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

1. Three Brief Introductory Notes
2. Table: Updated Spring Run-Environment Numbers
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training (Overall)
4. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training (Rookies)
5. Mostly Unhelpful Video: Christian Yelich, Homering

Three Brief Introductory Notes
Here are three introductory notes:

1. It’s entirely possible that a reader might say regarding what follows — owing to the panoply of stats therein — might say that there is a surfeit of spring numbers to be found here. Whether the author himself would do so is doubtful — largely, that is, because he finds the alliteration between surfeit and spring unappealing. However, that is manifestly an expression of his own personal bias and is certainly not the case for everyone.

2. Of note regarding the SCOUT leaderboards to follow is this: the author has included in those leaderboards — besides the expected rates for hitters and pitchers — he has also included the raw totals for walks, strikeouts, and (where applicable) home runs. Why he (i.e. the author) has neglected to do so before now is absolutely not a mystery: the author lacks sense, is the reason.

3. The author recently made a loathsome semantic point regarding spring stats — and, specifically, to what degree it makes sense to call them “meaningless.” Said point applies to the following.

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If for some reason you have been under a rock for the past week or perhaps you’ve been cranking up the INXS, putting on your mother’s coke bottle eye glasses, and hollering “Where’s the cat at” until the Right Field Positional Power Rankings were unveiled, be sure to acquaint yourself with the methodology of the following. The quick and dirty is that the projections are a hybrid of Steamer and ZiPS, it takes into account expected playing time and players at multiple positions.

Right field seems like a place you put slow-footed sluggers that can murder the ball at the plate, and yet I remember playing a lot of right field because it was thought that I would do the least amount of defensive damage at the position. The combination of big offense and bad defense at the position might be changing — look closely at this year’s crop and you could be underwhelmed by the bats, and you’ll also see some players that produce despite low-powered plate production. And yet, one of the most exciting young (and, yes, powerful) players in baseball is atop the chart at the position — at least the Marlins have one thing going for them.

Right field — maybe not as sexy as your father’s right field, but still fairly attractive.

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Prospect lists are one of the best parts of the off-season. Marc Hulet published his top 100 yesterday as the culmination of several months of work, and Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, Keith Law, John Sickels and a plethora of websites have published others. Each group puts myriad hours into analyzing, calling, writing, editing, re-analyzing and finally publishing their work. But even after all that, they usually come to several different conclusions. I decided — instead of focusing on a specific list — to generate a list that combined each of these lists into one.

The idea of community or consensus lists isn’t new. Sites have done it before, but I’ve added some wrinkles:

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Ben and Sam discuss Aroldis Chapman’s role and how much control players should have over the way they’re used by their teams.

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If it seems like you’ve read dozens of articles about Aroldis Chapman potentially being a starting pitcher over the years, it’s only because you’ve missed hundreds more. This is an old topic, as is usually the case with relievers who appear to have the potential for more. The Reds invested a lot in Chapman when they first signed him, and as of 2012 he’s mastered the bullpen. Coming into 2013, Chapman was to move into the rotation, but now it’s a question again. Sometime within the next few days, the Reds hope to decide whether Chapman will open as a starter or a reliever. We’ve done this before, and we’re doing it again.

This has all come to a head once more because of something Chapman said over the weekend. From an AP article:

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Simultaneously FanGraphs’ trip to the desert and minor league games began Wednesday in Arizona. Trips to Goodyear and Scottsdale begot opportunities to view dozens of top prospects and some sleepers too.   Read the rest of this entry »

Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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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.

Center field is one of the most star-laden positions in baseball at the moment, but a whole lot of those stars are dealing with injuries or coming off down years or trying to change positions. It also hurts that arguably the best player in the game figures to spend most of his time in left field this summer, but so be it. There is still plenty of center field talent — third base was the only position with more 5+ WAR players in 2012 — with a few interesting youngsters due to get regular playing time this year.

The league average center fielder hit .264/.328/.414 (101 wRC+) last summer, so the offensive bar is low compared to the corner spots. Defense is a big separator between the good and great players, though I feel like no position is more prone to the surprise 4+ WAR season. We’ve seen quite a few players pop-up out of nowhere to post star-caliber seasons driven largely by their center field defensive ratings, which can be a sketchy proposition. The established center field stars are among the best players in the world and perennial MVP candidates, so it’s no surprise teams with those players dominate the top of our rankings.

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Table of Contents
Today’s edition of the Daily Notes has no table of contents, it appears.

World Baseball Classic, Maximum Update
With their 3-1 victory over Japan on Sunday night, Puerto Rico has advanced to the World Baseball Classic final. On Monday, the competition’s other semifinal game — between the Dominican Republic and Netherlands — takes place at 9pm ET.

What follows is a record of the 2013 World Baseball Classic to date — with, like, two or three prose flourishes by the author, or one prose flourish by the author.

Complete WBC Bracket, With an Ad for Subway in It
Here’s the complete bracket for the 2013 World Baseball Classic — including an advertisement for American restaurant franchise Subway, it appears — copy-and-pasted from the official WBC site, but then cropped and colored differently to suggest nothing of the sort. (Click on bracket to embiggen.)

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Due to an unfortunate data error, the numbers in this story did not include park factors upon publication. We have updated the data to include the park factors, and the data you see below is now correct. We apologize for the mistake.

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What’s all this, then? For an explanation of this series, please read the introductory post. As noted in that introduction, 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.

A note on what you’re going to see below. Below, in accordance with the series, you’ll see all the teams ranked 1 through 30, based on projected shortstop WAR. The team ranked #1 will be in a much better position than the team ranked #30. That’s how rankings work. However, how much separation is there? Between #1 and #30, a lot. Between #1 and #2, a lot. Between #2 and…well here’s a chart I made:

In terms of projected shortstop WAR in 2013, the gap between #1 and #2 is bigger than the gap between #2 and #15. This isn’t, of course, great science, even if it is science. This isn’t, of course, how things are actually going to work out. But this gives you a sense of the spread, and it gives you a sense you shouldn’t care about the ranking as much as you care about the WAR. This, as you might realize, is one of the issues with prospect lists — the slope is never perfectly linear. As long as you know that going in, you won’t misinterpret what you see. Let’s get on now with the actual list, so you can see who’s #1, and who isn’t.

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