Daily Notes, With an Update on Trade-Deadline Players

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

1. Update: Trade-Deadline Players
2. Today’s Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Update: Trade-Deadline Players
Regarding What We Do Periodically
Periodically, in the Daily Notes, we become troublingly intimate with the idea of our own mortality and weep silently, inconsolably until the dawn light.

Regarding What Else We Do Periodically
Also periodically, in these Notes, we revisit the players who were traded at the July 31st deadline and make note of their performances since those trades.

Hyperlinks of Note
Click this hyperlinked text to see a custom leaderboard of all the players traded within a week of this year’s July 31st trade deadline. Click this other hyperlinked text for the pitchers who match that same description.

Hitting Leaderboard, An Image of It
Here’s an embiggenable image depicting the leaderboard (as of yesterday) of all the batters traded within a week of this year’s trade deadline, their performances in August:

Pitching Leaderboard, An Image of It
Here’s an equally embiggenable image depicting a leaderboard (also as of yesterday) of all the recently traded pitchers, their performances in August:

Notes
• Hanley Ramirez, now of the Dodgers, leads all traded players in August with a 0.9 WAR. Here’s where he’s played defensively in August: at shortstop 16 times (17, including Tuesday) and third base once.
• Travis Snider, who was traded to Pittsburgh from Toronto, has only a 13.0% strikeout rate in August through 54 plate appearances — this, after posting a 27.3% strikeout rate in 917 total plate appearances with Toronto from 2008 to 2012.
• The Zack Greinke Experiment hasn’t gone particularly well so far: through four starts and 25.0 innings as an Angel of Anaheim in August, Greinke has a 103 xFIP-, a 141 FIP-, and is below replacement level in terms of wins.

Today’s Notable Games
Minnesota at Oakland | 22:05 ET ***MLB.TV Free Game***
Left-hander Brett Anderson makes his season debut after missing over a year to Tommy John surgery. Here’s Anderson’s line in five rehab starts at Triple-A Sacramento: 23.1 IP, 6.94 K/9, 1.93 BB/9, 1.54 HR/9, 4.66 FIP. And here’s where his velocity has been: clocked around 94 mph (although, one assumes, sitting somewhere below that).

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Oakland Radio.

San Francisco at Los Angeles NL | 22:10 ET
The Giants and Dodgers play the second game of this series, after the former beat the latter 2-1 last night to take a half-game lead in the NL West (box). The tragic and slight Tim Lincecum faces the Falstaffian (probably) Joe Blanton.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Los Angeles NL Television.

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 4.5.

Note: the following Game Scores include the poorly conceived playoff-odds adjustment discussed in a recent edition of Daily Notes. Also note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Paul Maholm	ATL	4	8	5	6	10	WAS	Stephen Strasburg	19:05
Homer Bailey	CIN	6	5	5	5	9	PHI	Cliff Lee	19:05
Ricky Romero	TOR	2	6	5	4	10	DET	Max Scherzer	19:05
Ervin Santana	LAA	3	8	2	6	1	BOS	Aaron Cook	19:10
Jhoulys Chacin	COL	2	8	0	2	0	NYN	Chris Young	19:10
Luke Hochevar	KC	4	8	5	4	10	TB	David Price	19:10
Chris Tillman	BAL	5	1	4	7	4	TEX	Scott Feldman	20:05
Chris Rusin*	CHN	7	1	4	8	7	MIL	Marco Estrada	20:10
Ivan Nova	NYA	7	7	5	4	7	CHA	Francisco Liriano	20:10
Lucas Harrell	HOU	5	4	6	9	9	STL	Adam Wainwright	20:15
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	4	3	4	7	5	AZ	Trevor Cahill	21:40
Cole DeVries	MIN	3	4	5	6	10	OAK	Brett Anderson*	22:05
A.J. Burnett	PIT	8	5	5	6	4	SD	Jason Marquis	22:05
Robe. Hernandez*	CLE	6	3	5	4	9	SEA	Felix Hernandez	22:10
Tim Lincecum	SF	7	3	7	1	8	LAN	Joe Blanton	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.