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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Corner Outfielders
2. An Observation Regarding Ichiro!
3. Elimination Playoff Game Event

Contract Crowdsourcing: Corner Outfielders
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with corner outfielders. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catchers / First Basemen / Second Basemen / Third Basemen / Shortstops.

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Episode 262
Advanced NFL Stats is more or less to gridiron football what FanGraphs is to baseball — with the caveat, perhaps, that football is fluid (as opposed to baseball, which is turn-based) and presents certain challenges for that reason. Brian Burke, the proprietor of said nerdly internet website, is the guest 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 52 min. play time.)

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Even as we prepare, via our contract-crowdsourcing project, for the commencement of free agency at the major-league level, a growing number of minor-league players have already — William Wallace-like, one imagines, while leading painted Scotsmen into battle — declared their freedom.

What sort of impact might this year’s class of minor-league free agents have? One never knows, of course. However, as Baseball America’s Matt Eddy noted earlier this week at that same site, a number of last season’s minor-league free agents turned out to be actually productive pieces on actual major-league teams.

Eddy identified 13 players who were signed as minor-league free agents last offseason and proceeded to provide some sort of value in 2012. Below are those same players, rendered into table form and sorted by WAR.

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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Shortstops
2. Three Notes Regarding the Other Alex Gonzalez
3. Today’s One Playoff Game

Contract Crowdsourcing: Shortstops
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with shortstops. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catchers / First Basemen / Second Basemen / Third Basemen.

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With two playoff games scheduled for today and considerable intrigue concerning the future of a certain well-compensated Yankees third baseman abounding on the internet, there’s obviously one thing on the minds of baseball fans everywhere — namely, the early offensive performances of certain, likely obscure, participants in this year’s winter leagues.

Here’s why I, personally, like winter-league leaderboards: because, in almost every case, they represent an opportunity to learn something. While the playoffs generate narratives consumed en masse by the sporting public, the winter leagues begin quietly in mostly distant and certainly Spanish-speaking lands. And while the postseason plays host to, and showcases, a number of the game’s legitimate superstars, the winter leagues in the Dominican and Mexico and Venezuela (and, soon, Puerto Rico) feature what I, at least, consider to be a charming combination of actual prospects, minor-league filler, and aged and aging journeymen.

What follows represents, then, not only a series of three batting leaderboards, but also an opportunity to become acquainted with some new names — names which, in some cases, the reader might see on the backs of a major-league uniform within the next couple years, and which, in other cases, will never bother the reader again.

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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Third Basemen
2. Erotic Image: Likely Free Agent Kevin Youkilis
3. Today’s Playoff Games

Contract Crowdsourcing: Third Basemen
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with third basemen. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catcher / First Basemen / Second Basemen.

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Episode 261
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), is in Detroit, where he is actually covering the ALCS for an actual and accredited internet site.

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 1 hr and 2 min. play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Second Basemen
2. Photo: So-Called Major Leaguer Freddy Sanchez
3. Today’s Playoff Games

Contract Crowdsourcing: Second Basemen
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with second basemen. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catcher / First Basemen.

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Episode 260
Prospect analyst Mike Newman discusses players he’s seen — including, in this case, catcher Hector Sanchez (Giants), first baseman D.J. Hicks (Twins), and shortstop/second baseman Nick Franklin (Mariners) — and the larger concerns each raises with regard to prospect analysis generally.

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 52 min. play time.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

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

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: First Basemen
2. Photo: Carlos Lee Looking Handsome
3. Today’s One Playoff Game

Contract Crowdsourcing: First Basemen
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series. FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with first basemen. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catcher.

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