive base-stealer.

To account both for the efficiency and frequency of 2013’s base-stealers, the author has first calculated every major leaguer’s stolen-base runs using the current linear-weight values both for stolen bases and caught stealing, and then divided that figure by stolen-base opportunities (i.e. plate appearances during which a runner is on first or second with the next base open). Finally, the author has multiplied that result by 100, such that one is left with stolen-base runs per 100 stolen-base opportunities.

The results of those calculations are available below.

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