Daily Notes, Ft. Nerd Stats for Every Rule 5 Pick

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

1. Custom Leaderboards: Nerd Stats for Every Rule 5 Pick
2. Largely Unhelpful Video: Houston Rule 5 Pick, Josh Fields
3. SCOUT Leaderboards: Australian Baseball League

Custom Leaderboards: Nerd Stats for Every Rule 5 Pick
The Rule 5 draft took place Thursday morning, on the last day of the Winter Meetings in Nashville — results of which draft can be found by clicking this hyperlinked text.

Clicking on other hyperlinked texts will bring the reader to other, more different things — namely, in this case, to custom FanGraphs hitting and pitching leaderboards for all the players picked during the draft in question.

By way of example, here’s a screen shot for the top of batting leaderboard, sorted by weighted runs above average:

Leisurely perusing these leaderboards, one finds, for example, that:

• First baseman Nate Freiman, whom the Astros took from the Padres, produced the most league-adjusted runs above average in 2012 among all the Rule 5 draftees.

• Other Astros pick, right-handed reliever Josh Fields, posted the lowest minor-league FIP (2.39) among all Rule 5 draftees who pitched more than 7.0 innings (i.e. how many Cubs draftee Hector Rondon threw) in 2012. Fields spent last season with Boston.

• Colorado selection (from Washington), left-hander Daniel Rosenbaum, posted the lowest FIP of any pitcher who made the majority of his appearances as starts.

• First baseman Chris McGuiness, first of Texas and now of Cleveland, finished third among all Rule 5 draftees by weighted offensive production — also where he finished on the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Arizona Fall League this year.

• Angel Sanchez and Marquez Smith — selected by the White Sox and Rangers, respectively — were both hailed by the author last month in these same electronic pages as “notable minor-league free agents of note.” The pair had actually been signed to minor-league contracts already this offseason — by the Angels and Reds, respectively — but were still exposed to the Rule 5 draft, on account of they weren’t on their teams’ 40-man rosters.

Largely Unhelpful Video: Houston Rule 5 Pick, Josh Fields
Here’s mostly unhelpful video of Astros Rule 5 pick Josh Fields striking out four batters — all on fastballs, and three of those looking — in a Triple-A game from this past August:

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

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

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