Daily Notes, With More Expected wOBA Trifles

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

1. Expected wOBA Leaderboards: Last 30 Days
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Expected wOBA Leaderboards: Last 30 Days
A Brief Explanation of What This Is
In yesterday’s edition of the Notes, I experimented with something called “Expected wOBA,” itself essentially a version of Bradley Woodrum’s Fielding Independent wOBA but with regressed (as opposed to raw) home-run, walk, and strikeout rates — and a (somewhat haphazardly) regressed version of Woodrum’s updated xBABIP formula, as well — as the inputs.

The idea behind Expected wOBA is to estimate something like a player’s true talent over the course of X plate appearances. However, because we looked — again, in those leaderboards yesterday — because we looked at Expected wOBA for all of 2012, we were dealing with samples that, in most cases, had passed the plate-appearance threshold for reliability for all the relevant inputs. For that reason, there was little deviation between those Expected wOBA figures and the Fielding Independent wOBAs posted by Woodrum last week.

For this edition of the Notes, I’ve published some new Expected wOBA numbers — except, in this case, using only the last month’s worth of data. This appeals more directly to the strength of Expected wOBA — namely, its capacity to express something meaningful even with small samples.

Expected wOBA Leaders: Last 30 Days
Here are the leaders in Expected wOBA (xWOBA, in this case) among all batters over the last 30 days. Note that anything beginning with an -x- has been regressed. Note also that, in the absence of actual research having been done on it, I’ve opted to regress stolen-base percentage to 100 plate appearances (as, unregressed, it gives undue credit to players who’ve stolen one base in, for example, just four plate appearances).

Expected wOBA Laggards: Last 30 Days
Here are the bottom-10 hitters over the last month by Expected wOBA:

Potential wOBA Risers, Maybe
Here are the 10 players whose Expected wOBAs most greatly exceed their actual wOBAs over the last 30 days (minimum 25 PA):

Potential wOBA Fallers, Maybe
Here are the 10 players whose Expected wOBAs are most greatly exceeded by their actual wOBAs over the last 30 days (minimum 25 PA):

Complete Expected wOBA Leaders: Last 30 Days
Click this hyperlinked text to see the full Expected wOBA leaderboard for the last 30 days.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Texas at Los Angeles AL | 22:05 ET
To answer the question that at least one reader might consider asking in his heart (if not aloud, to a sad and empty room): the reason for Jered Weaver’s seemingly low NERD score — NERD being our infallible watchability metric that’s infallible — is due to the fact that Weaver currently possesses a below-average swinging-strike rate (7.4%) and overall strike rate (62.7%) and average fastball velocity (88.1 mph) — and only a slightly above-average xFIP (3.95). To answer the other question that a reader might ask: yes, it’s illegal to do that — even if it’s just to a dog.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas Radio.

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
Tommy Hanson	ATL	5	8	7	6	10	WAS	Step. Strasburg	19:05
Miguel Gonzalez	BAL	6	1	3	5	2	CLE	Derek Lowe	19:05
Jake Peavy	CHA	6	5	7	4	9	DET	Justin Verlander	19:05
Ricky Nolasco	MIA	4	3	2	4	1	PIT	Kevin Correia	19:05
Tim Lincecum	SF	7	4	4	5	5	PHI	Vance Worley	19:05
Aaron Harang	LAN	2	1	5	3	6	NYN	Johan Santana	19:10
Marco Estrada	MIL	9	7	6	4	5	CIN	Homer Bailey	19:10
Hisashi Iwakuma	SEA	4	4	5	4	8	TB	James Shields	19:10
Aaron Laffey	TOR	3	7	5	6	6	BOS	Josh Beckett	19:10
Nick Blackburn	MIN	1	3	2	7	5	KC	Luke Hochevar	20:10
Ryan Dempster	CHN	6	1	5	9	4	STL	Kyle Lohse	20:15
Bud Norris	HOU	6	4	4	7	5	AZ	Trevor Cahill	21:40
Drew Pomeranz	COL	3	9	2	5	3	SD	Jason Marquis	22:05
Ivan Nova	NYA	6	7	6	4	5	OAK	Tommy Milone	22:05
Derek Holland	TEX	5	8	5	6	4	LAA	Jered Weaver	22:05

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.