Daily Notes: The Week’s Top Performances

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

1. SCOUT Leaderboards: The Week’s Top Performances
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages

SCOUT Leaderboards: The Week’s Top Performances
Much as with skinning a cat, but far less gruesome, there are a number of ways, theoretically, to determine the “best” performances in baseball over a timeframe as short as a week. One could, for example, merely sort by WAR. If WAR seems inappropriate, one can use WPA, instead — to see which player, that is, most improved his team’s chances of winning (offensively, at least) over the course of the week. Alternatively, one might prefer simply to look into his or her own heart for the answer — or any of the other more vital organs.

What the author has done, in this particular instance, is to give readers another tool — namely, the SCOUT leaderboards below for the past week’s best hitters and pitchers.

“What actually is SCOUT?” a reasonable person might ask — to which question the author has provided a (hopefully) reasonable answer here. In brief, however, it’s this: an attempt to use our knowledge of certain metrics, and at what sample sizes they become reliable, to measure run production/prevention in instances where small samples are all that’s available.

In so doing, we learn lessons like:

• For as excellent as Atlanta’s Evan Gattis has been in an uncertain role, St. Louis’s Matt Adams has been that excellent in an even less certain role.

• Oakland third baseman Josh Donaldson is making more contact than would have otherwise seemed likely.

• Apart from a rather unfortunate blown save in Chicago, Giants closer Sergio Romo was dominant last week.

Now, to the leaderboards.

SCOUT Leaderboard: The Week’s Top Hitters
Below is the SCOUT leaderboard for major-league hitters over the past week. SCOUT+ combines regressed home-run, walk, and strikeout rates in a FIP-like equation to produce a result not unlike wRC+, where 100 is league average (in this case, for all major-league hitters) and above 100 is above average. xHR%, xBB%, and xK% stand for expected home run, walk, and strikeout rate, respectively.

Player	Team	PA	HR	BB	K	xHR%	xBB%	xK%	SCOUT+
Prince Fielder	Tigers	30	2	9	2	2.9%	11.7%	16.3%	120
Joey Votto	Reds	29	1	12	4	2.6%	13.2%	17.8%	117
John Buck	Mets	21	4	0	2	3.6%	7.5%	17.5%	114
Billy Butler	Royals	24	1	7	1	2.6%	10.9%	16.4%	114
Robinson Cano	Yankees	24	3	2	2	3.3%	8.4%	17.1%	113
Justin Upton	Braves	28	2	4	2	2.9%	9.2%	16.6%	112
Evan Gattis	Braves	27	3	3	4	3.3%	8.8%	18.0%	112
Matt Adams	Cardinals	9	3	1	2	3.4%	8.5%	19.0%	111
Chris Carter	Astros	28	4	3	8	3.6%	8.7%	20.6%	111
Josh Donaldson	Athletics	28	2	3	2	2.9%	8.7%	16.6%	111

SCOUT Leaderboard: The Week’s Top Pitchers
Below is the SCOUT leaderboard for major-league pitchers for the past week. SCOUT- combines regressed strikeout and walk rates in a kwERA-like equation to produce a number not unlike ERA-, where 100 is league average (in this case, for all major-league pitchers) and below 100 is better than average. xK% and xBB% stand for expected strikeout and walk rate, respectively.

Player	Team	G	GS	IP	TBF	K	BB	xK%	xBB%	SCOUT-
Jake Peavy	White Sox	2	2	12.1	48	18	1	24.8%	7.9%	80
Clay Buchholz	Red Sox	2	2	15.0	56	19	8	24.4%	9.0%	85
Adam Wainwright	Cardinals	1	1	9.0	31	12	0	22.9%	7.9%	86
Max Scherzer	Tigers	1	1	6.0	24	11	1	23.1%	8.2%	86
Lance Lynn	Cardinals	1	1	6.0	23	10	1	22.5%	8.2%	88
Sergio Romo	Giants	5	0	4.2	20	9	0	22.3%	8.1%	88
Anibal Sanchez	Tigers	2	2	14.0	55	16	5	22.5%	8.5%	89
Matt Harvey	Mets	2	2	15.0	53	15	4	22.1%	8.3%	89
Hyun-Jin Ryu	Dodgers	1	1	6.0	25	9	1	21.6%	8.2%	91
Dale Thayer	Padres	3	0	3.2	13	7	1	21.8%	8.4%	91

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
New York NL at Colorado | 20:40 ET
As no one on nodding terms with the faculty of reason would have predicted, the Mets entered Sunday with the highest WAR among field players in the entire both leagues, having slashed .272/.349/.467 with a not particularly inflated .311 BABIP through 433 plate appearances. Shall we consider together a table of the four Mets to have accumulated a WAR of 0.5 or more as of Sunday? “Yes” appears to be the answer.

To wit:

Name	PA	BB%	K%	HR	AVG	OBP	SLG	BABIP	WAR
Daniel Murphy	46	6.5%	10.9%	2	.381	.413	.690	.389	0.8
John Buck	44	2.3%	11.4%	6	.317	.318	.780	.219	0.7
Lucas Duda	42	21.4%	23.8%	3	.258	.452	.613	.278	0.5
David Wright	49	16.3%	20.4%	0	.293	.408	.415	.387	0.5

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: New York NL Television.

Today’s Game Odds, Translated into Winning Percentages
Note: the very proprietary and also critically acclaimed NERD game scores will become available again at the end of April/beginning of May.

Here — for purposes entirely of entertainment and not for gambling, which is a Scourge of Propriety — are all of today’s games with moneyline odds (from relatively “sharp” sportsbook Pinnacle Sports) translated into projected winning percentages (and adjusted to account for the vigorish).

Games are listed in Eastern Time, as the author has recently bothered to learn how to convert time zones in Excel. Game presented in order of (a) National League and then (b) American League and, finally, then (c) interleague play.

Game	Teams	Starters	Line	Win%
19:05	St. Louis Cardinals	Lance Lynn	1.93	50.9%
ET	Pittsburgh Pirates	James McDonald	2.00	49.1%
—	—	—	—	—
19:10	Philadelphia Phillies	Cliff Lee	1.80	54.4%
ET	Cincinnati Reds	Bronson Arroyo	2.15	45.6%
—	—	—	—	—
19:10	Washington Nationals	Jordan Zimmermann	1.57	62.4%
ET	Miami Marlins	Wade LeBlanc	2.61	37.6%
—	—	—	—	—
20:40	New York Mets	Dillon Gee	2.20	44.6%
ET	Colorado Rockies	Juan Nicasio	1.77	55.4%
—	—	—	—	—
22:10	San Diego Padres	Eric Stults	2.65	37.0%
ET	Los Angeles Dodgers	Chad Billingsley	1.56	63.0%
—	—	—	—	—
11:05	Tampa Bay Rays	Jeremy Hellickson	2.22	44.2%
ET	Boston Red Sox	Ryan Dempster	1.76	55.8%
—	—	—	—	—
19:05	Chicago White Sox	Gavin Floyd	2.26	43.4%
ET	Toronto Blue Jays	Mark Buehrle	1.73	56.6%
—	—	—	—	—
20:10	LAA Angels	Joe Blanton	1.89	52.0%
ET	Minnesota Twins	Kevin Correia	2.04	48.0%
—	—	—	—	—
22:05	Houston Astros	Erik Bedard	2.70	36.3%
ET	Oakland Athletics	Tommy Milone	1.54	63.7%