Offseason Notes for October 19th

Red Sox minor leaguer Dan Butler is patient in at least two ways.

Today’s edition of Offseason Notes contains within it:

1. An Announcement Regarding How SCOUT Is Better
2. SCOUT Batting Leaderboard: Arizona Fall League
3. SCOUT Pitching Leaderboard: Arizona Fall League

An Announcement Regarding How SCOUT Is Better
Bolded Heading
Today’s SCOUT leaderbaords — that is, the leaderboards for the metric we use to make something out of the small samples found in baseball’s various fall and winter leagues — contain three! three! three! changes.

Regarding Change No. 1
The first way SCOUT is different is that the batting leaderboards now contain walk rates. It’s possible that I’ve made a compelling argument against their inclusion at some point, but, if that’s the case, I don’t recall what the argument was. In point of fact, walk rates becomes reliable after about 200 plate appearances — that is, only 50 more than for strikeout rates and 100 fewer than for home-run rates.

Regarding Change No. 2
The second way SCOUT is different is that pitching rates are no longer on a nine-inning basis (i.e. strikeouts and walks per nine innings) but on a per-batter basis. It doesn’t necessarily make a huge difference in terms of outcome, but using per-batter rates prevents high-walk pitchers from being unduly rewarded for strikeouts, too.

Regarding Change No. 3
The third difference in today’s leaderboards is that they’ve been reformatted with a view to making them more user-friendly.

SCOUT Batting Leaderboard
The Leaderboard
Here is the SCOUT batting leaderboard for the Arizona Fall League. (Click here for more on SCOUT.)

Notes
Daniel Butler is a (recently turned) 25-year-old catcher in the Red Sox organization. That he played the majority of 2011 at High-A Salem indicates that he’s not what you’d call a “top prospect,” although he did finish the season playing at Triple-A Pawtucket, however briefly. Butler’s plate-discipline numbers were good at his Double-A stop, where he posted a 11.8% walk rate and 14.5% strikeout rate in 76 plate appearances. So far in the AFL he has nine walks against only a single strikeout — which, that’s a lot of walks.

SCOUT Pitching Leaderboard
The Leaderboard
Same verse, very similar to the first.

Notes
Anthony Bass makes his way to second place on the leaderboard with an impressive performance last (Tuesday) night, during the course of which he struck out eight of the 19 batters he faced. Bass pitched 48.1 uninspiring innings — both as a started and reliever — for the Padres this season, finishing with this line: 12.1% K, 10.6% BB, 46.0% GB, 4.80 SIERA, 4.62 xFIP, 120 xFIP-. Bass featured a fastball in the 92-94 mph range even as a starter. A curious note: Bass made a reference after Tuesday’s game to his “fastball… curve and… change,” while Pitch F/x classifies the middle offering as a slider.

Photo courtesy Tom Priddy.