Table of Contents
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1. Top Performers of the 2009 WBC, Curiously
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: 2009 World Baseball Classic
3. Illustrative Video: Cuba’s Frederich Cepeda

Top Performers of the 2009 WBC, Curiously
Because both (a) a very persistent reader has requested it and (b) the author must produce content anyway lest he be fired completely from his job, what follows is a pair of SCOUT leaderboards for the 2009 iteration of the World Baseball Classic.

“What is a SCOUT leaderboard?” a reasonable person might ask. 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 2009 WBC hitters) and above 100 is above average. xHR%, xBB%, and xK% stand for expected home run, walk, and strikeout rate, respectively.

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Episode 315
It is not necessarily how much baseball FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron analyzes in this edition of the podcast, but from where he analyzes it — in this case, from Phoenix, Arizona, home not only to Pool D of the World Baseball Classic, but also the second annual SABR Analytics Conference.

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 31 min play time.)

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Table of Contents
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A WBC Status Update of Reasonable Quality
Following weekend play, the first round of this year’s World Baseball Classic is complete, having produced eight qualifiers, as follow: Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei (from Pools A and B), and the Dominican Republic, Italy, Puerto Rico, and the United States (from Pools C and D).

Second-round play has progressed considerably among the first four teams (called Pool 1), and begins for the second four (called Pool 2) on Tuesday afternoon.

What follows is a record of the Classic thus far.

Standings
In the first round, each team plays the other three teams in its pool once. The two teams with the highest winning percentages — or, in case of a three-way tie, the two teams that qualify via this set of tie-breaking rules — advance to Round Two.

The eight qualifiers from the first round progress to Round Two. Pool 1 features the four qualifiers from first-round Pools A and B; Pool 2, from Pools B and C. Both Pool 1 and 2 are played as a four-team double-elimination tournament. The top two teams in each qualify for the four-team final round.

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Episode 314
Prospect analyst Marc Hulet discusses some recent organizational top-15 prospect lists for the 2012-13 offseason, with particular attention to outfielder Adam Eaton (Arizona), shortstop Dorssys Paulino (Cleveland), right-hander Gerrit Cole (Pittsburgh), other right-hander Dan Straily (Oakland), et al. — as well as the assorted issues raised by each.

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 33 min play time.)

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Table of Contents
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WBC MegaGuideWow for the Weekend
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic began last Friday in Japan and Taiwan, respectively, and have produced four qualifiers for the tournament’s second round (which has already begun): Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei.

On Thursday, played started among teams in Pools C and D. And while many of the competition’s earliest games took place under cover of darkness for those in the Western Hemisphere, many of this weekend’s games are decidedly more amenable to “television coverage” for “North Americans.”

Here is what the author has been compelled to call a WBC MegaGuideWow for the upcoming weekend.

Standings
In the first round, each team plays the other three teams in its pool once. The two teams with the highest winning percentages advance to Round Two. A series of tie-breaking rules exists which the author has no interest in reading even at all.

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Table of Contents
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A Brief Guide to Pools C and D of the Classic
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic began last Friday in Japan and Taiwan, respectively, and have already produced four qualifiers for the tournament’s second round: Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei.

Starting today (Thursday), play starts among teams in Pools C and D. And while many of the competition’s earliest games took place under cover of darkness for those in the Western Hemisphere, the forthcoming set of games is decidedly more amendable to “television coverage” for “North Americans.”

What follows is a brief guide to Pools C and D of the Classic.

Participants
As noted above, first-round play begins on Thursday in Pools C and D — which day is also marked by the beginning of second-round games between the four qualifiers from Pool A and B (Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei).

Below are the eight teams scheduled to commence first-round play starting today and Friday — and those same teams’ most notable players.

Nation: Canada
Notable Players: Young and talented Blue Jays third baseman Brett Lawrie, less young but not completely hopeless Twins first baseman Justin Morneau, and Reds uber-batsman Joey Votto. Also notable is this: among the pitchers on the Canadian roster is well-regarded Pirates right-handed prospect Jameson Taillon.

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

1. A Loathsome Semantic Point Regarding Spring Stats
2. SCOUT Leaderboards: Spring Training
3. Mostly Unhelpful Video: Michael Wacha Strikes Out Five

A Loathsome Semantic Point Regarding Spring Stats
It has been noted by people smarter than the present author — and also by Jeff Sullivan — that it’s best to approach spring numbers with a great deal of caution so far as drawing conclusions is concerned regarding what they might suggest about a player’s true-talent level. While research from last March by Mike Podhorzer and Matt Swartz reveals that, in certain cases, spring numbers actually do possess some predictive value, this is likely an instance of exceptions proving rules.

Still, to say that spring numbers are “meaningless” because they lack predictive value for the upcoming season is likely not quite right, either. As Dave Cameron recently noted in a February piece on the relevance of WAR, every stat “is simply the answer to a question.” A question that the present author has some interest in answering is “Which players are performing the best this spring?” — not necessarily with a view to how it might inform their regular-season production (although I’m willing to become irrationally exuberant with little provocation), but merely in and of itself. Any numbers that answer that question have “meaning” to that end.

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Tom McCarthy: Well, Wheels, that’s what you’re talking about. They’re not going to take many pitches.

Chris Wheeler: No. I was kidding with Juan Samuel about that behind the cage today… I was kidding around with Sammy. He says, “You want to see the lineup?” and he showed us the lineup card. I said, “Not many walks in that lineup, are there?” He said: “I told you a long time ago, we do not come off that island walking. We come off swinging.” And that was something that Sammy had said years and years ago, and it’s so true.

–From the second inning of Tuesday’s Dominican-Phillies exhibition game

During today’s game between the Dominican national team and the Phillies in Clearwater, Florida, the broadcasters for Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia (Tom McCarthy and Chris Wheeler, it appears) made a number of references to the aggressive approach of the Dominican team’s batters as a unit — the comment above being merely an example of a half-dozen or so made by McCarthy and Wheeler over the first two or three innings.

Certainly, this will not mark the first time that the reader has encountered the suggestion that Dominican players — or, perhaps, Latin players as a whole — exhibit less in the way of plate discipline than their American counterparts. To what degree there is or isn’t any truth to this generalization historically is one matter — and is decidedly outside the purview of this present post. The plate discipline of the lineup deployed by manager Tony Pena on Tuesday, however, is something that can be measured with some ease.

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

Four Teams Qualify for Second Round of WBC
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic began this past weekend in Japan and Taiwan, respectively. As noted in a semi-adequate preview of the Classic, many of the first games took place at a time when Americans are either (a) asleep or (b) engaged in some manner of illegal activity or, strangely, (c) both.

In any case, what follows is a record of what has taken place thus far.

Standings
In the first round, comprised of 16 countries, each team plays the other three teams in its pool once. The two teams with the highest winning percentages advance to Round Two. A series of tie-breaking rules exists which the author has no interest in reading even at all.

As of today, four nations (of a possible four from Pools A and B) have qualified for second-round play, where they will compete amongst themselves, in a double-elimination format, for two spots in the final: Chinese Taipei, Cuba, Japan, and the Netherlands.

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Episode 313
Dave Cameron once again defies belief and analyzes — this week — an entire world’s worth of baseball. Discussed, in particular: baseball’s minimum salary and what it means for competitive balance. Also: how only 88 people attended the China-Cuba game in Fukuoka and what that means for the WBC.

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 33 min play time.)

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