Daily Notes: Professional Stats of Last Year’s Cape Leaders

August 20, 2013

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

1. Professional Stats of Last Year’s Cape Leaders
2. Danny Salazar Night in the Americas, Maybe
3. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
4. Today’s Complete Schedule

Professional Stats of Last Year’s Cape Leaders
Introduction
The 2013 iteration of the Cape Cod League — the collegiate, wood-bat summer league responsible for approximately a third of the most recent draft’s first-round picks (and a similar percentage of the first ten rounds’ picks) — concluded this past Thursday. Tomorrow, the author will publish the SCOUT* leaderboards for this year’s Cape League hitters and pitchers. For the purposes of this edition of the Notes, however, what the author has done is to create a custom leaderboard featuring the top-10 hitters and pitchers from last year’s Cape League, according to that same methodology.

*The (poorly) regressed defense-independent index stat devised by the author.

Hyperlink to the Leaderboard in Question
Click this hyperlinked text to view the current professional stats (sorted by weighted runs above average) of last year’s leading Cape League hitters, and this other hyperlinked text for the pitching leaderboard (sorted by FIP) of that same thing.

Screenshot of the Leaderboard in Question
Below is a screenshot of the hitter-portion of the aforementioned leaderboard. (Click, embiggen.)

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Three Notes
• Three of the 20 players from last year’s top-10 hitting and pitching lists have recorded zero playing time as a professionals — specifically, catcher Kyle Schwarber (Indiana) and right-hander Kyle Ruchim (Northwestern) because they’re still enrolled in school and also left-hander Sean Manaea, the 34th-overall pick in this year’s draft by Kansas City, because he had hip surgery at the end of June.

• The top hitters from last year’s Cape League have recorded, on average, a 125 wRC+ in 184 plate appearances this year as professionals. The top pitchers, a 2.93 FIP in 21.1 innings. One notes also that, in many cases, the Cape alumni aren’t particularly young for their levels — likely because they’re all rather new draftees, getting acclimated with professional baseball.

• Outfielder Phillip Ervin (1st Round, Cincinnati) and second baseman Tony Kemp (5th Round, Houston) have each made it to the Class-A level, the highest thus far among last year’s leading Cape League hitters. Left-hander Matt Boyd (5th Round, Toronto) recently pitched 4.0 innings for Dunedin in the High-A Florida State League, the highest professional level to which any of last year’s top pitchers have ascended.

Danny Salazar Night in the Americas, Maybe
After Cleveland pushed back the young and hard-throwing right-hander’s start by a day, it appears as though Danny Salazar’s eponymous Night — discussed by means of breathless prose on Monday — will be celebrated today (Tuesday) starting at 10:05pm ET.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Tampa Bay at Baltimore | 19:05 ET
Alex Cobb (88.2 IP, 74 xFIP-, 1.3 WAR) faces Miguel Gonzalez (129.0 IP, 106 xFIP-, 1.5 WAR). The Tampa Bayers, per Cool Standings, presently have a ca. 78% chance of making the playoffs — the fifth-highest figure in the American League.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Baltimore or Tampa Bay Radio, Probably.

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 5.4.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Esmil Rogers	TOR	5	6	6	3	9	NYA	Ivan Nova	13:05
Jorge de la Rosa	COL	3	7	2	0	0	PHI	Tyler Cloyd	19:05
Alex Cobb	TB	8	10	7	9	4	BAL	M. Gonzalez	19:05
Mark Buehrle	TOR	4	6	5	3	5	NYA	Phil Hughes	19:05
Mike Pelfrey	MIN	0	3	4	7	8	DET	Rick Porcello	19:08
Patrick Corbin	AZ	9	3	7	3	8	CIN	Tony Cingrani	19:10
Brandon Beachy	ATL	7	8	6	7	5	NYN	Zack Wheeler	19:10
Chris Capuano	LAN	5	3	4	1	4	MIA	Jacob Turner	19:10
Jarred Cosart	HOU	2	4	3	3	4	TEX	Travis Blackley*	20:05
Dan Haren	WAS	6	3	5	5	4	CHN	Chris Rusin	20:05
John Danks	CHA	6	2	6	7	7	KC	Ervin Santana	20:10
Lance Lynn	STL	6	3	5	4	5	MIL	Kyle Lohse	20:10
Danny Salazar*	CLE	11	7	8	8	4	LAA	C.J. Wilson	22:05
Joe Saunders	SEA	2	4	6	6	10	OAK	Sonny Gray*	22:05
A.J. Burnett	PIT	8	7	7	6	7	SD	Tyson Ross	22:10
Jake Peavy	BOS	6	9	5	5	2	SF	R. Vogelsong	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.