Daily Notes: An Arbitrary Endpoints Leaderboard Event

July 18, 2012

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

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.”

What the Author Would Argue
The author would argue that, a post such as this one, it’s basically the same thing as sweeping serenely into an infinite sea or whatever.

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Leaderboard: July Hitters
Here are the leaders among field players, per WAR, in July so far:

Name	Team	PA	wRC+	BABIP	Fld	BsR	WAR
Andrew McCutchen	Pirates	54	326	.514	-1.0	0.5	1.7
Mike Trout	Angels	58	273	.472	1.1	0.5	1.6
Neil Walker	Pirates	57	253	.583	0.3	0.4	1.4
Michael Brantley	Indians	51	253	.429	-0.7	0.4	1.2
Ryan Zimmerman	Nationals	54	225	.353	-0.4	0.1	1.0
Kevin Youkilis	White Sox	59	201	.382	1.6	-1.0	1.0
Mark Teixeira	Yankees	51	227	.259	0.8	-0.1	1.0
Edwin Encarnacion	Blue Jays	54	228	.364	-0.6	0.1	0.9
Ian Desmond	Nationals	36	245	.409	0.4	0.1	0.9
Miguel Cabrera	Tigers	58	198	.364	-0.6	-0.4	0.8

Today’s Notable Games
Philadelphia at Los Angeles NL | 15:10 ET
Many readers will have some interest in the fact that this game features excellent left-hander Cliff Lee versus other excellent left-hander Clayton Kershaw.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

Houston at San Diego | 15:35 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Yasmani Grandal Status Update: 52 PA, .288/.288/.558 (.289 BABIP), 134 wRC+, 0.4 WAR.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Astros Television.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 4.9.

Note: the following Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in a recent edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Ricky Romero	TOR	3	7	4	7	5	NYA	Hiroki Kuroda	13:05
Adam Wainwright	STL	8	9	7	8	6	MIL	Tyler Thornburg*	14:10
Cliff Lee	PHI	9	5	8	1	9	LAN	Clayton Kershaw	15:10
James McDonald	PIT	6	4	3	9	1	COL	Jeremy Guthrie	15:10
Wandy Rodriguez	HOU	5	4	3	5	4	SD	Clayton Richard	15:35
Colby Lewis	TEX	6	8	6	4	5	OAK	Travis Blackley	15:35
C.J. Wilson	LAA	4	5	7	4	8	DET	Doug Fister	19:05
Chris Young	NYN	0	2	5	7	8	WAS	J. Zimmermann	19:05
Ian Kennedy	AZ	6	7	6	4	8	CIN	Mat Latos	19:10
Undecided	CHA	5	5	7	5	8	BOS	Felix Doubront	19:10
Justin Masterson	CLE	5	5	4	4	1	TB	Jeremy Hellickson	19:10
Ryan Vogelsong	SF	2	3	3	8	3	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Josh Johnson	MIA	7	3	5	1	10	CHN	Jeff Samardzija	20:05
Tommy Hunter	BAL	5	1	3	4	6	MIN	Francisco Liriano	20:10
Kevin Millwood	SEA	3	4	2	6	4	KC	Bruce Chen	20:10

To learn more about Pitcher and Team NERD scores click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.