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

1. Not for Nothing, Daniel Straily
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Not for Nothing, Daniel Straily
Regarding the Author, What He Did This Weekend
This weekend, the author went out to dinner twice to a pair of entirely satisfactory area restaurants, escorted his wife on a totally innocent and pleasant walk around the neighborhood, and watched (and enjoyed) Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for the first time.

Regarding the Author, What He Mostly Did This Weekend
What the author mostly did this weekend, however — probably way more than that other stuff — is think about Oakland minor-league right-hander and 23-year-old Daniel Straily.

Regarding Straily, His Line at Double-A This Year
Here’s Straily’s line at Double-A Midland this year: 85.1 IP, 11.39 K/9, 2.43 BB/9, 0.63 HR/9, 2.57 FIP.

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

1. Glorious Custom Leaderboard Update: First-Round Draftees
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Glorious Custom Leaderboard Update: First-Round Draftees
Regarding What This Is
Ten or something days ago now, I submitted for the reader’s consideration a leaderboard — a glorious custom leaderboard — of the first-round picks from the 2012 draft who had both signed and then started playing professionally. What follows is a hyperlink to an updated version of that same leaderboard.

New Additions to the Leaderboard
Here are the first-rounders who’ve been added to the leaderboard since that first iteration of the first-rounders leaderboard:

• Michael Zunino, C, Seattle
• Kyle Zimmer, RHP, Kansas City
• Michael Wacha, RHP, St. Louis
• Chris Stratton, RHP, San Francisco
• Marcus Stroman, RHP, Toronto

Two Other Additions to the Leaderboard
Here are two other players who’ve been added to the glorious and custom leaderboard — not because they’re first rounders, but because the author’s True Nature has dictated it:

• Nolan Fontana, SS, Houston — Because of his champion offensive line thus far.
• Sherman Johnson, 3B, LA AL — Because of his obvious personal magnetism.

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Table of Contents
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1. Featured Game: Atlanta at Washington, 13:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Atlanta at Washington, 13:05 ET
Regarding What’s Notable About This Game
What’s notable about this game is that Ben Sheets is making his second major-league start of the season in it and also his second major-league start of the last two seasons.

Sheets’ First Start
Here’s Sheets’ line from his first start of the last two seasons, home against the Mets on July 15th (box): 6.0 IP, 21 TBF, 5 K, 1 BB, 3 GB on 15 batted-balls (20%), 3.85 xFIP.

Video of Sheets’ First Start
Here’s video from that same July 15th start:

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Table of Contents
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1. Expected wOBA Leaderboards: Last 30 Days
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Expected wOBA Leaderboards: Last 30 Days
A Brief Explanation of What This Is
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, I experimented with something called “Expected wOBA,” itself essentially a version of Bradley Woodrum’s Fielding Independent wOBA but with regressed (as opposed to raw) home-run, walk, and strikeout rates — and a (somewhat haphazardly) regressed version of Woodrum’s updated xBABIP formula, as well — as the inputs.

The idea behind Expected wOBA is to estimate something like a player’s true talent over the course of X plate appearances. However, because we looked — again, in those leaderboards yesterday — because we looked at Expected wOBA for all of 2012, we were dealing with samples that, in most cases, had passed the plate-appearance threshold for reliability for all the relevant inputs. For that reason, there was little deviation between those Expected wOBA figures and the Fielding Independent wOBAs posted by Woodrum last week.

For this edition of the Notes, I’ve published some new Expected wOBA numbers — except, in this case, using only the last month’s worth of data. This appeals more directly to the strength of Expected wOBA — namely, its capacity to express something meaningful even with small samples.

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

1. Expected wOBA Leaderboards
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Expected wOBA Leaderboards
A Note on What Is Expected wOBA
In the not very distant past, I experimented in the Notes with something called “Expected wRC+.” Expected wRC+ (or, xRC+) was essentially a version of Bradley Woodrum’s Should Hit formula (itself more or less a FIP for hitters with BABIP included) but with regressed (as opposed to raw) home-run, walk, and strikeout rates as the inputs. Also, for xRC+, BABIP was replaced by expected BABIP (xBABIP), per the formula (adjusted for 2012 league averages) proposed by user slash12 at Beyond the Boxscore in 2009.

The idea behind xRC+ was to estimate something like a player’s true talent over the course of X plate appearances. Of course, the methodology wasn’t flawless: wRC+ is a park-adjusted stat, for example, while the inputs for xRC+ were all expressly not park-adjusted. Also, while I’d adjusted the xBABIP formula to produce a league-average figure equivalent to the league-average for BABIP in 2012, it’s also the case that the I had not addressed the way in which the different inputs were weighted against each other. (Because I don’t know how to do that, is why.)

Fortunately, since my initial clumsy experiments with xRC+, Woodrum has made some new and useful contributions apropos fielding-independent offense — not only producing a formula to express a fielding-independent offensive stat in terms of wOBA (as opposed to wRC+), but also revisiting slash12’s xBABIP formula to best represent the current offensive (and, of course, defensive) environment.

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Table of Contents
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1. Arbitrary Endpoints Leaderboard: July Hitters So Far
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Arbitrary Endpoints Leaderboard: July Hitters 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 — albeit not in great depth — recently in these same pages.)

The Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards, What Else They Are
The Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards also represent an opportunity for the author to build most or all of a post around what’s little more than a regular leaderboard from the present site, rendered into the form of an internet table.

What Ralph Waldo Emerson Would Say About That
Ralph Waldo Emerson, were he not unavailable at the moment, would likely say something like, “[A man] is like a ship in a river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.”

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Table of Contents
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1. Apropos of Little: Oakland’s Chris Carter
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Apropos of Little: Oakland’s Chris Carter
What’s Probably Most Notable Today
What’s probably most notable today — so far as Official Baseballing News is concerned, I mean — is either how (a) Toronto is likely to replace Jose Bautista (en route to the DL) on their active roster with very exciting outfield prospect Anthony Gose, or how (b) brutally efficient right-hander Roy Halladay is making his return from injury tonight with the Phillies, or how (c) perpetually intriguing right-hander Trevor Bauer is scheduled to make his fourth major-league start tonight with the Diamondbacks.

What’s Most Notable to Right-Thinking People, Actually
Of greater consequence for right-thinking people today — more than the three Pressing Current Events invoked above, that is — more pressing is the player page of Oakland first baseman Chris Carter.

What the Author, Personally, Would Do to Chris Carter’s Player Page
Meditate all up on it, is what.

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Table of Contents
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1. First-Round Draftees: Results from the Signing Deadline
2. Notable MLB Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

First-Round Draftees: Results from the Signing Deadline
Some Information for the Reader
This past Friday was the deadline for signing players selected in the most recent draft. Below is a table of this year’s first-round draftees and their corresponding signing bonuses.

Of Note in re the Following Table, Who’s Missing From It
The reader will note that one draftee — Mark Appel, the right-handed pitcher out of Stanford, selected eighth overall by Pittsburgh — has been omitted from the following table. Appel failed to reach an agreement with the Pirates and will return to Stanford for his senior year.

How Pittsburgh Is Affected by Failing to Sign Appel
On account of they were unable to sign Appel, Pittsburgh will now receive — in addition to whatever normal pick they get — Pittsburgh will now also receive the ninth-overall pick in next year’s draft.

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Table of Contents
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1. Featured Game: New York NL at Atlanta, 13:35 ET (Free Game)
2. Another Notable Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: New York NL at Atlanta, 13:35 ET
Regarding the Year 2004, What the Reader Might’ve Forgotten About It
So far as the year 2004 is concerned, it’s possible that the reader — owing to an excess either of formative experiences in the interim or, alternatively, of fermented beverages in the interim — it’s possible that the reader has forgotten how Arizona left-hander Randy Johnson was the very best pitcher in baseball that season, with a league-best WAR (among pitchers, at least) of 9.9 and league-best SIERA (among qualified pitchers, at least) of 2.58.

Regarding 2004, What Else the Reader Has Forgotten About It
That a gallon of gas only cost a nickel, is probably one thing the reader has forgotten, and that a handshake agreement meant something, goddammit — unless one lacked hands, that is, in which case a more conventional written contract was an entirely reasonable substitute.

Regarding 2004, Another Thing the Reader Has Forgotten About It
The reader has almost definitely forgotten that pitchers Ben Sheets (8.0) and Johan Santana (7.7) finished second and third, respectively, among all pitchers according to WAR in 2004 — and also that Sheets (2.67) and Santana (2.77) finished second and third, respectively, among all qualified pitchers per SIERA in that same season.

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Table of Contents
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1. Featured Game: Detroit at Baltimore, 16:05 ET
2. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Detroit at Baltimore, 16:05 ET
A Thing the Reader Might Notice
A thing the reader might notice is that, while the Mets-Braves game has actually received tonight’s highest NERD score — NERD being the infallible metric by which the watchability of a game is adjudged infallibly — that the author has bestowed upon this contest the title of Featured Game.

Regarding the Author’s Actions, How He Justifies Them
The author, everyone should know, has taken what is frequently referred to — or, at least, was frequently referred to, at the height of W.C. Fields’ career — has taken what’s known as “a shine” to tonight’s starter for Detroit, right-hander Max Scherzer.

Why the Author Would Do That Type of Thing
It’s possible that the author would take some interest in Scherzer, owing to how he (i.e. Max Scherzer) has posted a 4.72 ERA but only a 3.72 FIP and only a 3.28 xFIP and then only a 3.08 SIERA — that last figure representing the fourth-best such mark among the league’s 97 qualified starters.

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