Daily Notes: Ft. Kal Daniels’ Alternate Career Path

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

1. Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
2. Unnecessary Video: Kal Daniels Making a Catch Once
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League

Kal Daniels’ Hastily Calculated and Alternate Career Path
As noted in today’s release of the ZiPS projections for the Washington Nationals, Bryce Harper’s closest comparable at the moment, according to ZiPS, is former Reds outfielder Kal Daniels. As also noted in that post, Kal Daniels was a pretty excellent ballplayer between his age-22 and -26 seasons, during which span he posted a 16.9 WAR over 1,970 plate appearances — i.e. over five wins for every 600 plate appearances.

After that, though, injury — and the subsequent ineffectiveness it caused — stopped Daniels’ career rather abruptly, and he was done with major-league baseball after his age-28 season.

“What if,” one is compelled to wonder, “what if Daniels were — instead of to suffer the slings and arrows of multiple knee injuries — what if he were to continue an exactly generic possible career path, where an exactly generic career path would constitute declining by precisely 0.5 WAR per season? And were to average precisely 600 plate appearances for every 162 games? And were to play until he became irrelevant?”

Here is what Kal Daniels’ career would have looked like, in that case, is the exact answer:

That career — one which’d produce ca 43-44 wins — is basically like the one Andy Van Slyke had. And Paul O’Neill.

Unnecessary Video: Kal Daniels Making a Catch Once
Here’s video of Kal Daniels making a catch once:

SCOUT Leaderboards: Dominican Winter League
Below are the current SCOUT leaderboards for the Dominican Winter League. (Ages as of July 1st, 2012. Players listed with most recent team. Click here for more on what is SCOUT.)

SCOUT Leaderboard: Dominican Winter League Hitters
Below is the current SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Dominican Winter League. SCOUT+ is calculated using regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates, where 100 is average and above 100 is above average.

SCOUT Leaderboard: Dominican Winter League Hitters (Prospects)
Here is the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Dominican Winter League, but only populated with players who are 25 or under — i.e. something more like “prospect” age relative to the league.

SCOUT Leaderboard: Dominican Winter League Pitchers
Below is the current SCOUT pitching leaderboard for the Dominican Winter League. SCOUT- is calculated using regressed strikeout and walk rates where 100 is average and below 100 is above average.

SCOUT Leaderboard: Dominican Winter League Pitchers (Starters)
Here is the SCOUT pitching leaderboard for the Dominican Winter League, but only populated with pitchers who’ve made at least half of their appearances as starts.