I’ve often wondered what would happen if a group of umpires came together to make a call that was so obviously wrong, so over-the-top blatantly inaccurate as to be completely nonsensical. Like, what if a pitcher threw a pitch, and the batter grounded out, and the umpires signaled for an automatic double? Obviously, the defensive team’s manager would get ejected, and a bunch of other guys would probably get ejected too, but, then what? If the umpires all agree that the batter doubled, who steps in to prevent the double? Does the defensive team leave the field in protest? Are they then given a forfeit? Does the commissioner get involved? The commissioner would have to get involved. But this is a thought experiment — of course, something like this would never happen.

But, you know. There are bad calls every day. Some of them are dreadful. Inexplicably dreadful. And now we have one that even followed a video review. You already know all this by now, but Wednesday night in Cleveland, in a high-leverage spot, the umpiring team did something nonsensical, and shortly thereafter the A’s were handed another loss. At least, Oakland should’ve played a bottom of the ninth. They didn’t, and won’t.

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You’ve probably heard that MLB umpire Angel Hernandez is in the news again, because he’s awful at his job and does embarrassing things to the sport on a too regular basis. You may also know that Hernandez has something of a reputation for drawing attention to himself, and is annually rated as one of the worst umpires by Major League players.

What you might not know, and what I didn’t know until I saw Joe Posnanski retweet something from Buffalo News writer Mike Harrington, is that Hernandez’s reputation for brutal calls and a total lack of professionalism goes back over 20 years. Harrington linked to this article written in 1991 by Bob DiCesare, covering Hernandez’s performance in a Triple-A game between the Buffalo Bisons and Iowa Cubs. The piece is brutal in its honesty, and rings true even today.

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Here at FanGraphs, we enjoy rolling out cool new things. It’s fun to be able to add stuff that we can all use on a daily basis, and David Appelman has done a great job of building some incredible tools for public consumption. Today, we’re going to introduce you to the newest additions to FanGraphs: Depth Charts and a dedicated Standings page. We’re rolling them out together because they actually go hand in hand.

We’ll start with the standings page, because that’s what you’ll see first when you visit the new section of the site. The standings table is broken into three sections: Year to Date, Projected Rest of Season, and Projected Full Season.

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Glen Perkins knows his FIP. He also knows his HR/9, Z-Swing% and O-Swing%. More importantly, he understands what they mean. As the Minnesota Twins left-hander says, “I like baseball and I like math.”

Perkins is more than a stat geek. The 30-year-old converted starter is one of the better closers in the American League (despite his skepticism of modern-day closer usage). Six weeks into the current campaign he’s well on his way to topping last year’s save total, despite a markedly higher ERA — a number he considers less important than his FIP.

Perkins talked about his 2013 numbers prior to last night’s game at Fenway Park.

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

1. Pitcher NERD, Now Featuring Pace
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Pitcher NERD, Now Featuring Pace
What the Reader Needs to Know
A thing the reader might need to know — to benefit from the present discussion, at least — is that NERD is the very proprietary watchability metric crafted artisanally by the present author and found daily in these Notes. (Read more about NERD here.)

What Else the Reader Needs to Know
Another thing the reader should know — again, with a view to benefiting from the present discussion — is that Pitcher NERD is the version of NERD which applies to pitchers exclusively.

A Note Regarding Pitcher NERD, Its Improvement
It has recently and somewhat emphatically been brought to the author’s attention that, while widely (and correctly) regarded as infallible, that Pitcher NERD might also (paradoxically?) benefit from the inclusion of an additional variable — namely, from the addition of pitcher pace.

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Ben and Sam discuss the sunscreen scandal and how much clubhouse chemistry matters to the Astros.

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J.A. Happ got hit in the head by a line-drive comebacker. When the same thing happened to Doug Fister, he got lucky; when the same thing happened to Brandon McCarthy, he also got lucky, if you understand that “luck” can go both ways, like “accelerate.” Happ is fortunate in that he seems to be doing well, but the scene at the time was terrifying, with Happ on the ground and blood on his face. It was the kind of incident that makes you wonder if we’re going to see a player die, and it’s sparked back up the familiar debate regarding pitcher protection. This post isn’t about that, because there’s nothing new to be said. (It would be nice.) (Reality hasn’t yet matched up with the theory, in that no one’s yet invented anything worthwhile.)

This post is about the result of the play. Desmond Jennings was the player who drilled the line drive, and he wound up standing on third base with a two-run triple. A screenshot taken moments after ball-head impact:

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Matt Harvey placed an exclamation point on his excellent start to the season Tuesday night with 9 one-hit innings, let’s take a look at how he’s doing it with a slant towards the visual.

Harvey is one of the hardest throwing starters in the league on a typical night, and he had a little extra on his stuff against the WhiteSox, averaging over 95 miles per hour on his fastball.  I’ve captured, stabilized and overlaid a selection of his primary pitches below.

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Win probability said the Reds had a 4.3 percent chance of winning when Devin Mesoraco stepped to the plate against Craig Kimbrel. There were two outs and nobody on base. Win probability obviously didn’t know Craig Kimbrel was pitching.

According to Tom Tango’s run frequency calculator, given Kimbrel’s career .154/.240/.208 line against, a run is expected to score off Kimbrel 2.3 percent of the time with two outs and the bases empty. Actual win probablity, then, is more like 1.0 percent, considering Atlanta would be expected to win half the times Kimbrel gets out of the inning with a tie.

Naturally, then, Mesoraco and Shin-Soo Choo hit back-to-back home runs, and the Reds left with likely the most improbable walk-off win of the season.

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