A month ago, I submitted an article with something I came up with that I thought was pretty cool.  It was a simulator similar to the Coolstandings sim, except that it would use Steamer and ZiPS rest-of-season (RoS) projections instead of year-to-date statistics as the measure of each team’s true talent.  Well, as you may have noticed, the boss, David Appelman, must have thought it was a pretty cool idea too, as unbeknownst to me, he had been working on the same sort of thing since long before the idea popped into my head.  But my duplication of effort will hopefully not go entirely to waste, as I’ll be sharing and explaining the simulator I created.  You’ll be able to use it to analyze your own “what if” scenarios, if that’s your sort of thing.  Think ZiPS and/or Steamer is overly optimistic or pessimistic about some teams?  You can fix that by running your own simulations with this.  Or you can apply it to past or completely hypothetical teams.  Go nuts.

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If you recall, last week, I talked about one approach that we can take for evaluating starting pitcher performance. Today, I’d like to continue on that vein, this time taking a look at relief pitching.

With regards to evaluating both player performance and player talent, relief pitching is one of the least understood aspects of baseball. There are a few factors that lead me to believe this, but the only one I’d like to talk about today is the problem of mid-inning pitching changes.

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The list of compelling rookie seasons for Seattle pitchers is a short one.

Mark Langston debuted in 1984 with a 4.1 WAR. Freddy Garcia managed a 3.7 WAR in his freshman season in 1999. The flame-throwing Michael Pineda tossed up a 3.2 WAR in 2011. Felix Hernandez managed a 2.3 WAR in his somewhat brief debut season, the exact same mark that a 28-year-old rookie southpaw by the name of Bobby Madritsch managed in 2004 when he came out of no where to to appear in 15 games (11 starts).

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

1. Taijuan Walker to Debut on This Day in History
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Taijuan Walker to Debut on This Day in History
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce that today — a day which has, until now, belonged to the future, but which, in short order, will reside entirely in the past — that today right-handed Seattle prospect Taijuan Walker is scheduled to make his major-league debut at 8:10pm ET against the Houston Astros.

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This week started with some hullabaloo when a Forbes contributor published a column claiming that the Houston Astros were the most profitable team in MLB history. Contributor Dan Alexander did some pretty simple math in concluding that the Astros would clear $99 million in “operating revenue.” “They have become so profitable thanks to slashed payroll expenses and soaring television revenues,” Alexander wrote.

But another Forbes contributor —  Maury Brown, of the Biz of Baseball — refuted Alexander’s column. Brown explained the Astros “soaring television revenues” aren’t so soaring because CSN Houston — the new regional sports network the Astros and the NBA’s Houston Rockets own — isn’t carried on any cable or satellite service in the Houston area other than Comcast. Indeed, we reported last month that cable and satellite companies are using new technology to determine how many customers tune into local sporting events and for how long. AT&T U-verse used that information in deciding to forgo carrying CSN Houston. That’s left CSN Houston well short of projected viewership and revenue from carriage fees.

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Episode 376
Washington Nationals prospect Zach Walters is (a) a shortstop playing at Triple-A in just his age-23 season and also (b) one of the minor leagues’ top home-run hitters. 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 15 min play time.)

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I recently posed a question to 12 hitters. It was a question that doesn’t have an easy answer. Given the subjectivity involved, it doesn’t even have a right answer.

If you could lead the league in any offensive category, what would it be?

Their responses — some less serious than others — are listed below in alphabetical order. Read the rest of this entry »

Ben and Sam talk to Cincinnati Enquirer reporter C. Trent Rosecrans about the Reds, Joey Votto and Brandon Phillips, and the trials and travails of beat writing.

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Every so often, I get the sense people under-appreciate the importance of pitching ahead in the count. These phases are usually followed by other phases in which I conclude I’m simultaneously over-appreciating it, and then I return to baseball normalcy, but right now I’m in one of them first phases. And whenever I’m here, it’s weird. From a very impressionably young age, we’re told how important it is to throw strike one. We know, when we think about it, that it’s much better to be ahead than behind, as a pitcher. But it doesn’t come up that much in conversation or analysis. People talk about proxies, but then almost everything is a proxy for pitching ahead in the count. When you’re pitching ahead, you’re pitching in control.

Obviously, it makes a difference with regard to walks and strikeouts. More strikes mean more strikeouts, more balls mean more walks. But it also makes a difference with regard to quality of contact. Just looking at this year’s league-wide splits, pitchers have allowed a .303 BABIP when behind in the count, with a .198 isolated slugging. Meanwhile, they’ve allowed a .287 BABIP when ahead in the count, with a .092 isolated slugging. On contact, when behind in the count, pitchers have allowed 4.7% home runs. On contact, when ahead in the count, they’ve allowed 2.5% home runs. Yeah, there’s some selection bias — better pitchers pitch ahead in the count more often — but that doesn’t explain the gaps. Common sense explains the gaps, mostly.

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