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

1. How Last Spring’s Pitching Leaders Fared (Amended)
2. How Last Spring’s Pitcher Laggards Fared

How Last Spring’s Pitching Leaders Fared (Amended)
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, we considered how the top-10 pitchers from last spring — according to the SCOUT leaderboards, that is — how those pitchers ended up faring during the 2012 regular season.

While it’s manifestly the case that the author has little idea what he’s doing, it’s also the case that he knew even less of what he was doing when he published the final spring-training SCOUT pitching leaderboards last April, or whenever. In the meantime, I’ve made some slight changes to SCOUT that correlate directly to my increased understanding of how to use certain functions in Excel.

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When FanGraphs was in Arizona earlier this spring, our merry band of nerds made our way to a Jarrod Parker vs Chris Sale afternoon tilt. The result on that 16th of March — an 11-5 win for the White Sox and bad performances from the two starting pitchers — was mostly unimportant to everyone in involved. But a few innings sitting behind the plate did provide some insights, including some reasons why those results were unimportant.

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Fun fact: Jose Molina‘s FanGraphs player ID number is 25. Mike Trout’s is 10155. All right.

According to numbers provided to me by Matthew Carruth, last year there were 78 catchers in baseball who caught at least 1,000 called pitches. Carruth defines his strike zone not by the rule book, but by an average of the strike zones big-league umpires actually call. Out of those 78 catchers, Molina posted the fifth-lowest rate of pitches in the zone called balls. Molina tied for the second-highest rate of pitches out of the zone called strikes. Overall, Molina posted the highest rate of extra strikes per game, at +2.5. The other guys over 2 were David Ross, Chris Stewart, and Jonathan Lucroy. Molina caught more than 6,000 called pitches. We’ve had an idea for some time now that Jose Molina is an expert pitch-framer.

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Ben and Sam discuss Yasiel Puig’s spring hot streak, how perceptions of him have changed since his signing, and what the Dodgers will do with him now.

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For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. The data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Last week, we tackled the positional players, grading out each team’s options at each spot that is occupied by a fielder. You can see all those posts here, and yes, they’ve now been updated to reflect the correct park adjusted numbers. So, today, we move on to the pitching side of things. Because we’re dealing with 7-10 starters and an equal number of relievers for each club, we’re breaking these posts into two parts, less they become our own version of War and Peace.

After doing the bottom tier this morning — while noting again that the dividing line is essentially a false one, since there’s basically no separation between teams from #13 to #17 — we’re on to the strong pitching staffs, including a couple at the top that are exceptionally strong. There are also a few surprises in the top half, but overall, I think the projections look pretty good. There are inevitably going to be innings allocations or performance forecasts than one can quibble with, but overall, I think this system has done a pretty good job.

On to the list.

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Monday morning, Dave Cameron posted his bottom half of the 2013 starting pitcher positional power rankings. Just going to go ahead and paste a few select excerpts:

There’s a reason the team keeps getting tied to Kyle Lohse – he would be a pretty big upgrade over the internal candidates for the Brewers rotation.

And:

If they had another quality starter, having two interesting upside guys with big variance at the back of the rotation would be more palatable. As it is, the Brewers look like they’re at least one good pitcher short of being a contender this year.

Funny story!

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We end at the beginning. If you need to catch up, here are parts one, two, three, four and five.

Vetoed/Completed trade: October 1969, Cardinals send Curt Flood, Byron Browne, Joe Hoerner and Tim McCarver to Phillies for Dick Allen, Jerry Johnson and Cookie Rojas.
Addition to vetoed/completed trade: April 1970, Cardinals send Willie Montanez and Jim Browning to Phillies for unknown compensation due to Flood’s refusal to report to Philadelphia.
Completed trade: Phillies send Flood and player to be named later (Jeff Terpko) to Senators for Greg Goossen, Gene Martin and Jeff Terpko

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For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. The data is a hybrid projection of the ZIPS and Steamer systems with playing time determined through depth charts created by our team of authors. The rankings are based on aggregate projected WAR for each team at a given position.

Last week, we tackled the positional players, grading out each team’s options at each spot that is occupied by a fielder. You can see all those posts here, and yes, they’ve now been updated to reflect the correct park adjusted numbers. So, today, we move on to the pitching side of things. Because we’re dealing with 7-10 starters and an equal number of relievers for each club, we’re breaking these posts into two parts, less they become our own version of War and Peace.

We’ll start off with the starting staffs that occupy the 16th-30th spots on the list, but also keep in mind that the ordinal rank is often not that important, as there’s no real difference between the #13 and #17 teams in terms of projected outcome. The actual performance is the interesting thing here. And, since we’re starting in the lower half of the list, there are some pretty ugly projections to follow.

Also, note that the innings projections are not equal for every team. Due to durability and bullpen deployment, not every team gets the same amount of innings from their starters over the course of the season. We have equalized the innings at the team level, so teams that are projected for fewer innings from their starters will get a larger number from their relievers, but the IP totals for each team’s rotation and bullpen won’t match up like the PA totals did for each hitter. We’ve made sure they fall within a reasonable range, however, and think the overall distribution of playing time makes sense for each club.

All that said, on to the write-ups.

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

1. How 2012’s Spring Pitching Leaders Fared
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training (Overall)
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training (Rookies)

How 2012’s Spring Pitching Leaders Fared
Already atop last Friday’s edition of the SCOUT pitching leaderboards, Atlanta right-hander Julio Teheran produced Saturday what is likely his best line of the spring: 6.0 IP, 21 TBF, 10 K, 3 BB, 0 HR, 0 H. He continues to possess the spring’s highest regressed strikeout rate — and, with ca. 100 batters faced, is about two-thirds of the way to the point at which strikeout rates have typically become reliable at the major-league level*.

*Which is a different thing, of course, than when they become reliable at spring training, a consideration whose depths remain (understandably) unplumbed.

“What does that mean for Julio Teheran, 2013 Braves Starter?” is a question a reader might ask. Allow the author to answer that question only in part — in this case, by considering how the top-10 pitchers from last spring’s final SCOUT leaderboard (about which you can read more below) fared in the 2012 regular season.

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