Daily Notes: Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboard Explosion

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

1. Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards: June So Far
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Arbitrary Endpoint Leaderboards: June 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 in, like, 11% more depth recently in these same pages.)

Leaderboard: June Hitters
Here are the June leaders among field players, per WAR:

Notes
• The reader may very well be totally and irretrievably drunk at the moment, but it’s not for that reason that he’s seeing Trevor Plouffe’s name near the top of the preceding table. As of Tuesday night, at least, Plouffe had hit the most home runs (nine) among major leaguers in June.
• Even with a BABIP of .150, Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista is among the league leaders in WAR so far in June. Entering play on Tuesday, he had a 14:7 BB:K and eight home runs in the month.
• Note that the author has extended the leaderboard to include the top-11 players in June per WAR — thus allowing Texas outfielder Craig Gentry to make the list. This sort of gesture is what’s often referred to as “the Christian thing to do” — although, so far as I know, never by Jesus of Nazareth himself.

Leaderboard: June Pitchers
Here are the June leaders among pitchers, by WAR:

Notes
• The world needs to know: precisely how many batters has Arizona left-hander Wade Miley walked over the course of 30.0 June innings? Answer: just one. The 25-year-old has a 97 xFIP- and 2.3 WAR in 82.1 innings so far this season.
• Yankees on-again, off-again left-hander Andy Pettitte has clearly been excellent since returning. “What’s he throwing?” is the question a reasonable person would ask. Here’s the answer, according to PITCHf/x: four-seam fastball (14.1%, 87.5 mph), two-seam fastball (16.5%, 87.8 mph), cut fastball (27.1%, 87.2 mph), slider (22.6%, 80.3 mph), curve (12.3%, 73.1 mph), changeup (7.3%, 79.3 mph).

Today’s Notable Games
Note: it has come to the author’s attention that — in lieu of Jeremy Hellickson, who’s been placed the DL — that right-handed prospect Chris Archer will make his major-league debut. Archer, who was ranked fourth overall among Tampa Bay prospects by our Marc Hulet before the season, has posted this line at Triple-A Durham: 76.2 IP, 10.57 K/9, 5.28 BB/9, 0.47 HR/9, 3.41 FIP. The reader will note that control is of some concern apropos Archer, nor does this represent any sort of recent development: Archer posted a walk rate of 5.36 BB/9 last year in 134.1 Double-A innings. The reader will also note that Archer-Strasburg represents an improvement over Hellickson and same.

Seattle at Arizona | 15:40 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Wade Miley isn’t pitching for the Diamondbacks today. What this brief note presupposes is… what if he were?

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Arizona Radio.

St. Louis at Detroit | 19:05 ET
The Cardinals-Tigers match-up on Tuesday garnered the first NERD score of 10 this season. Maybe if Jake Westbrook and Rick Porcello had studied a little more and earned their parents’ love a little harder, this game would’ve earned a NERD of 10, too.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: St. Louis Radio.

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
Tommy Hanson	ATL	3	6	5	6	6	NYA	Phil Hughes	13:05
Bruce Chen	KC	3	6	2	5	2	HOU	Jordan Lyles	14:05
Undecided	TOR	5	6	6	6	5	MIL	Yovani Gallardo	14:10
Jason Vargas	SEA	2	4	4	4	6	AZ	Trevor Cahill	15:40
Yu Darvish	TEX	6	10	5	5	6	SD	Anthony Bass	18:35
Bronson Arroyo	CIN	5	5	4	4	4	CLE	Justin Masterson	19:05
Alex White	COL	6	10	6	5	8	PHI	Joe Blanton	19:05
Francisco Liriano	MIN	5	3	4	2	4	PIT	Erik Bedard	19:05
Jake Westbrook	STL	6	10	7	5	6	DET	Rick Porcello	19:05
Jeremy Hellickson	TB	2	5	6	4	10	WAS	Step. Strasburg	19:05
Brian Matusz	BAL	3	4	6	1	8	NYN	Dillon Gee	19:10
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	3	2	5	5	8	BOS	Felix Doubront	19:10
Randy Wells*	CHN	3	3	4	6	5	CHA	Gavin Floyd	20:10
Nathan Eovaldi	LAN	8	4	5	4	4	OAK	Tommy Milone	22:05
Ryan Vogelsong	SF	2	5	5	3	4	LAA	Jered Weaver	22:05

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.