Daily Notes: Every Team Minus Its Best Player

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

1. Parallel Universe: Every Team Minus Its Best Player
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Parallel Universe: Every Team Minus Its Best Player
Regarding Parallel Universe, Its Definition
Parallel universe is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as a “hypothetical self-contained separate reality in which Biff Tannen has become wealthy and corrupted, and changed Hill Valley into a chaotic dystopia.”

Regarding Parallel Universe, Another Possible Definition
Another possible definition of parallel universe is “a reality not entirely unlike the present one, except in which every major-league team’s best player has been replaced by a freely available one instead.”

Regarding That Second Definition
What this edition of the Notes considers is that second, less common definition of parallel universe.

Table: Every American League Team Minus Its Best Player
Here’s a (sortable) table including: every AL team’s present record, its best player (by WAR), the respective WARs of those best players, and every team’s record (noted as MW and ML, for “minus” wins and losses) were said best player never to’ve been born at all.

Other Table: Every National League Team Minus Its Best Player
Here’s a (sortable) table including: every NL team’s present record, its best player (by WAR), the respective WARs of those best players, and every team’s record (noted as MW and ML, for “minus” wins and losses) were said best player never to’ve been born at all.

Sample Observation
There are a number of observations one can make from the above pair of tables — including, for example, how, if the Nationals didn’t have Gio Gonzalez, how the Reds would have the best record in the majors.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Los Angeles (NL) at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET
Pittsburgh second baseman Neil Walker entered Sunday slashing .286/.349/.443 in 459 plate appearances, good for a 114 wRC+. He exited that same game hitting .294/.358/.460, with a 121 wRC+, in just six additional plate appearances — on account, largely, of how he went 5-for-5 with a walk during it (box). Walker now enters the week with a 3.8 WAR after beginning Sunday with a 3.4 mark.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: None, really — although the Pittsburgh camera angle is one of the league’s best.

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 4.0.

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
Aaron Harang	LAN	1	1	4	5	6	PIT	Jeff Karstens	19:05
Ryan Dempster	TEX	6	7	5	6	7	NYA	David Phelps*	19:05
Jake Peavy	CHA	6	5	4	6	5	TOR	Carlos Villanueva	19:07
Cole Hamels	PHI	9	5	4	2	5	MIA	Nathan Eovaldi	19:10
Eric Stults	SD	2	6	2	7	3	ATL	Mike Minor	19:10
Arm. Galarraga*	HOU	2	4	3	0	9	CHN	Jeff Samardzija	20:05
Anibal Sanchez	DET	7	5	3	4	0	MIN	Samuel Deduno	20:10
Mike Fiers	MIL	7	8	4	8	4	COL	Jeff Francis	20:40
Justin Masterson	CLE	5	4	5	7	4	LAA	C.J. Wilson	22:05
Alex Cobb	TB	7	4	5	4	4	SEA	Blake Beavan	22:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	9	6	5	3	3	SF	Ryan Vogelsong	22:15

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.