Table of Contents
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A Not Unhelpful WBC Status Update
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 took place over Classic’s first weekend of play.

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 exist which the author has no interest in reading even at all.

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Episode 312
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), has hands and they are covered in blood for some reason.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

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Audio after the jump. (Approximately 48 min play time.)

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

A Semi-Adequate Preview of the Weekend’s WBC Games
Pools A and B of this year’s edition of the World Baseball Classic begin this weekend in Japan and Taiwan, respectively. While much of the first weekend’s action will be taking place during that time of the night during which the present author, at least, is “very unconscious,” the prospect of real-live baseball is attractive.

That being the case, he has produced the following, i.e. a Semi-Adequate Preview of the Weekend’s WBC Games.

Participants
As noted above, this weekend’s collection of games includes only teams from Pools A and B — with the competition’s other two groups to commence play on Thursday.

Here are the eight teams scheduled to compete this weekend and those teams’ most notable players (with considerable help from Experts on the Internet).

Pool: A (Fukuoka, Japan)
Nation: Brazil
Notable Players: No fewer than nine member of affiliated baseball, including White Sox right-hander Andre Rienzo (ranked seventh among that team’s prospects by Marc Hulet), 27-year-old Royals outfielder Paulo Orlando (who’s regarded by Steamer as something slightly better than replacement level, actually), and nearly 23-year-old Tampa Bay third baseman Leonardo Reginatto (who posted a 1:1 BB:K in ca. 13 plate appearance during qualifying).

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On Spring Run Environments, In Case You Care
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, the author published the earliest possible returns regarding league averages for spring training this year — both for the two spring leagues as a whole, and for the Florida and Arizona leagues separately.

A curious reader named Dan — who likely possesses multiple graduate degrees and even more lovers — asked how the spring stats so far in 2013 compared to last year’s spring-training numbers. What this post does is provide the answer to that particular question — while, perhaps, asking several more.

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1. Some Almost Not Meaningless Spring Numbers
2. Mostly Unhelpful Video: Tom Layne, Striking Out Sides

Some Almost Not Meaningless Spring Numbers
The bespectacled reader is likely aware that spring training baseball has begun. As Jeff Sullivan pointed out earlier this month, there are a number of variables present in spring games which necessarily distort the stats that are produced there. As Mike Podhorzer demonstrated last March, however, there’s some significance to certain spring stats — especially among those which become reliable in smaller samples.

Even less than a week into spring, there are some numbers that are worthy of consideration — more for purposes of monitoring, perhaps, if not to regard as gospel.

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1. The Best Players Without Starting Roles, Now for ZiPS
2. Mostly Unhelpful Video: Scott Rolen, Defensing in 2008

The Best Players Without Starting Roles, Now for ZiPS
Last week, the author utilized his widely praised capacity for “sorting through leaderboards” to identify the top forecasts for rookie-eligible players, according to the ZiPS and Steamer and FAN projection systems — where “top” was equivalent to “highest projected WAR” and nothing else.

Yesterday, the author performed a similar exercise — except for, instead of identifying the top rookie-eligible players, the author identified the best field players per Steamer who are currently without a starting role.

Today, the author once again looks at the best players sans a starting role, except with using the ZiPS projections, which were officially released at the site on Monday afternoon.

Below are the 11 players (because there was a tie for 10th place) who most aptly fit that description. Below that are some brief comments by the author to give the impression that he has not merely assembled a Table of Numbers.

First, though, five notes:

1. “Best” in the context of this exercise is equivalent to “projected WAR per every 650 plate appearances.”

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Episode 311
Dave Cameron analyzes an amount of baseball that is ca. two standard deviations above the mean with regard to how much baseball is analyzed. Discussed this week: outfield alignment, the importance of; the Yankees outfield situation following Curtis Granderson’s injury; projections and fan enthusiasm.

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 36 min play time.)

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Table of Contents
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1. The Best Players per Steamer Without Starting Roles
2. Mostly Unhelpful Video: Bobby Scales, Defensing

The Best Players per Steamer Without Starting Roles
Last week, the author used his unparalleled capacity for “sorting through leaderboards” to identify the top forecasts for rookie-eligible players, according to the ZiPS and Steamer and FAN projection systems — where “top” was equivalent to “highest projected WAR” and nothing else.

What follows is the product of a very similar exercise — except for, instead of identifying the top rookie-eligible players, the author has identified the best field players per Steamer who are currently without a starting role.

Below are the 14 players (because there was a considerable tie for seventh place) who most aptly fit that description. Below that are some brief comments by the author to give the impression that he has not merely assembled a Table of Numbers.

First, though, five notes:

1. “Best” in the context of this exercise is equivalent to “projected WAR per every 650 plate appearances.”

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Episode 310
Al Skorupa writes for Bullpen Banter and (quite recently) RotoGraphs and resides just outside of Providence, Rhode Island. He discusses the specific challenges of, and opportunities for, covering prospects in the Northeast.

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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1. Spring Broadcast Schedule Begins Saturday
2. Saturday Games and Probable Starters
3. Sunday Games and Probable Starters

Spring Broadcast Schedule Begins Saturday
This weekend, six spring-training games are available via MLB.TV. “Which pitchers are starting those games?” a hypothetical reader might ask conveniently for the sake of this post. To which the author responds: “That’s a reasonable question.”

Indeed, given the nature of spring training, teams’ probable starters are not available days ahead of time (through the MLB website, for example) the way they are during the regular season. For example, as the author writes this, there are precisely zero probable starters listed for Saturday’s and Sunday’s games — and yet, this is what we might call “need to know” information.

With a view to satisfying the reader’s curiosity, then, what the author has done is to utilize his Google machine such that he might procure it (i.e. the information) from the internet. What follows is the fruit of that not-very-exhausting labor.

Beside each pitcher is his Steamer projection for 2013. Source material is available by clicking on each respective team acronym. All corrections are invited.

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