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

1. Saturday’s Notable Games of Note
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game(s)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Saturday’s Notable Games of Note
Introductory Note
As the table below indicates, stolen entirely from the playoff odds located elsewhere on this site, three American League teams enter play on Saturday each with a reasonable opportunity of qualifying for the league’s two wild-card spots.

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

1. Corey Kluber Society on the Precipice of History
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game(s)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Corey Kluber Society on the Precipice of History
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce a meeting of the Corey Kluber Society tonight (Friday) at 8:10pm ET.

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

1. A Count of Every Club’s Meaningless Games
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
Introduction
With four days remaining in the major-league regular season, only three clubs — Cleveland, Tampa Bay, and Texas — possess some manner of playoff odds that aren’t either 0.0% or 100.0%. Some teams (Kansas City, New York AL) have only just been eliminated from a possible postseason berth; others (Chicago AL, Houston, Miami) have possessed playoff odds of 0% for over a month.

What the author has done, in the table below, is to calculate the number of meaningless games every major-league team will have played by the end of the season — where meaningless indicates games played while the team in question has possessed either a 0% or 100% chance of making the playoffs, per Cool Standings. Note that this is different, probably by a little bit, than what is frequently referred to as “mathematical elimination,” but (a) is another, pretty similar type of mathematical elimination and also (b) was easier to calculate, as the author’s internet browser happened already to be pointed to Cool Standings.

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

1. A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Statistical Update on Players in Deadline Deals
Introduction
On August 2nd of this year, the author published in these same Notes a leaderboard featuring all — or, at least, the most notable — players to have changed teams ahead of the July 31st deadline for non-waiver deals.

Nearly two months later, what the author has done is to aggregate and publish below a pair of similar leaderboards — in this case, featuring the statistical records for August and September of all those same players who appeared on the leaderboards from two months ago.

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

1. Power on the 20-80 Scouting Scale for 2013
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Power on the 20-80 Scouting Scale for 2013
Introduction
In a post that appeared in these pages this past February, prospect writer Mark Smith used statistical proxies to investigate the thresholds at the major-league level of different baseball tools as measured on the 20-80 scouting scale. Smith found, for example, that Jose Bautista‘s home-run rate of 6.6% between 2010 and -12 represented the standard for 80 power and that Michael Bourn’s average of 9 BsR per annum did the same for baserunning/speed.

With just a week left in the current season, the author has reproduced Smith’s effort for 2013 itself — for power, specifically.

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

1. The Top Prospect-Age Hitters by FIB*
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

The Top Prospect-Age Hitters by FIB*
Introduction
Minor-league regular seasons everywhere have come to their respective conclusions. Last week, before the author had become a really big deal and moved to Europe, he published a leaderboard of the top-10 qualified minor-league pitchers by kwERA (i.e. an ERA estimator derived entirely from just strikeout and walk rates).

Today, despite the fact that he’s a really big deal now and lives in Europe, the author has condescended to publish a second leaderboard — in this case, of the top-10 qualified minor-league hitters by FIB*, or Fielding Independent Batting (Asterisk). What FIB* isn’t is the same metric introduced to readers by Bradley Woodrum about two years ago. That one, called Fielding Independent Batting, but without the very integral asterisk, accounts for xBABIP and is presented as an index stat, like wRC+. What FIB* is is a batting metric calculated almost precisely like FIP, except then placed on the same scale as wOBA*.

*The equation, in full: [(HR*12 + BB*3 – K*2) * .141] + .3267.

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Table of Contents

Here’s the table of contents for next September 20th’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Matt Harvey: Can’t He Decide On That Surgery Already?
2. The Story of Luke Hochevar’s 63rd Save
3. Derek Jeter’s MVP Comeback Season Continues
4. The iPhone 6, and how you can not only watch the MLB.TV Free Game on it, you can also play center field.
5. Today’s Complete Schedule, except for the Dodgers and Diamondbacks, still stuck in Australia, waiting to get out since April.

Alternatively, here’s the table of contents for today’s partially crowdsourced edition of the Daily Notes.

1. An Introduction
2. Hot Bruce Chen GIF
3. Mike Trout Slash Lines
4. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
5. Today’s Complete Schedule

An Introduction

I am graph-impaired, and far more comfortable writing poems about anti-semitic urine collectors, scripts for the new NBC comedy, “Park Factors and Recreation,” and fake fantasy mailbags than actual non-fictional content about current issues on the baseball diamond.

Thus, in preparation for filling Carson’s shoes this morning, I begged the loyal NotGraphs readers to help me fill these notes. They responded by requesting hot Bruce Chen GIFs, Mike Trout’s slash line, and daily drink selections to help you cope with watching the Astros on the MLB.TV free game of the day, which is perhaps MLB’s punishment for not upgrading to a more expensive app.

I will try to fulfill these requests, and also provide you with a chart of today’s starting pitchers. Carson will be back on Monday, and all will be better.

Hot Bruce Chen GIF

Commenter Samy Dangerfield requested a hot Bruce Chen GIF. This is the best I can do.

Mike Trout Slash Lines

Commenter ettin wanted Mike Trout slash lines. According to this 2011 Baseball Prospectus piece by Emma Span, which you probably do not want to read at work, slash fiction refers to stories about people (and cartoon characters?) having, uh, very graphic extracurricular lives. Thus, I assume that ettin was asking for lines like this:

“…and then Trout gently stroked his bat…”

“…and with the final poker hand decided, Mike Trout, Albert Pujols, and the Rally Monkey were the only ones with any clothes still left on….”

“…and Trout said to Josh Hamilton, ‘I know exactly how we can bust that slump….'”

Or maybe he just wanted to know that Trout’s at a ridiculous .330/.435/.570, topping last year, with an even more ridiculous second-half line of .346/.496/.581, with 53 walks in 56 games. No walks since Sunday though… Monday ended a 9-games-with-a-walk streak.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game

Houston at Cleveland | 19:05 ET Brett Oberholtzer (60.1 IP, 107 xFIP-, 1.0 WAR) faces Zach McAllister (125 IP, 113 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR) in the day’s longest-combined-last-names-of-starting-pitchers matchup. Also, the Indians should probably try and win this thing for the sake of their wild-card hopes.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Vin Scully, three hours later, broadcasting an entirely different game.

Today’s Complete Schedule

Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with beer and non-beer pairings, courtesy of prolific and helpful NotGraphs commenter Well-Beered Englishmen, whom you can also find on Twitter. Ah, Twitter. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and a random guess as to who will be pitching for the Yankees, since, as of this writing, it’s TBD*.

*Okay, I checked again and it’s CC Sabathia. But why change a whole chart?!

In the interest of shaking up these electronic pages a bit, I’ve decided to dig into the old FanGraphs mailbag to answer some questions from questionable readers. Remember, if you are interested in asking a question of FanGraphs representatives, use the frequent chats that occur on this site, because that is a much better option. If you insist on emailing a question to the totally-not-made-up mailbag, send it to fangraphstotallyrealmailbag@reallyrealinternet.biz.

Question #1: Hey, who are you? – Stephen, Dallas, TX
Excellent question, Stephen. I’m David Temple. You may know me from my excellent work at NotGraphs, where I currently hold titles as Most Handsome and Best Writer. NotGraphs is that little purple section of this site. You should check it out — there’s a lot of really great work over there. Most of it comes from me.

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Table of Contents

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

1. The Standings, and How Teams Stand According to Them
2. The Corey Kluber Society, Its Current Status
3. How 1987 Baseball Card Values Compared to Actual Player Value
4.Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
5. Today’s Complete Schedule

The Standings, and How Teams Stand According to Them

There are a dozenish contests remaining in the regular season, and fourteen teams with legitimate playoff aspirations, several of them owing to the Texas Rangers. According to FanGraphs’ very own playoff odds, the NL Wild Card is and has been resolved, and the Rays, Indians and Rangers are the leading contenders to have their playoff hopes determined by a single game.

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Before we begin, a brief note: Carson Cistulli will be celebrating in the French style for the next week (that sounds dirtier than I meant it) and will not be able to note things on the daily. As such, he’s foolishly enlisted several other writers from across the ___Graphs family of websites to fill in. He assured us that there is no pressure, as no one will read these things anyway. Anyway, the Daily Notes, for better or for worse, will probably be slightly different from that to which you are accustomed for the rest of this week. And now, the noting:

– Tonight we would have been privileged to watch Jose Fernandez make his 29th start and marvel at the fact that the Marlins were so unbelievably right that he could handle the jump from A-ball to the Majors (leaving aside questions of service time, which are unseemly). Instead, now that Fernandez has been officially shut down, we will see a 25 year old Sam Dyson, who I have never heard of but who I am assured is a real human male, start his first Major League game.

Let’s resolve to harbor no ill will toward young Mr. Dyson, who succeeded on what I’m going to call craftiness and guile in the minor leagues, despite striking out fewer than five batters per nine innings. Based on this alone, it’s unlikely Dyson gets more than what would have been Fernandez’s last two turns before he is DFAed this winter and is invariably signed by the Minnesota Twins.

But back to Fernandez. Throughout baseball history, successful innovation has been quick to catch on around the game. The curveball, the fielder’s glove, the three-man rotation, platooning, the four-man rotation, integration, the five-man rotation, the closer, etc. Monkeys saw, and monkeys did. Teams adapted to the new paradigm or they died. Yet, here are the Marlins following the Nationals’ lead in shutting down their young ace with more of the season left to play. The Twins did the same with Kyle Gibson (though that, also, could be described as a mercy killing), and the Mets were planning to do it with Matt Harvey, before his perfect elbow perfectly exploded. Where is the evidence that this works? At least the five-man rotation had the Big Red Machine and the closer had Rich Gossage to validate them. All this new strategy seems to have is Stephen Strasburg, whose forearm is sore as we speak, and a lot of “I dunno, I heard other people are doing it.”

Bill Baer does an excellent job of exploring this idea over on Hardball Talk. Intuitively, sure, it makes sense that pitching less would protect pitchers more, especially in light of all the evidence that demonstrates that overuse leads to injury. And I certainly would rather teams err on the side of caution, and acknowledge they have a much better idea of what their pitchers are feeling than I do. But as Harvard-trained sports physician Marcus Elliott notes, we’re bumbling around in the dark in many ways. It’s going to look awfully funny if and when we find out that the only thing we prevented by artificially limiting the number of starts an at risk pitcher makes was our own joy at getting to see the game’s best young pitchers more often.

– Johnny Cueto last threw a pitch in anger on June 28, when he was removed after re-straining a lat muscle in his right side. In all, this will be just his 10th start on the year, but it has turned out that the Reds haven’t really needed him all that much.

With Tony Cingrani fighting back spasms again, however, Cueto is going to rejoin the rotation tonight without so much as a rehab start, since all the minor leagues have closed up shop for the year. On the bright side, he gets to face the closest thing to a minor league team at the major league level, in the Houston Astros.

If Cueto’s healthy and effective, and if Cingrani can recover in time, it leaves the Reds with a pretty interesting dilemma as they try to set their rotation for the postseason. Latos and Bailey are locks, but if you can definitively figure out who to turn to between Bronson Arroyo, Mike Leake, Cingrani, and Cueto, you’re a better man, woman, or child than me.

– Wil Myers has been quietly excellent for the Rays, and will deservedly get the American League Rookie of the Year award. He also does incredibly naughty things to a baseball, as he did yesterday against Twins lefty Pedro Hernandez:

That ball traveled some 440 feet. Note the aw shucks look on Myers’s face on those replays and think about how hard it must be to remain humble when you can do that.

And, finally, your NERD scores: