Daily Notes: Largely Concerning Felipe Paulino

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

1. Featured Game: Kansas City at Chicago AL, 20:10 ET
2. Lightly Annotated Video: Felipe Paulino’s Season Debut
3. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Kansas City at Chicago AL, 20:10 ET
Of Particular Note Regarding This Game
Of particular note regarding this game is that right-hander Felipe Paulino, 28, is starting it for the Royals.

Regarding Paulino, His Season Debut
Paulino made his season debut against the Yankees last Saturday after missing the first month of the season with a strained forearm — and he was excellent. Line: 6.0 IP, 23 TBF, 6 K, 2 BB, 8 GB on 15 batted-balls (53.3%), 2.40 xFIP.

Regarding Paulino, His Career So Far
For his career so far (353.2 IP, most of them since 2009), Paulino has posted basically average defense-independent numbers (98 xFIP-, 101 FIP-), with slightly above-average strikeout rates and slightly below-average walk rates.

Regarding Paulino, His Career So Far, Part II
Over his career, Paulino has been decidedly less successful in terms of overall run prevention, having posted an ERA that’s 27% worse than league average and a full run worse than his FIP over that same time (5.19 ERA, 4.14 FIP).

Regarding Paulino, The Causes of His ERA/FIP Split
The reasons for the large split between Paulino’s ERA and FIP are what you’d expect: BABIP (.339 career) and a below-average strand rate (66.5%).

Regarding Paulino, His Stuff
Paulino’s stuff is excellent: four-seamer at about 95 mph, two-seamer at about the same, slider at 87, changeup at about 87, and then a slower curve. The slider has been Paulino’s best pitch, worth 19.0 runs above average over the course of his career (+1.22 per 100 thrown).

A Quick Note on Eric Hosmer, What He Should Be Hitting
Eric Hosmer has posted a 65 wRC+ and -0.4 WAR so far through 127 plate appearances. That’s with only a .168 BABIP, however. Per Bradley Woodrum’s Should Hit calculator, Hosmer would have a 119 wRC+, were he to have recorded his career .287 BABIP — and a 132 wRC+ were he to’ve posted the .314 BABIP he had last season.

Pitching for Chicago
Pitching for Chicago tonight is Gavin Floyd (38.2 IP, 89 xFIP-, 0.8 WAR).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast
Per the results of our offseason crowdsourcing project, FanGraphs readers prefer Kansas City Television (link). Sort of, they prefer it.

Lightly Annotated Video: Felipe Paulino’s Season Debut
Here’s footage from Felipe Paulino’s first start of the season, against New York.

The pitches you’ll see, in order: changeup* (0:11), slider (0:17), slider (0:24), slider (I think, 0:28), changeup (0:37), slider (0:46), fastball at 97 mph (0:59).

*The announcer calls it a “breaking ball,” but it certainly appears to have changeup movement.

Other Notable Games
Houston at Pittsburgh | 19:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
The author highly recommends the Houston Astros broadcast team of Bill Brown and Jim Deshaies. Consider this recently crafted Jim Deshaies Soundboard, for example.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Houston.

Atlanta at St. Louis | 20:15 ET
As of Thursday, these are the two best offenses in the National League.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Neither, Really.

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. The average NERD Game Score for today is 4.9.

Regard, a magnificent and sortable table:

Away   SP Tm. Gm. Tm. SP   Home Time
Bud Norris HOU 6 6 5 2 5 PIT James McDonald 19:05
Clayton Richard SD 4 5 5 3 6 PHI Vance Worley 19:05
Felix Hernandez SEA 7 4 5 7 3 NYA Hiroki Kuroda 19:05
Jeremy Hellickson TB 1 7 3 5 3 BAL Dana Eveland* 19:05
Ubaldo Jimenez CLE 0 4 2 5 2 BOS Clay Buchholz 19:10
Johan Santana NYN 5 2 4 4 4 MIA Mark Buehrle 19:10
Gio Gonzalez WAS 9 1 6 4 5 CIN Mike Leake 19:10
C.J. Wilson LAA 5 2 6 10 7 TEX Yu Darvish 20:05
Matt Garza CHN 9 2 5 6 1 MIL Randy Wolf 20:10
Felipe Paulino* KC 9 8 7 5 5 CHA Gavin Floyd 20:10
Kyle Drabek TOR 4 6 4 3 3 MIN Nick Blackburn 20:10
Mike Minor ATL 7 8 7 10 5 STL Jaime Garcia 20:15
Mad. Bumgarner SF 5 4 5 6 5 AZ Patrick Corbin* 21:40
Rick Porcello DET 8 2 5 3 3 OAK Tommy Milone 22:05
Jamie Moyer COL 2 8 4 6 5 LAN Chris Capuano 22:10

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





Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.

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Mario Mendoza of commenters
11 years ago

Quentin said on Monday that he could return today. Anyone know if that’s happening?

Mario Mendoza of commenters
11 years ago

Guess not.