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

1. Assorted Headlines
2. GIFs: College Prospect Ryne Stanek’s Lusty Slider
3. Status Update: Venezuelan Winter League Championship Series

Assorted Headlines
Baseball America Publishes Excellent College Baseball Preview
“Published last Thursday” would be the more appropriate phrasing, but would also reveal that the author, who is hypothetically paid to do just such a thing, neglected to see Aaron Fitt’s excellent annual piece when it was released. In any case, Fitt has released his preview-cum-scouting-report of the top-25 college teams. First overall: North Carolina, which team features three starters who posted an 8.1 K/9 or better last season. Noted, and draft-eligible, pitching prospect Ryne Stanek — whose repertoire includes a mid-90s fastball and plus slider — heads third-ranked Arkansas.

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

1. Assorted Headlines
2. Table: Nick Johnson’s Walk Rate in Context
3. Three Images: Venezuelan Winter League Championship Series

Assorted Headlines
Johnson Announces Retirement
Former Yankees and Expos and Nationals first baseman Nick Johnson has retired, reports Sweeny Murti of New York’s WFAN. A legitimate offensive force when healthy, Johnson was frequently injured and amassed just 200 major-league plate appearances between 2010-12. A notably patient batter, he was among the league’s leaders in walk percentage over the course of his career — a claim that the author has supposed by means of nicely appointed table below.

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

1. Actual Quotes from the Actual Ryan Braun
2. Status Update: All the Caribbean Leagues
3. Plagiarized Video: Johnny Monell Hitting Home Runs

Actual Quotes from the Actual Ryan Braun
By what is likely a result of some manner of oversight or clerical error on their part, the BBWAA recently admitted the present author into its membership. What that does is to provide him (i.e. me, the author) less-than-fettered access to major-league baseball players and personnel. Having only ever had entirely fettered access beforehand, this represents a considerable improvement.

Sunday afternoon’s Brewers On Deck fanfest situation at Milwaukee’s Delta Center provided the first opportunity for the author to exercise the rights of his credential.

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

1. Nerds Stats for Venezuela’s Provisional WBC Team
2. Comparative Images: Cesar Jimenez vs. Caesar Augustus

Nerds Stats for Venezuela’s Provisional WBC Team
Last Thursday, all 16 participants in this year’s World Baseball Classic announced their provisional rosters for that same tournament (which itself begins in early March). Recently, in the Notes, we’ve considered the nerds stats for some of the notable WBC rosters, where notable is defined as “those which most interest the author on that particular morning.”

Here are the countries considered so far: Canada* / Dominican Republic / United States.

*Not by this precise methodology.

Below are the members of the Venezuelan national team, accompanied by various nerd stats from the last three seasons of major-league play.

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

1. Regressed Stats for the Dutch League, Also
2. Professional Humor Video: Holland vs. the Netherlands

Regressed Stats for the Dutch League, Also
Much as he did for the Italian Baseball League in the composition of yesterday’s Daily Notes post, the author has spent a not insubstantial portion of the past 24 hours both (a) copy-and-pasting Dutch baseball league stats into an Excel file, and then (b) formatting and applying a simple regression to those same stats, so’s to produce the leaderboards one finds below — which is to say, SCOUT-type leaderboards for that same Dutch baseball league

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

1. Regressed Italian League Stats, For Some Reason
2. Video Footage: The Craig Kimbrel of Italy

Regressed Italian League Stats, For Some Reason
A man does not always know what he’s doing. Perhaps, in fact, he never knows what he’s doing.

Regardless of the precise frequency, what’s clear is that the author of this post — for reasons that have yet to be revealed — spent a considerable portion of Tuesday night first (a) copy-and-pasting Italian baseball league stats into an Excel file, and then (b) formatting and applying a simple regression to those same stats, so’s to produce the leaderboards one finds below — which is to say, SCOUT-type leaderboards for that same Italian baseball league

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

1. Nerds Stats for the Dominican’s Provisional WBC Team
2. Video: The Only Footage You’ve Maybe Seen of Kelvin Herrera
3. Status Update: All the Caribbean Leagues

Nerds Stats for the Dominican’s Provisional WBC Team
This past Thursday, all 16 participants in this year’s World Baseball Classic announced their provisional rosters for that same tournament (which itself begins in early March). Over the course of this week, we’ll consider the nerds stats for some of the notable WBC rosters, where notable is defined as “those which most interest the author on that particular morning.”

Here are the countries considered so far: Canada* / United States.

*Not by this precise methodology.

Below are the members of the Dominican Republic team, accompanied by various nerd stats from the last three seasons of major-league play.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

1. Nerds Stats for the United States’ Provisional WBC Team
2. Video: Craig Kimbrel Doing Whatever

Nerds Stats for the United States’ Provisional WBC Team
This past Thursday, all 16 participants in this year’s World Baseball Classic announced their provisional rosters for that same tournament (which itself begins in early March). Over the course of this week, we’ll consider the nerds stats for some of the notable WBC’s rosters, where notable is defined as “those which most interest the author on that particular morning.”

Below are the members of the United States team, accompanied by various nerd stats from the last three seasons of major-league play.

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

1. The Pitching Stats for the Pitching Coaches
2. Video: Dave Righetti’s No-Hitter, 1983

The Pitching Stats for the Pitching Coaches
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, for reasons that remain somewhat unclear, we considered how well the league’s hitting coaches performed as major leaguers themselves. In today’s edition, we turn our attention to the pitching coaches — and to their corresponding major-league pitching careers.

As noted yesterday, there’s nothing to suggest — or, at least, not so far as the author is aware — that a player’s own personal pitching ability is a determinative factor in his ability to coach others well in that same art. Stated differently: this is a mostly trivial exercise the author is conducting.

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Table of Contents
Today’s edition of Daily Notes has no table of contents, it appears.

The Hitting Stats for the Hitting Coaches
The Miami Marlins named former Cardinal and Devil Ray and Mariner and Yankee Tino Martinez as their new hitting coach this offseason, shortly after the departure of Ozzie Guillen and his staff — including Guillen’s hitting coach, former major leaguer Eduardo Perez.

There’s nothing to suggest, so far as the author knows, that a player’s own personal hitting ability is a determinative factor in his ability to coach others well in that same art. That said, it’s also the case that Martinez was an above-average hitter over the course of his 16-year career.

“How, generally, have the league’s batting coaches performed as major leaguers?” the author, who constructs thoughts in full sentences, asked himself. The answer, one finds, is best presented in the form of a table, not unlike the one below.

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