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

1. A Count of Every Club’s Meaningless Games
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
Introduction
With four days remaining in the major-league regular season, only three clubs — Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and Texas — possess some manner of playoff odds that aren’t either 0.0% or 100.0%. Some teams (Kansas City, New York AL) have only just been eliminated from a possible postseason berth; others (Chicago AL, Houston, Miami) have possessed playoff odds of 0% for over a month.

What the author has done, in the table below, is to calculate the number of meaningless games every major-league team will have played by the end of the season — where meaningless indicates games played while the team in question has possessed either a 0% or 100% chance of making the playoffs, per Cool Standings. Note that this is different, probably by a little bit, than what is frequently referred to as “mathematical elimination,” but (a) is another, pretty similar type of mathematical elimination and also (b) was easier to calculate, as the author’s internet browser happened already to be pointed to Cool Standings.

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

1. A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
Introduction
On August 2nd of this year, the author published in these same Notes a leaderboard featuring all — or, at least, the most notable — players to have changed teams ahead of the July 31st deadline for non-waiver deals.

Nearly two months later, what the author has done is to aggregate and publish below a pair of similar leaderboards — in this case, featuring the statistical records for August and September of all those same players who appeared on the leaderboards from two months ago.

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

1. Power on the 20-80 Scouting Scale for 2013
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Power on the 20-80 Scouting Scale for 2013
Introduction
In a post that appeared in these pages this past February, prospect writer Mark Smith used statistical proxies to investigate the thresholds at the major-league level of different baseball tools as measured on the 20-80 scouting scale. Smith found, for example, that Jose Bautista‘s home-run rate of 6.6% between 2010 and -12 represented the standard for 80 power and that Michael Bourn’s average of 9 BsR per annum did the same for baserunning/speed.

With just a week left in the current season, the author has reproduced Smith’s effort for 2013 itself — for power, specifically.

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Episode 381
Dave Cameron is both (a) the managing editor of FanGraphs and (b) the guest on this particular edition of FanGraphs Audio — during which edition he turns his attention to the last week of the season and what it holds for Baseball in America.

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 39 min play time.)

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

1. The Top Prospect-Age Hitters by FIB*
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The Top Prospect-Age Hitters by FIB*
Introduction
Minor-league regular seasons everywhere have come to their respective conclusions. Last week, before the author had become a really big deal and moved to Europe, he published a leaderboard of the top-10 qualified minor-league pitchers by kwERA (i.e. an ERA estimator derived entirely from just strikeout and walk rates).

Today, despite the fact that he’s a really big deal now and lives in Europe, the author has condescended to publish a second leaderboard — in this case, of the top-10 qualified minor-league hitters by FIB*, or Fielding Independent Batting (Asterisk). What FIB* isn’t is the same metric introduced to readers by Bradley Woodrum about two years ago. That one, called Fielding Independent Batting, but without the very integral asterisk, accounts for xBABIP and is presented as an index stat, like wRC+. What FIB* is is a batting metric calculated almost precisely like FIP, except then placed on the same scale as wOBA*.

*The equation, in full: [(HR*12 + BB*3 – K*2) * .141] + .3267.

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

1. The Top Minor-League Starters by kwERA
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The Top Minor-League Starters by kwERA
Introduction
Minor-league regular seasons everywhere have come to their respective conclusions. What concerned readers want to know now — or, at least what the author is presently supposing they want to know — is which qualified minor-league pitchers have recorded the best fielding-independent numbers this year. Moreover, concerned readers are adding this caveat — namely, that they’re interested in a fielding-independent metric that accounts only for strikeout and walk rate, but not home runs, owing to how much more quickly the first two become reliable.

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

1. The Quite Very Effective Ubaldo Jimenez
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The Quite Very Effective Ubaldo Jimenez
A Note Regarding Ubaldo Jimenez
Yesterday, by way of previewing briefly yesterday’s MLB.TV Free Game, which game featured Cleveland right-hander Danny Salazar, the author had occasion to produce the table below, which includes — or included as of yesterday, at least — the top-five starters by strikeout rate over the last month (minimum three starts).

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Episode 380
Prospect analyst Marc Hulet has recently written a series of posts previewing this year’s Arizona Fall League, which begins the second week of October. He discusses that same league in some depth 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 49 min play time.)

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

1. Chris Carter’s Record Strikeout Rate in Context
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Chris Carter’s Record Strikeout Rate in Context
Of late, the author has encountered more than one concerned internet citizen making a comment to the effect that Houston corner-type Chris Carter has recorded, thus far, the highest strikeout rate of any qualified batter in major-league history. Indeed, as the table below indicates — of the ten highest single-season strikeout rates since 1913 (i.e. the year since which we have contiguous strikeout data) — these concerned citizens are also generally honest ones.

To wit:

What one finds here is a collection of power hitters from the past 25 years, basically, who compensated for a lack of contact with power and/or patience. What one also finds is Dave Nicholson, who seems to have produced a 1.6 WAR in 1963 as a left fielder for the Chicago White Sox — and ultimately a career WAR of 1.7 in 1661 plate appearances.

If one’s ambition, however, is to determine the place of Chris Carter’s 2013 season in all of baseball of all time, one must consider his numbers relative to the context in which they’ve been recorded. For, as a brief inspection of the leaderboards at this site reveals, the 2013 season has produced the second-highest league-wide strikeout rate of the last 101 years.

With a view to examining which players have produced the most prolific strikeout rates relative to their peers, the author has first identified the league-average strikeout rate (strikeouts per plate appearance, that is) for every season since 1913. The author has then divided every qualified player’s seasonal strikeout rate (since 1913, as well) by the relevant league-average rate for that year. The result is an index stat, K-, which measures strikeout rate relative to league average, where a higher figure represents more striking out.

Here are the results of those calculations:

Three Notes
• Old brother both to Dom and Joe, center-fielder Vince DiMaggio is responsible for the most prolific strikeout rate of the last 100 years — not only recording the highest rate relative to league, but also having produced three of the ten-highest adjusted strikeout rates over that interval. While DiMaggio’s career rate of 19.7% is precisely average in 2013, it’s more than double the overall rate of 9.1% registered league-wide between 1937 and -46.

• By this methodology, Carter’s 2013 season is only the 66th-worst so far as strikeout rate relative to league is concerned. His index figure: a 187 K-.

• It’s very possible that a more responsible way of conducting a study such as this one would be to find the z-score for every player’s strikeout rate for every season since 1913. In addition to being the more responsible method, however, this would also be the considerably more time-consuming one.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Cleveland at Chicago AL | 14:10 ET
Danny Salazar (37.0 IP, 71 xFIP-, 0.6 WAR) faces Hector Santiago (138.2 IP, 113 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR). Of some relevance to this matchup is the following table, which features the top-five starters by strikeout rate over the last month (minimum three starts):

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cleveland Radio.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire.

Note that these NERD scores are calculated using the methodology introduced recently and designed to account for the influence of playoff odds on the watchability of games. ***Unlike in recent iterations of this table, the author has adjusted the day’s NERD Game Scores such that, combined, they average 5.0.*** This allows said table to resemble more closely the Game Scores that have appeared here over the preceding four months.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Danny Salazar	CLE	10	3	6	0	3	CHA	Hector Santiago	14:10
Jake Arrieta	CHN	1	0	9	10	6	PIT	Charlie Morton	19:05
Kyle Kendrick	PHI	3	0	4	0	10	WAS	St. Strasburg	19:05
Jason Hammel	BAL	2	1	2	0	5	TOR	Todd Redmond	19:07
Bruce Chen	KC	2	1	3	0	6	DET	Justin Verlander	19:08
Brad Hand*	MIA	5	0	3	0	5	NYN	Jon Niese	19:10
Hiroki Kuroda	NYA	5	4	6	0	7	BOS	John Lackey	19:10
Ian Kennedy	SD	4	0	3	0	7	ATL	David Hale*	19:30
Dan Straily	OAK	5	5	10	5	7	TEX	Derek Holland	20:05
Jason Vargas	LAA	3	0	2	0	6	HOU	Dallas Keuchel	20:10
Mat Latos	CIN	8	1	4	0	4	MIL	Kyle Lohse	20:10
Chris Archer	TB	5	7	7	0	2	MIN	Kevin Correia	20:10
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	7	0	10	9	9	STL	Adam Wainwright	20:15
Tyler Chatwood	COL	6	0	3	0	5	AZ	Brandon McCarthy	21:40
Madis. Bumgarner	SF	8	0	5	0	10	LAN	Clayton Kershaw	22:10

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.

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

1. A Brief Timeline of the Corey Kluber Society
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Brief Timeline of the Corey Kluber Society
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce a meeting — in this case, at 8:10pm ET today (Thursday) — of the Corey Kluber Society.

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