Daily Notes: Every Team Minus Its Best Player

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

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

Every Team Minus Its Best Player
Introduction
It is not uncommon, as the season comes to an end, for members of this, our sporting media, to debate the semantic niceties of the word valuable, in particular as it relates to each league’s Most Valuable Player award. The author has no intention of entering this very heated fray. As a thought experiment, however, what he’s done is this — namely, to publish below two tables, one for each league, of every team in the majors minus its best player, with the idea that each best player has been replaced by freely available talent.

The results? Various and sundry, as results often are. One finds that, without Miguel Cabrera, Detroit would presently be tied with Cleveland (or perhaps behind by a game) in the AL Central. One finds also that, sans Mike Trout, the Angels would most likely enter next year’s draft with the third-overall pick. One finds also-also that, were a replacement-level player to have substituted for Andrelton Simmons, that Atlanta would still currently hold a 10-game lead in the NL East.

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 not to exist.

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 not to exist.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Seattle at Kansas City | 12:10 ET
Joe Saunders (162.2 IP, 110 xFIP-, 0.3 WAR) faces Jeremy Guthrie (178.2 IP, 113 xFIP-, 0.9 WAR). “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t talk about the Mariners”: the author is reminded that this isn’t an actual lesson repeated by parents to their children:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Seattle Radio or 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.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Joe Saunders	SEA	2	0	1	0	2	KC	J. Guthrie	12:10
Jake Peavy	BOS	5	1	3	3	8	NYA	Ivan Nova	14:10
Jose Quintana	CHA	5	0	1	1	3	BAL	M. Gonzalez	14:20
Lance Lynn	STL	6	6	4	1	8	CIN	Tony Cingrani	19:10
Brad Peacock	HOU	0	0	5	10	9	OAK	Sonny Gray	22:05
David Price	TB	7	6	4	0	4	LAA	J. Williams	22:05
Trevor Cahill	AZ	5	0	1	0	1	SF	R. Vogelsong	22:15

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