Episode 322
Managing editor Dave Cameron is the guest on this edition of FanGraphs Audio, which is, incidentally, the first ever to have been shortened due to weather.

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 22 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. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
2. Potentially Useful Footage: Nick Tepesch’s Breaking Ball
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
Atlanta at Miami | 19:10 ET
One might suppose that, with Freddie Freeman having recently been placed on the disabled list, that very pleasing and slightly old rookie Evan Gattis would get starts at first base against left-handers (like Miami’s starter for tonight, for example, Wade LeBlanc). This does not appear to be the case, unfortunately — a fact which the author learned only after writing the majority of this brief preview, but which (despite the demands of common sense) hasn’t compelled that same author just to delete the earlier part of the entry.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Atlanta Radio.

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Episode 321
Actual major-league pitcher Brandon McCarthy is the guest on this brief edition of FanGraphs Audio, recorded live on tape from the bowels of Miller Park.

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 8 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. A Brief Note on SCOUT, Like What It Is
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: The Season’s First Week
3. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

A Brief Note on SCOUT, Like What It Is
Below, in this edition of the Notes, are the first SCOUT leaderboards of the 2013 regular season.

“What is a SCOUT leaderboard?” a reasonable person might ask. The author is plagiarizing himself at length when he says that, for hitters (for whom it’s denoted as SCOUT+), it’s this: a metric that combines regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates in a FIP-like equation to produce a result not unlike wRC+, where 100 is league average (in this case, for all MLB hitters so far) and above 100 is above average. xHR%, xBB%, and xK% stand for expected home run, walk, and strikeout rate, respectively.

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

1. An Invitation to Curse the Author
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

An Invitation to Curse the Author
As the reader will note while inspecting the table below of Sunday’s scheduled games and probable pitchers, today offers what can only be called — or can only be called, at least, by someone affecting the airs of a 19th century flaneur — a “panoply of delights.”

The delights are so ubiquitous, in fact, that the task (for the author) of selecting merely two or three so-called “notable” games has proven quite a chore. A very reasonable person could make a very reasonable case that the author’s choices are the work of a lunatic — or, at the very least, the work of someone typing with one hand while preparing and busily consuming mimosas with the other. I make no apologies, of course*: my biases (for starting pitchers making a debut or something close to a debut) are clear.

*With regard to the present exercise, that is. I make apologies for a number of other things. Most other things, really.

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

1. Featured Game: Cleveland at Tampa Bay, 19:10 ET
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Featured Game: Cleveland at Tampa Bay, 19:10 ET
On Who’s Starting This Game
One of the players starting this game is right-hander Trevor Bauer for Cleveland, who (a) was traded from the Diamondbacks to the Indians this offseason in a three-team deal and (b) is known for having idiosyncratic thoughts on pitching mechanics and (c) is known for having idiosyncratic other thoughts, as well.

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Episode 320
FanGraphs prospect analyst and proprietor of ROTOscouting Mike Newman is the guest on this edition of the podcast. Discussed: Dodgers prospects Zach Lee and Yasiel Puig and other members of the Double-A Chattanooga Lookouts. Also discussed: players who’ve made their major-league debuts so far — like Jackie Bradley (for example) and Jedd Gyorko (for other example).

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 54 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. Pitching Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Pitching Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
With the addition recently of both the Live and Yesterday splits to the site’s leaderboards, it’s possible now to get a sense of how players are performing in real time by certain advanced metrics in a way that wasn’t before.

What the author has found himself wondering, though, is how best to adjudge the day’s Champions of Hitting and Pitching using the metrics available at the site. As is the case even with larger samples, there are actually multiple ways of doing so — it’s a matter always, as Dave Cameron suggests, of the particular question one is attempting to answer.

Yesterday, I considered the usefulness of some batting metrics on a single-game basis. Below are three pitching metrics and their relevance to our new Live and Yesterday splits.

xFIP
Yesterday, we established that wOBA is probably the best metric for assessing a player’s batting production per plate appearance. Expected Fielding Independent Pitching, or xFIP, is the closest antecedent for pitchers — except on a per-inning (as opposed to per-plate-appearance) basis. Pitchers who are able to accrue strikeouts while also avoiding walks and fly balls tend to prevent runs more effectively than pitchers who don’t do that. If there’s a drawback to xFIP, it’s that relief pitchers who’ve pitcher 0.1 innings mostly occupy the top of the single-game leaderboards.

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

1. Batting Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

Batting Stats with Live and Yesterday Splits
With the addition recently of both the Live and Yesterday splits to the site’s leaderboards, it’s possible now to get a sense of how players are performing in real time by certain advanced metrics in a way that wasn’t before.

What the author has found himself wondering, though, is how best to adjudge the day’s Champions of Hitting and Pitching using the metrics available at the site. As is the case even with larger samples, there are actually multiple ways of doing so — it’s a matter always, as Dave Cameron suggests, of the particular question one is attempting to answer.

Below are four metrics, all of which answer slightly different questions about a player’s single-game batting performance. I’ll looking at some pitching metrics tomorrow.

wOBA
Weighted On-Base Average, or wOBA, is a record of a hitter’s batting production for the day scaled to on-base percentage. As such, it’s the best way to determine offensive output per plate appearance. That’s its strength. It’s less useful for reporting cumulative production, however. So, a batter with one home run in a single plate appearance will have a higher single-game wOBA than another hitter who’s hit three home runs in four plate appearances — even though we might say that the latter has been “more productive.”

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

1. An Idle Thought on Imperfection
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

An Idle Thought on Imperfection
Inspecting Tuesday’s single-game xFIP leaderboard (among starting pitchers only) — a thing which is now possible after FanGraphs CEO and star of every nightmare David Appelman added a “Yesterday” split to the leaderboards here at the site — one is not surprised, in the wake of his 14-strikeout effort against Houston, to find Yu Darvish’s name at the top.

One is also compelled to note in how many ways Darvish’s game was imperfect — an imperfection that is amplified, undoubtedly, for its proximity to perfection.

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