Daily Notes: A Possibly Sufficient WBC Status Update

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

A WBC Status Update of Reasonable Quality
By the end of this past weekend, the first round of this year’s World Baseball Classic had produced eight qualifiers: Cuba, Japan, the Netherlands, and Taipei from Pools A and B, and the Dominican Republic, Italy, Puerto Rico, and the United States (from Pools C and D).

Second-round play among the first set four qualifiers (called Pool 1, in this case) has now already produced two teams for the four-team final: Japan and the Netherlands. Pool 2 (composed of the second set of four qualifiers) began on Tuesday afternoon.

What follows is more — perhaps even possibly sufficient — information on theme of the 2013 World Baseball Classic.

Standings
In the first round, each team plays the other three teams in its pool once. The two teams with the highest winning percentages — or, in case of a three-way tie, the two teams that qualify via this set of tie-breaking rules — advance to Round Two.

The eight qualifiers from the first round progress to Round Two. Pool 1 features the four qualifiers from first-round Pools A and B; Pool 2, from Pools C and D. Both Pool 1 and 2 are played as a four-team double-elimination tournament. The top two teams in each qualify for the four-team final round.

Here is the bracket for Pool 1 of second-round play — from which Japan and the Netherlands have qualified for the four-team final — copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia, but then cropped and colored differently to suggest nothing of the sort. (Click on the bracket to embiggen.)

And here is the bracket for Pool 2, scheduled to begin on Tuesday (click to embiggen):

Stats
Here is a slightly absurd, but not entirely usesless, leaderboard of the top-10 hitting performances of the World Baseball Classic so far. SCOUT+ an offensive measure (about which you can read more here) calculated with regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates, where 100 is average and above 100 is above average.

Player	Team	Pos	PA	xHR%	xBB%	xK%	SCOUT+
Alfredo Despaigne	CUB	OF	21	2.8%	10.0%	16.4%	116
Adrian Gonzalez	MEX	1B	13	2.1%	11.9%	17.3%	112
Hanley Ramirez	DOM	SS	16	2.1%	11.2%	16.3%	112
Frederich Cepeda	CUB	OF	26	2.1%	11.8%	17.1%	111
Yoshio Itoi	JPN	OF	24	2.1%	10.9%	16.0%	111
David Wright	USA	3B	19	2.1%	10.1%	15.9%	109
Andrelton Simmons	NED	SS	28	2.4%	8.7%	15.5%	109
Shinnosuke Abe	JPN	C	20	2.4%	9.0%	16.5%	109
Carlos Santana	DOM	C	17	2.1%	11.7%	18.8%	108
Takashi Toritani	JPN	IF	15	2.1%	10.8%	17.8%	108

And here are the top-10 pitching performances thus far — in this case by SCOUT-, a metric calculated with regressed strikeout and walk rates where 100 is average and below 100 is above average.

Player	Team	G	GS	IP	TBF	xK%	xBB%	SCOUT-
Kenta Maeda	JPN	2	2	10.0	33	23.6%	8.7%	84
Masahiro Tanaka	JPN	4	1	7.0	31	21.9%	8.6%	88
Tadashi Settsu	JPN	2	0	5.1	20	20.5%	8.8%	92
Seunghwan Oh	KOR	3	0	2.2	8	20.5%	9.0%	92
Oscar Nakaoshi	BRA	2	1	5.1	22	20.2%	8.7%	92
Danny Betancourt	CUB	2	2	10.2	39	20.3%	9.0%	93
Kenji Otonari	JPN	2	2	6.0	22	19.6%	8.9%	94
Jose De La Torre	PUR	2	0	2.2	12	19.4%	9.1%	95
Kazuhisa Makita	JPN	3	0	3.0	14	19.2%	9.0%	96
Samuel Deduno	DOM	1	1	4.0	16	18.9%	8.8%	96

Notable Performance: Basically Every Japanese Pitcher
Because they’ve played more games than every team but the Dutch and Cubans, the stats for the Japanese pitchers — by the likely flawed measure being used above, at least — will naturally be less subject to the influence of regression. By extension, their expected rates will more closely resemble their actual rates. If those actual rates are quite high, that will be reflected in a strong SCOUT figure.

That caveat noted, the Japanese pitchers have been excellent as an entire unit, as well, having posted a 68:11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in just 52.0 innings. Below are the team pitching stats for all 16 teams in this year’s Classic — including kwERA, which is an ERA estimate based just on strikeouts and walks (which makes sense as opposed to FIP, probably, given the sample sizes with which we’re dealing). Note that batters faced (TBF) is estimated as follows: IP*3 + BB + H + HBP.

Team	G	IP	TBF*	K%	BB%	kwERA
JPN	6	52.0	219	31.1%	5.0%	2.65
KOR	3	26.0	114	22.8%	7.9%	3.98
USA	4	36.0	149	19.5%	5.4%	4.08
PUR	4	35.0	157	19.1%	7.0%	4.32
MEX	3	27.0	129	19.4%	7.8%	4.37
CUB	6	49.2	217	19.8%	8.8%	4.44
DOM	4	36.0	154	20.1%	11.0%	4.68
VEN	3	26.0	120	17.5%	10.0%	4.87
ITA	4	34.0	160	16.3%	10.0%	5.02
CAN	3	25.0	126	13.5%	9.5%	5.29
TAI	5	42.0	185	11.9%	8.6%	5.38
NED	7	59.0	274	10.6%	8.0%	5.46
BRA	3	26.0	120	15.8%	14.2%	5.57
ESP	3	25.0	126	14.3%	13.5%	5.67
CHN	3	23.0	110	10.0%	10.9%	5.88
AUS	3	25.0	119	8.4%	10.1%	5.97

Here is nearly relevant video — of right-hander Kazuhisa Makita finishing Japan’s most recent victory.

Schedule
The Classic is available on the MLB Network — and streaming online for customers of Bright House, DIRECTV, and Time Warner Cable. Spanish coverage (relevant to many of the games in Pools C and D) is available on ESPN Deportes.

Furthermore, MLBAM has released a dedicated app for the WBC, as well, which includes Gameday coverage and video highlights.

Here are the games scheduled between now and Thursday morning (all times ET):

07:00 PM Italy vs. Puerto Rico (2nd Rd, Pool 2)