It will likely come as no surprise to the reader to learn that Cleveland right-hander Justin Masterson and the author have a lot in common: we both lived in the Boston area for a little while, we both have -son at the end of at least one of our names, and both of us totally possess a Y chromosome (regardless of what some “doctors” supposedly say). “Two peas in a pod” would be the most expeditious way of describing us.

One way in which we’re different, however, is that only one of us pitched a complete game against the Reds on Wednesday night (box). And only one of us finished said complete game by striking out baseball’s most likely year-end WAR leader.

Indeed, it was Justin Masterson — and not the present author — who did those latter two things. Shocking, I know.

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Episode 201
Dayn Perry, contributor to CBS Sports’ Eye on Baseball and author of two books (one of them serviceable), makes his weekly appearance on 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 36 min. play time.)

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

1. Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards: June So Far
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards: June So Far
The Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards, What They Are
The Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards represent an attempt to compensate for the influence of early season narratives, which — likely owing to a cogntive bias known as the primacy effect — are often quite powerful and can obscure more recent, notable performances. (Note: this was discussed in, like, 11% more depth recently in these same pages.)

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

1. Featured Game: St. Louis at Detroit, 19:05 ET (MLB.TV Free Game)
2. The College World Series: Still Happening
3. Today’s Complete MLB Schedule

Featured Game: St. Louis at Detroit, 19:05 ET
The Significance of This Game
This — so far as the author can tell — is the first game of the season to register a perfect NERD score of 10.

What Is NERD, For Those Who Don’t Know
NERD represents an attempt to measure the likely interest a player or team or game might have to the baseball nerd (which is probably you, by virtue of the fact that you’re reading this).

Links That Exist on the Internet
Click here for more information on Pitcher and Team NERD scores and here for how Game NERD Scores are calculated.

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Mets right-hander and soft-spoken Southern gentleman R.A. Dickey threw his second consecutive one-hitter tonight — in this case, against the Orioles of Baltimore. Nor do his defense-independent numbers suggest that he was anything but excellent on Monday night (box): 9.0 IP, 30 TBF, 13 K, 2 BB, 11 GB on 15 batted-balls (73.3% GB), 1.14 xFIP.

The average knuckleball from Dickey has approximately zero inches of horizontal movement and a single inch of positive vertical movement — or “rise,” a concept the present author discussed briefly earlier on Monday. Of course, the idea of an “average” knuckleball is a bit of a misnomer: given the nature of the pitch, the standard deviation of both sorts of movement is likely quite high. Indeed, this is the strength of the pitch: no one really knows where it’s going, not even Dickey.

As a sort of celebration of Dickey’s last two games — of his entire season, really — I sought out Dickey’s three “movingest” knuckleballs from his Monday start. In this case, I’ve identified the three of Dickey’s knuckleballs with the highest absolute value of total movement (i.e. the sum of the absolute values of both horizontal and vertical movement, in inches).

It’s hard to say if what follows are necessarily Dickey’s three best knuckleballs from Monday. However, each of them really does move quite a bit: indeed, the reader will note that catcher Josh Thole is unable to catch two of the three pitches and has to sort of violently move his glove to catch the other.

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If you’ve ever watched even maybe one baseball game in your entire life, you’ve probably heard the term “rising fastball” used by a broadcaster, coach, or player. In point of fact, insofar as gravity is a thing that we have on earth, the notion that a fastball can “rise” is a misnomer. Like any object, a baseball is drawn toward the earth at 9.8 meters per second squared.

If you’ve ever made your way to a pitcher’s PITCHf/x page here at the site, however, you might’ve noticed that, indeed, pitchers are credited with positive (or “rising”) horizontal movement on many of their offerings. The league-average vertical movement for most pitch types, in fact, registers as positive.

While these two facts appear to contradict each other, they actually don’t. The PITCHf/x numbers for vertical movement one finds here — and at sites like Brooks Baseball and Texas Leaguers — are presented not as absolute movement, but movement relative to a spinless ball. When we see that a league-average fastball has 8.8 inches of postive vertical (i.e. Y-axis) movement, what that means is, is that the league-average fastball drops 8.8 inches fewer than a ball without backspin.

The intent of the present post, however, is neither to discuss the finer points of physics nor to make a particularly salient point about or using PITCHf/x. The author has expertise in neither. What the author does know about is how to make a GIF, which is what he (read: I) has/have done.

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Episode 200
FanGraphs managing editor Dave Cameron, as per usual, makes his weekly appearance on FanGraphs Audio and analyzes all baseball.

Discussed:
• Mariners unsigned third-round draft pick (from 2010) — and likely first-round selection in 2013 — Ryne Stanek, who pitches for Arkansas on Monday night in the College World Series.
• The American League’s continued dominance over the National one.
• Teams in need: the Detroit Tigers, for example, who have multiple outfielders with negative WARs.

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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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. College World Series: Ryne Stanek to Pitch Tonight
2. Today’s Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

College World Series: Ryne Stanek to Pitch Tonight
What Is Happening Tonight, Specifically
Specifically, what is happening tonight is the Arkansas Razorbacks are playing the South Carolina Gamecocks in a College World Series game at 9pm ET.

What’s Happening Tonight, Even More Specifically
Even more specifically, what’s happening tonight is sophomore right-hander Ryne Stanek is pitching for Arkansas.

One Thing About Ryne Stanek
Of Stanek, Baseball America’s Aaron Fitt wrote this in March — with regard to Stanek’s prospects for the 2013 draft:

[H]is rapidly improving ability to utilize his stuff by attacking the strike zone (without trying too hard to be too fine) makes him a strong early candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick in the 2013 draft.

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

1. Breaking: College World Series Is Romp of Emotion
2. Today’s Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Breaking: College World Series Is Romp of Emotion
Regarding the Title of This Post
The title of this post is designed to alert readers to a breaking news story, the substance of which story is that the College World Series — currently ongoing in Omaha, Nebraska, America — is a romp of emotion.

For Example, Why It’s a Romp of Emotion
Allow me to answer that question in the form of multiple Hot GIFs.

Robert Benincasa’s Slidepiece
Here’s Florida State reliever Robert Benincasa’s (7th round, Washington) slider, from a game in which he pitched 4.0 innings of relief, stiking out a third (5 of 15) of the batters he faced.

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

1. The College World Series, Important Knowledge About
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The College World Series, Important Knowledge About
The Things That Happened on Friday
The College World Series — which you’ll watch this evening and like watching — began last (Friday) night. Northeastern upstarts Stony Brook lost to UCLA, 9-1 (box). In the second game, Arizona beat Florida State by a score of 4-3 in 12 innings (box).

What That All Means
What that means is, is UCLA and Arizona will now face each other on Sunday night as part of the “winners bracket” of the double-elimination tournament. Northeastern upstarts Stony Brook will play Florida State on Sunday, as well. The loser of that latter game will be eliminated.

How the Author Feels
The author feels like, despite their loss, Florida State still has a pretty good chance of making it to the championship finals.

What Makes Him Feel That Way
What makes him feel that way is a combo package of excellent center fielder James Ramsey and also wild speculation — with a decided emphasis on the latter.

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