Daily Notes: Ft. A Leaderboard with Yusmeiro Petit’s Name in It

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

1. A Leaderboard with Yusmeiro Petit’s Name in It
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

A Leaderboard with Yusmeiro Petit’s Name in It
Belabored Introduction
At a point in the not very distant past, right-hander Yusmeiro Petit was an actual, if slightly confounding, prospect, having compiled a 429:75 strikeout-to-walk ratio and 2.76 ERA in 346.0 minor-league innings through his age-20 season, during which season he recorded the large majority of his innings at Double-A. That he produced such high strikeout rates with a fastball that sat at 88-90 mph (or perhaps even lower) was regarded as a minor mystery. In any case, he appeared on Baseball America’s top-100 prospect list in both 2005 and 2006 — itself no small accomplishment.

In subsequent years, Petit was demonstrably less successful, striking out (an approximately only league-average) 18% of hitters in his best major-league season and posting ground-ball rates around 30% — which is to say, multiple standard deviations below league average. Petit’s advanced command and deceptive delivery were insufficient to retire more advanced hitters, was the consensus.

As such, it was mostly for curiosity’s sake that the present author noted in late April that Petit, now 28, was producing better defense-independent numbers with San Francisco affiliate Fresno than he had previously at the Triple-A level. And it was with only passing interest that the author noticed each week, whilst preparing the Fringe Five column that appears in these pages, that Petit was frequently among the Pacific Coast League’s top starters, so far as regressed defense-independent numbers are concerned.

Certainly, Petit’s start from this past Friday — during which he came within one out of the 22nd perfect game of the modern era — provides some cause for re-assessing his present talents (box). Nor should it be ignored that the right-hander actually produced a lower single-game xFIP in his previous start, at Arizona, when he recorded a 10:1 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 6.0 innings (box).

In the absence of a more robust examination, the author here has managed at least to present the leaderboard below — one of the very few in which Petit’s name has appeared since his early and dominant interval as a prospect in the Mets and Marlins systems. Among major-league starters over the last month, one finds, Petit has produced the second-lowest xFIP-. Among Giants starters, one finds in half-related news, Petit remains — and is likely to remain, until such a time as he goes all the way into that dark night — remains younger than Tim Lincecum.

Leaderboard: Starter xFIP Minus Over Last Month
Here are the top-10 starters (minimum three starts) by xFIP- over the last 30 days:

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Chicago NL at Cincinnati | 19:10 ET
Travis Wood (179.0 IP, 119 xFIP-, 2.3 WAR) faces Bronson Arroyo (179.0 IP, 102 xFIP-, 1.8 WAR). Of particular note regarding the former: he’s recorded the lowest BABIP-against (.241) among all qualified starters this season and would’ve posted the third-lowest BABIP-against (.244) last season, had he pitched five more innings.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Chicago NL 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 that these NERD scores are calculated using the methodology introduced recently and designed to account for the influence of playoff odds on the watchability of games. ***Unlike in recent iterations of this table, the author has adjusted the day’s NERD Game Scores such that, combined, they average 5.0.*** This allows said table to resemble more closely the Game Scores that have appeared here over the preceding four months.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Ervin Santana	KC	7	0	8	6	4	CLE	Ubaldo Jimenez	19:05
CC Sabathia	NYA	6	2	5	2	5	BAL	Chris Tillman	19:05
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	0	1	0	1	MIN	P. Hernandez	19:10
Kris Medlen	ATL	7	0	3	0	6	MIA	H. Alvarez	19:10
Travis Wood	CHN	3	0	4	3	5	CIN	Bronson Arroyo	19:10
Gio Gonzalez	WAS	7	0	4	0	7	NYN	Carlos Torres	19:10
Gerrit Cole	PIT	10	5	10	6	10	TEX	Yu Darvish	20:05
Max Scherzer	DET	9	0	5	0	10	CHA	Chris Sale	20:10
Randall Delgado	AZ	8	0	4	0	6	LAN	Ricky Nolasco	22:10
Jarred Cosart	HOU	2	0	2	0	7	SEA	Taijuan Walker*	22:10
Jhoulys Chacin	COL	5	0	3	0	7	SF	Tim Lincecum	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.