Daily Notes, Featuring Power Rankings of Power

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

1. Important Item: Power Rankings at SI.com
2. Brief Previews for Select Games
3. Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Houston Radio

Important Item: Power Rankings at SI.com
On Monday, totally influential internet presence SI.com published the first iteration of its weekly MLB power rankings. In a turn of events that has shocked mildly surprised the nation, said power rankings are now being provided by FanGraphs and are based on WAR.

Here are your top five teams by that criteria (with WAR winning percentage in parentheses):

1. St. Louis (.847)
2. Texas (.757)
3. Washington (.647)
4. Detroit (.636)
5. Los Angeles NL (.627)

And bottom five teams:

26. Miami (.347)
27. Cincinnati (.347)
28. Seattle (.338)
29. Pittsburgh (.336)
30. San Diego (.327)

Brief Previews for Select Games
Here are brief previews for four of today’s games — each including the preferred television feed of FanGraphs readers, per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project. (Information on probable pitchers from MLB.com.)

New York NL at Atlanta | 19:10 ET
Right-hander Randall Delgado, who starts tonight for Atlanta, posted a strikeout rate above 20% at literally every stop he made in the minor leagues — but only a 12.2% strikeout rate in his 35.0 major-league innings last season. In his first start of the season, his numbers more resembled the precedent he set in the minors. Line: 5.0 IP, 21 TBF, 6 K, 2 BB, 8 GB on 12 batted-balls (66.7%) — for a single-game xFIP of 2.26… Johan Santana pitches for New York. Here’s his line so far: 10.0 IP, 31.7% K, 12.2% BB, 34.8% GB, 3.17 SIERA, 3.47 xFIP, 94 xFIP-… Velocity update for Santana: 87.9 mph on the fastball so far — versus 89.6 mph on average in 2010… Atlanta has probably the best center-field camera angle in the majors.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL.

Baltimore at Chicago AL | 20:10 ET
Wei-Yin Chen faces John Danks… As noted Monday, Baltimore entered the week as a Team of Interest… The Orioles won last night after having seen their WE drop to just 3.4% in the ninth inning.

To wit:

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore.

Los Angeles NL at Milwaukee | 20:10 ET
The Dodgers enter play Tuesday with a league-best 9-1 record and (as of Monday, at least) the second-highest batter WAR (2.6) in the majors. They also enter play Tuesday having only played Pittsburgh and San Diego — i.e. likely not capital-B Baseball’s strongest teams… Of note: Matt Kemp has already posted a 1.2 WAR — which is to say, Matt Kemp has almost had the season of an average major leaguer in just 10 games… Also of note: none of Kemp’s six home runs have been to his pull-side. Two have been to center field, four more to right. Last season, major-league batters posted an 81 wRC+ when hitting the ball to opposite field — which, note, accounts only for batted balls (so, no strikeouts). Last season, Kemp had a 191 wRC+ when going to opposite field, the sixth-highest mark among 162 qualified batters… Starters: Chad Billingsley and Yovani Gallardo.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Milwaukee.

Cincinnati at St. Louis | 20:15 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
As of Monday (an off-day for them), St. Louis held a pretty considerable lead in the team standings (relatively speaking, at this point in the season), having recorded a 4.7 batter WAR, collectively — with the Los Angeles Dodgers (noted above) in a pretty distant second place. Here are their team leaders thus far (small sample, small sample, small sample): Yadier Molina, 225 wRC+ (.360 BABIP) and 0.8 WAR; David Freese, 215 wRC+ (.476 BABIP) and 0.8 WAR; and Carlos Beltran, 187 wRC+ (.381 BABIP) and 0.6 WAR… Johnny Cueto faces Kyle Lohse. The latter has only allowed two runs in 13.2 innings (1.35 R/9), but has posted unconvincing DIPS numbers, owing to his poor strikeout (10.4%) and ground-ball (40.0%) rates: 4.54 SIERA, 4.60 xFIP, 125 xFIP-.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Cincinnati.

Crowdsourcing Broadcasters: Houston Radio
Recently, we released the results of our television broadcaster rankings — itself the product of reader crowdsourcing that started in late November. Now, FanGraphs is asking readers to rate the radio broadcast teams for all 30 major-league clubs (Click here for more on this project.)

Rate other teams: Washington / Toronto / Texas / Tampa Bay / Seattle / San Francisco / San Diego / St. Louis / Pittsburgh / Philadelphia / Oakland / New York (NL) / New York (AL) / Minnesota / Milwaukee / Miami / Los Angeles (NL) / Los Angeles (AL) / Kansas City.