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

1. Status Update: Javier Vazquez’s Status, Updated
2. Video: Javier Vazquez’s Most Recent Major League Start
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Puerto Rican League

Status Update: Javier Vazquez’s Status, Updated
Right-hander Javier Vazquez, 36, has made four starts since joining Ponce of the Puerto Rican League at the beginning of the month — most recently on Dec. 19 at Mayaguez, when he posted this impressive line (box): 6.0 IP, 27 TBF, 11 K, 2 BB, 6:2 GO:AO.

Vazquez has now posted this other, more different line during those same four starts: 17.0 IP, 23 K, 3 BB, 1 HR. His performance has given him the league’s best regressed kwERA despite a relatively small sample — which, because of the way SCOUT- (discussed below) is calculated, it’s actually more difficult to produce excellent numbers in a small sample like that.

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

1. Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
2. Unnecessary Video: Kal Daniels Making a Catch Once
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League

Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
As noted in today’s release of the ZiPS projections for the Washington Nationals, Bryce Harper’s closest comparable at the moment, according to ZiPS, is former Reds outfielder Kal Daniels. As also noted in that post, Kal Daniels was a pretty excellent ballplayer between his age-22 and -26 seasons, during which span he posted a 16.9 WAR over 1,970 plate appearances — i.e. over five wins for every 600 plate appearances.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, are being released at FanGraphs this year. Below are the projections for the NL East champion Washington Nationals. Szymborski can be found on Twitter at @DSzymborski

Other 2013 Projections: Athletics / Giants..

Batters
The most interesting projection for the Nationals is probably Bryce Harper’s because one of the most interesting projections in all baseball is probably Bryce Harper’s. ZiPS forecasts Harper to approximate his Rookie of the Year campaign, when he posted a 4.9 WAR. Certain readers might consider said forecast pessimistic, given that Harper will be a year more experienced and a year closer to his peak in 2013. Still, he (i.e. Harper) is projected to be the best field player on a strong team as a 20-year-old.

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

1. Table: How 2012’s Best Relievers Were Acquired
2. Of Note: Evan Gattis’s Past Week in Venezuela
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Venezuelan Winter League

Table: How 2012’s Best Relievers Were Acquired
On Sunday, the Boston Red Sox agreed to send youngish corner-type Jerry Sands, right-handed prospect Stolmy Pimentel, and (likely) two others to Pittsburgh in exchange for closer Joel Hanrahan and (likely) one other. It represents the third not-insubstantial trade — after last year’s deals for Andrew Bailey (which required conceding Josh Reddick and Miles Head) and Mark Melancon (which cost them Jed Lowrie and Kyle Weiland) — the third not-insubstantial trade the Red Sox have conducted over the last two seasons in search of quality, high-leverage relief.

It raises the question, of course: are quality, high-leverage relievers generally acquired by means of trade? And, if not by trade, then how are they acquired?

Below is a (sortable) table of 2012’s best relief pitchers, as measured by the differential between shutdowns (SD) and meltdowns (MD). For each pitcher, I’ve included how he was acquired by the team with which he concluded the 2012 season — either by draft (DR), free agency (FA), trade (TR), or waivers (WV).

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

1. Three Very Recent Transactions
2. GIFs of Enthusiasm: Yoshi Tateyama’s Screwball
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

Three Very Recent Transactions
Tateyama Re-Signs with Texas
The Texas Rangers have re-signed right-handed reliever Yoshinori Tateyama to a minor-league contract, reports MLB.com’s T.R. Sullivan. Over two major-league seasons, the soon-to-be 37-year-old Tateyama pitched 61.0 innings, posting this precise line: 23.7% K, 6.6% BB, 37.5% GB, 3.01 SIERA, 88 xFIP-, 0.2 WAR. Also, he throws a screwball ca. 6% of the time last season — an example of which spectacle one can see below.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the second set of 2013’s projections — for the AL West champion Oakland Athletics. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Batters
With his offseason acquisition of outfielder Chris Young (for Cliff Pennington and a minor leaguer), GM Billy Beane has created a good kind of the problem for the A’s: four of the team’s five best field players, per ZiPS — and four of the five team’s field players projected to record a WAR above 2.0 — are outfielders. Coco Crisp and Young both have positive career UZRs in center field; Reddick has the same in right. All three have pretty large sample sizes at their respective positions. Yoenis Cespedes has neither decent fielding numbers nor a sample that requires us to weight said numbers heavily. Still, based on the defensive reputations of all four players, it wouldn’t be shocking to see a lineup with Cespedes at DH and the other three playing the outfield.

Outside of that quadrumvirate — and newly signed Japanese shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima (about whom Jeff Sullivan recently made some shockingly intelligent comments) — ZiPS sees mostly pieces, but little impact.

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

1. Table: League’s Top Changeups by Pitch-Type Runs, 2012
2. Action Footage: Three of Jason Vargas’s Changeups
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Mexican Pacific League

Table: League’s Top Changeups by Pitch-Type Runs, 2012
As Alden Gonzalez of MLB.com was first to report on Wednesday, the Seattle Mariners have traded left-hander Jason Vargas (829.2 career IP, 5.9 WAR, 8.4 RA9-Wins) to the Angels for first baseman/designated hitter Kendrys Morales (1762 career PA, 6.0 WAR). As Jeff Sullivan noted not long after that, the trade mostly benefits both teams. “The Angels,” writes Sullivan, “had too many bats and too few starting pitchers, so they traded a bat for a starting pitcher. The Mariners wanted a bat more than they wanted to keep one of their starting pitchers.”

Morales’s best tool is his power, represented most succinctly by his .210 career ISO. Vargas’s best tool is his changeup. Nor is Vargas’s changeup his best pitch, it’s also one of the best pitches in the league.

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

1. Status Update: Scott Kazmir’s Status, Updated
2. Video: Scott Kazmir Striking Out All the Yankees in 2008
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Puerto Rican League

Status Update: Scott Kazmir’s Status, Updated
Scott Kazmir, who last pitched at the major-league level (for 1.2 innings) in 2011 and last pitched effectively in something more like 2008, currently resides atop the SCOUT pitching leaderboard for starters in the Puerto Rican League. The left-hander, who’s still just 28 years old, pitched for the Sugar Land Skeeters of the Atlantic League this year, posting a 51:33 strikeout-to-walk ratio in in 64.0 innings (14 starts).

Through five starts and 22.2 innings for Carolina in Puerto Rico, Kazmir has recorded a 27:8 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 2.27 GO/AO — which latter figure probably translates into something like a 50% or 55% ground-ball rate.

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Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS projections, which have typically appeared in the pages of Baseball Think Factory, will be released at FanGraphs this year. Below is the first set of 2013’s projections — for the World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Don’t hesitate to leave notes regarding format/presentation in the comments section, as the author frequently has no idea what he’s doing.

Other thing: Szymborski himself will be chatting at Noon ET today in these very same electronic pages, and will happily answer any questions readers have regarding the projections themselves.

Batters
The Giants’ success is tied pretty strongly to the health and success of Buster Posey — not merely because only one player (i.e. Mike Trout) posted a higher WAR than Posey in 2012, but also because San Francisco’s catching corps lacks anything like impact talent. At 23, Hector Sanchez certainly has some promise, but even approaching Posey’s production would be a considerable challenge.

Of some interest will be how well the club is able to account for the departure of Melky Cabrera. While they were obviously able to win a championship following his suspension, Cabrera was also integral to the Giants’ regular-season performance, posting a 4.6 WAR in just 113 games (501 plate appearances). Manning the corners now will be Hunter Pence in right field and (likely) a platoon of Gregor Blanco and Andres Torres in left. ZiPS is optimistic neither about Blanco’s ability to match his career-high 2.4 wins from 2012, nor Pence’s ability to earn the entirety of the ca. $14 million he’s likely to receive in arbitration.

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

1. World Series Odds Converted into Projections
2. Video: Cubs Shortstop Prospect Arismendy Alcantara
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League

World Series Odds Converted into Projections
Bovada (née Bodog) has published their early odds for the winner of the 2013 World Series. Odds for each of the 30 major-league teams are reproduced below. Also included are the break-even (BE) point (i.e. the likelihood of winning above which a team must have in order for a bet to be profitable) and a generic “projected” probability (i.e. what the odds suggest is the likely chance of each team winning the World Series) calculated by scaling the sum of all break-even percentages to 100%.

Note: the author has assumed, as appears to be customary, that the bettor gets his original stake back in a winning bet. So if the odds are 8/1 — as they are for Toronto — the bettor receives $9 in return for a winning $1 bet, making the break-even point only 11.1%.

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