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

1. Three Notable Prospects Promoted to Double-A
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Three Notable Prospects Promoted to Double-A
Player: Dylan Bundy, RHP, Baltimore
Promotion: High-A Frederick to Double-A Bowie
Notes: Bundy’s 11 starts at High-A (54.1 IP, 63 K, 17 BB) were decidedly not as dominant as the eight he’d made before that at South Atlantic League affiliate Delmarva (during which he posted a 40:2 K:BB in 30.0 innings and conceded just five hits), but they were still excellent. Bundy made his Double-A debut Tuesday night. Here’s his line from that game (box): 5.0 IP, 3 K, 3 BB, 8:3 GO:FO. And here, courtesy David Driver at MiLB.com, is a brief note on what he (i.e. Bundy) threw: “Bundy relied on a fastball in the mid-90s but had trouble finding the zone with his curve[,] as two breaking pitches stayed high in the first two innings.”

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Other Lists
Cape Cod League
Coastal Plain League
New England Collegiate League

With August very much here, the nation’s collegiate summer leagues — many of which have probably hosted at least one future major leaguer — are coming to an end.

Below are the players to have performed most ably in this year’s edition of the Northwoods League. Offensive production (represented as the totally made-up SCOUT+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average) is essentially a version of wRC+, except using the three main defense-independent inputs (home-run, walk, and strikeout rate), all regressed duly*. Pitching performance (represented by the also entirely made-up SCOUT-, where 100 is league average and below 100 represents above-average run prevention) is calculated using a version of kwERA, with regressed strikeout and walk rates as the relevant inputs.

*By the method outlined here.

The idea here is not to suggest that the following players are/were the actual best prospects from the Northwoods League this summer. Outlets like Baseball America and Perfect Game will certainly do a much better job of that. Rather, it’s to (a) represent as accurately and responsibly as possible the best performances of the Northwoods League season and to (b) acquaint ourselves with those top performers.

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

1. Three Important and Upcoming Dates
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Three Important and Upcoming Dates
Here are three essential dates for the reader’s impossibly stylish and totally leather-bound business agenda.

Tuesday, August 14th, Noon ET
According to the pitcher’s own father, 16th-overall pick Lucas Giolito makes his debut for the Washington Nationals Gulf Coast League affiliate — versus the Marlins affiliate in that same league. Giolito was considered a possible No. 1 pick in the 2012 draft until a sprained elbow this past spring complicated his status. The right-handed Giolito sat in the mid-90s with his fastball as a senior at Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles, according to Baseball America’s Nathan Rode, even hitting 100 mph at one point.

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Cole Hamels‘ three-pitch strikeout of Justin Ruggiano during the first inning of Monday night’s Phillies-Marlins game (box) in Miami isn’t more significant than most other three-pitch strikeouts, except for that (a) it occurred on three consecutive changeups and (b) it occurred in front of the very excellent Miami center-field camera, itself particularly well-suited to capture the movement of Hamels’ changeup and (c) the author happened — for some reason that no know one really knows — the author happened to be watching the game in question.

Also, because it’s rather late and managing editor Dave Cameron doesn’t know I’m posting this, is another reason why I’m posting this.

(PITCHf/x data courtesy Brooks Baseball.)

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Other Lists
Northwoods League
Coastal Plain League
New England Collegiate League

With August very much here, the nation’s collegiate summer leagues — many of which have probably hosted at least one future major leaguer — are coming to an end.

Below are the players to have performed most ably in this year’s edition of the Cape Cod Baseball League. Offensive production (represented as the totally made-up SCOUT+, where 100 is league average and above 100 is above average) is essentially a version of wRC+, except using the three main defense-independent inputs (home-run, walk, and strikeout rate), all regressed duly*. Pitching performance (represented by the also entirely made-up SCOUT-, where 100 is league average and below 100 represents above-average run prevention) is calculated using a version of kwERA, with regressed strikeout and walk rates as the relevant inputs.

*By the method outlined here.

The idea here is not to suggest that the following players are/were the actual best prospects from the Cape League this summer. Outlets like Baseball America and Perfect Game will certainly do a much better job of that. Rather, it’s to (a) represent as accurately and responsibly as possible the best performances of the Cape League season and to (b) acquaint ourselves with those top performers.

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Episode 225
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• Cameron’s verbal fisticuffs with The Book’s Mitchel Lichtman at the recent Saber Seminar.
• The Rays, how they’re first in the AL Wild Card and have Jeff Keppinger.
• The best places to live for seeing prospects.

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 37 min. play time.)

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

1. Parallel Universe: Every Team Minus Its Best Player
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Parallel Universe: Every Team Minus Its Best Player
Regarding Parallel Universe, Its Definition
Parallel universe is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as a “hypothetical self-contained separate reality in which Biff Tannen has become wealthy and corrupted, and changed Hill Valley into a chaotic dystopia.”

Regarding Parallel Universe, Another Possible Definition
Another possible definition of parallel universe is “a reality not entirely unlike the present one, except in which every major-league team’s best player has been replaced by a freely available one instead.”

Regarding That Second Definition
What this edition of the Notes considers is that second, less common definition of parallel universe.

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

1. Featured Game: Oakland at Chicago AL, 14:10 ET
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Oakland at Chicago AL, 14:10 ET
On What’s Happening in This Game
What’s happening in this game is the Oakland lineup — the Oakland lineup that features terrifying right-handed batters like Chris Carter (121 PA, 184 wRC+, .310 BABIP) and Yoenis Cespedes (328 PA, 144 wRC+, .358 BABIP) and Jonny Gomes (248 PA, 137 wRC+, .339 BABIP) — is once again facing a left-handed pitcher, in this case sling-shotting PYT Chris Sale (132.0 IP, 80 xFIP-, 3.9 WAR).

What the Author Would Assume
The author would assume that, owing to presence of the aforementioned and terrifying right-handed batters, that the Oakland lineup will have been — were one to examine the numbers — will have been particularly productive against left-handed pitchers.

What’s Actually the Case
In point of fact, it appears as though the Oakland offense has exhibited almost no platoon split whatsoever. Regard:

Vs. RHP: 2870 PA, 90 wRC+, .270 BABIP
Vs. LHP: 1440 PA, 92 wRC+, .280 BABIP

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

1. An Amendment to Friday’s Notes in re Curveballs and Movement
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

An Amendment to Friday’s Notes in re Curveballs and Movement
What the Author Is Amending
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, the author presented a table of what he called — in a flaccid attempt to be amusing, no doubt — what he called the “movingest” curveballs in the major leagues this year. To find the total movement of the the league’s curveballs, however, the author merely added the absolute value of every pitcher’s average horizontal movement on the curveball to the absolute value of the vertical movement of his curveball.

How the Author Should Have Found Total Movement, Probably
In point of fact, the author probably should have found the square root of the sum of the squared horizontal and vertical measurements — as humans have been doing for ca. 2500 years, that is.

Regarding This Oversight, To Whom the Author Apologizes About It
The author apologizes to the readership for this oversight, to Kyle Weiland (whose curveball displaces Brett Myers’s atop the leaderboard), and to Pythagoras of Samos.

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The playoffs of the nation’s premier collegiate summer wood-bat league, the Cape Cod Baseball League, began Thursday night. Along with the end of the regular season come the league’s various awards — and one player, left-hander Sean Manaea of both Hyannis and Indiana State, has won not only the league’s Top Pitcher Award but also its Outstanding Pro Prospect Award.

Manaea was excellent this summer, posting an 85:7 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 51.2 innings for Hyannis over nine appearances (including eight starts). Those numbers are preposterous as they sound: the next most strikeouts recorded was Ryan Connnolly’s total of 56 in 51.1 innings. Nor was Manaea’s dominance merely a product of polish or deception: according to the whole internet, he was sitting at 92-96 mph this summer and topping out at 98. There’s now every indication, provided he remains healthy, that Manaea will go in the first round of the 2013 draft.

It certainly seems as though being recognized as the best college prospect in a league that has, of late, produced ca. 200 draftees per year and generally has about 200-250 active alumni in the majors — it certainly seems as though that sort of thing would indicate future success. “How much future success?” one might wonder — or, like the author, wondered slightly earlier this afternoon.

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