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

1. Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
2. Largely Superfluous Video: Cliff Lee’s May 15th Start
3. Other Notable Games (Including MLB.TV Free Game)
4. Today’s Complete Schedule

Featured Game: Boston at Philadelphia, 13:35 ET
Cliff Lee Status Update
Here’s a status update for 33-year-old left-hander Cliff Lee, who starts this afternoon for Philadelphia: 37.0 IP, 26.2% K, 3.1% BB, 61.1% GB, 2.09 SIERA, 61 xFIP-, 1.1 WAR.

Regarding Lee’s Strikeout Rate, Where It’d Rank in Terms of His Career
Regarding Lee’s present strikeout rate, it would represent the best mark of his career were the season to end today. (He posted a 25.9% strikeout rate last season.)

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Episode 182
David Laurila (@DavidLaurilaQA), curator of FanGraphs’ Q&A Series, talks both to Mariners catcher John Jaso and Seattle Times beat writer Geoff Baker.

Don’t hesitate to direct pod-related correspondence to @cistulli on Twitter.

You can subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or other feeder things.

Audio after the jump. (Approximately 28 min. play time.)

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Big news in Los Angeles of Anaheim these past couple days: Albert Pujols has hit home runs in back-to-back games. Just as after Pujols hit his first homer of the season back on May 6th, one question rules Angels-related discourse: is Albert back? Pujols did hit in six of his next eight games following that first home run, but the result was just a .265/.285/.265 line. Is anything different this time around? Can Angels fans finally start to believe? A quick look at where these home runs fell suggests yes, a rebound should be here soon for Pujols.

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Since the start of 2011, the Blue Jays are tied for 26th in WAR among first basemen. Yesterday, the team sought to do something to change that mark when they demoted Adam Lind to Triple-A. The most shocking thing about the demotion may be that it took so long.

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Understatement: Jason Heyward‘s 2011 season did not go quite as most of us expected. His (seemingly) long-awaited 2010 rookie campaign at age 20 mostly lived up to the hype, but he followed up with stereotypical “sophomore slump” season that was marred by nagging injuries, benchings, but most of all, poor hitting (relative to expectations, at least). Now 22, Heyward is so far may not be hitting as well as he did in his rookie year, but he is doing well. His resurgence over the first quarter of the season thus far is one reason the Braves are currently leading the National League East.

Many explanations have been given for Heyward’s 2011 issues, too many to deal with one way or the other. If it is not too boring, I want to focus on a couple different ways that “regression” was used in this particular case to see how it is sometimes misused, or, perhaps more accurately, used in a clumsy fashion.

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On Tuesday, Adam Jones took a 1-0 fastball from CC Sabathia in the second inning and launched it out to left field. On Wednesday, in the 15th inning, he destroyed a curveball from Nate Adcock, breaking a 3-3 tie and giving the Orioles a go-ahead run that led to their extra inning win. Yesterday, the victim was Luke Hochevar, whose 4th inning slider didn’t break far enough out of the zone, allowing Jones to deposit it over the center field wall for his third home run in as many days.

The power surge continues Jones’ strong start to the season, and his 13 home runs are now just six fewer than he had in both 2009 and 2010. The long ball barrage has raised his overall season line to .295/.345/.604, and his 159 wRC+ puts him in the top 20 in offensive performance to begin the year. Once you add in the fact that Jones is a center fielder who also runs the bases well, Jones has been a top five player in the sport so far.

While it’s still early, his strong start is evoking memories of Matt Kemp‘s breakout year last season, and the two might be a bit more similar than you think.

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Based on Game Score, Kerry Wood‘s 20 strikeout game against the Astros on May 6th, 1998 is the best-pitched nine-inning game in Major League history. The 105 score is better than every perfect game and four points better than any other game period. He was 41 days shy of his 21st birthday and it was his fifth big league start.

Wood, now 34, is set to announce his retirement from baseball today according to ESPN Chicago’s Bruce Levine. Among pitchers who have thrown at least 1,000 career innings, his career 10.31 K/9 is the best in history by a right-handed pitcher and the second best all-time behind Randy Johnson (10.61 K/9). His 20 strikeouts against Houston remains the National League single-game record, and five days later he struck out 13 Diamondbacks to set the all-time record for strikeouts in consecutive starts (33).

In many ways, Wood is the embodiment of everything that can happen with young pitchers. He dominated, he walked a ton of guys, he got hurt, he dominated again, got hurt again, shifted to the bullpen, and then got hurt yet again. Unlike Mark Prior, Wood was hurt long before Dusty Baker came to Chicago’s north side and starting running arms through the shredder. He had Tommy John surgery in 1999 and shoulder inflammation in 2001, but still managed to rack up 17.2 WAR before his career really flew off the rails in 2004.

The laundry list of injuries includes labrum and rotator cuff surgery, five separate DL stints for non-surgical shoulder problems, knee surgery, back problems, blisters, an oblique strain, and triceps issues in addition to the elbow reconstruction. Wood spent 16 different stints on the disabled list during his 14-year career, including a bout with shoulder inflammation this season that appears to have contributed to his decision to retire. Frankly, it’s surprising he didn’t call it a career sooner given all the physical problems.

In an age when the term “electric stuff” gets slapped on every kid with a mid-90s fastball, none have lived up to the moniker like Wood. His fastball would legitimately sit in the mid-to-upper-90s early in his career and that curveball … it was just a thing of beauty. Batters swung and missed at his offerings a whopping 12.3% of the time since the data starting being recorded in 2002, a testament to how nasty he was. Wood topped the 200 IP plateau only twice (2002 and 2003) but he had four different seasons of 3+ WAR, including another at 2.7. He started, he closed, and he setup between injuries for the Cubs, the Indians, the Yankees, and then the Cubs again.

It’s almost impossible to find someone who wasn’t a fan of Kerry Wood. He was never an underdog in the sense that he lacked talent — he had talent to spare, if anything — but he was an underdog in that his body did everything it could to sabotage his greatness. Wood was one of the most exciting pitchers of his generation, fitting the Texas fireballer stereotype to a tee. Paul Sullivan of The Chicago Tribune says he’ll announce the decision following this afternoon’s game, and chances are Wood will make his final appearance as a player in relief and walk off the field to a standing ovation. After all he’s been through, Kerry will leave the game of baseball on his own terms and that’s awesome.

“In the end,” Thompson wrote, “very few people will remember anything I have done as a baseball player. But hopefully they will remember what kind of person and teammate I am.”

– the Philadelphia Inquirer

For those who missed the Rays and Red Sox game last night, here’s the update: In the bottom of the eighth, moments before a blood-souring hit-by-pitch to Will Rhymes, pinch runner Rich Thompson took over for Luke Scott at second base. Much of the audience was probably — and perhaps rightly — focused on Rhymes.

But at the same time, Thompson standing at second was a spectacle in itself.
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With rain being a scouting nemesis for much of early April, having Nationals first rounder Alex Meyer fall into my lap in Rome, Georgia after consecutive postponements was a welcome surprise. Meyer’s start marked the beginning of a three-day stretch of scouting which included four top-100 pitching prospects (Trevor Bauer, Tyler Skaggs, Nathan Eovaldi, Allen Webster), along with two former first rounders in Chris Withrow and Meyer. And while the former University of Kentucky Wildcat held his own against this group in terms of raw stuff, Meyer’s poor command pushed him to the back of the line compared to other prospects scouted that week.

Video after the jump.

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With an inability to develop quality arms stateside, the Baltimore Orioles have made an attempt to solve their pitching woes through the international market. Specifically, the Orioles have dove headfirst into Asia — too aggressively for the tastes of some in the Far East — bringing in two starting pitchers for 2012 in Tsuyoshi Wada and Wei-Yin Chen. Wada will spend the year rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, but the early returns on Chen have been extremely positive. Chen held the Yankees to two earned runs over 7 innings Tuesday night, extending his streak of starts with three or fewer earned runs through his first seven career starts. Chen owns a 2.66 ERA and a solid 3.41 FIP in his first 44 innings as an American professional, exceeding the expectations many had for him entering the year.

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A refreshed look at the data.

Specificity is both delightful and dangerous. The guys at The Book Blog have previously remarked about how UZR and WAR would be better for mass consumption without the decimal because neither stat can show a true talent level within a single season, but the extra decimal can make it appear more certain or accurate than it is. At the same time, though, the difference between 1.0 and 1.9 WAR can be the difference of a starting job or a bench role (or the difference between 1.6 and 2.4, if rounding is your thing).

Well, today we will err on the side of specificity. In the past, when a player’s BABIP was .498 or .93278, we would just say, “Well, he will regress to the mean,” and then resume our toiling lives. Now, with Fielding Independent wOBA, we can whip their numbers into shape, we can thrust them into the De-Lucker and find out where a regressed BABIP will take them — which is good news for Marlon Byrd, but bad news for Mike Moustakas.

Let’s examine it.
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Zack Greinke is putting himself in a great situation. Not only is the 28-year-old Milwaukee Brewers’ ace dominating hitters again, he’s doing it in a contract year. With the Brewers allegedly suspending contract talks with Greinke just last month, it looks like Greinke might take his chance on the free-agent market.

If Greinke were to hit free-agency, he and Cole Hamels would be the two most-sought-after starters. The Brewers have said they are willing to sign Greinke to a long-term extension — but based on recent pitcher deals — Greinke may price himself out of their budget.

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One of my closest friends is a St. Louis native, and after the tumult of contract misadventures this past off season, he asked me how I thought the Cardinals might fare in 2012. My comment was that they’d win more games in 2012 than they did in 2011 — bank on it. But most of that was wrapped up in the notion that they’d get Adam Wainwright back to form, Lance Berkman would be relatively healthy and better suited defensively at first base and Carlos Beltran would produce somewhere around four wins.

Some prognosticator I am. Thank goodness for Carlos Beltran — right, St. Louis?

After just 33 games, Beltran has already posted 2.2 wins above replacement, and although he has played decent on defense, his WAR total is almost entirely accounted for with his bat. His slash line stands at .298/.406/.653 with 13 home runs and 32 RBI. He is among the league leaders in WAR, and is just 0.1 WAR behind Matt Kemp. And what’s particularly notable about the current WAR leaders is the potential for regression:

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…because you come here for the super clever post titles. No one has ever played off of the Melk/milk thing before, right?

Melky Cabrera is at it again. After a disastrous 2010 season in Atlanta, the Melk-Man (BOOM! It’s like MILK-Man, get it?) bounced back for a career year with the Royals in 2011. He was a good bet to regress, right? The Royals, who had Lorenzo Cain on deck, traded Cabrera to the Giants for much-needed pitching help in the form of one Jonathan Sanchez. So, how’s that going? It actually seemed like a fair need-for-need trade at the time, but while Sanchez has crashed, burned, and gotten hurt in Kansas City, Cabrera has been on fire in San Francisco. He’s been so good so far this season, that the team is reportedly already considering an in-season extension. Is Cabrera a different player than he used to be? How much would a reasonable extension be?

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Coming into the 2011 season, Domonic Brown ranked as the fourth-best prospect in all of baseball according to Baseball America. The Philadelphia Phillies had just watched right fielder Jayson Werth depart for greener pastures in Washington and felt confident that Brown was the long-term answer at the position.

A little more than a year later, we’re all left wondering what went wrong.

At age 23, Brown got his second extended look in the big leagues starting in May of 2011. Though some skill at the plate was evident, he ultimately underwhelmed with a .322 wOBA in 210 plate appearances. The league-average wOBA in right field was .334 in 2011, and the struggles on defense could not justify allowing him to work through his growing pains at the big league level — at least, not for a team with legitimate World Series aspirations.

Philadelphia sent Brown back down to Triple-A in August. The only other big league action he saw last season was a brief call-up in late September once rosters expanded and the Triple-A season had already been completed.

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Jonathan Papelbon has been sharp in his debut season with the Phillies thus far. He has allowed just four runs in his first 15 innings of work (2.40 ERA) and continues to blow away hitters, notching 18 strikeouts already. He was unavailable Monday afternoon, though — after throwing the past three nights consecutively, including with a four-run lead in Sunday’s game (+0.01 WPA), Papelbon was unavailable. It was Chad Qualls‘s ninth inning, then, when the Phillies took a 3-1 lead into the ninth against the Astros.

Qualls wouldn’t finish the ninth, as the Astros tied the game behind four hits and nearly took the lead, stranding runners on second and third thanks to Jake Diekman‘s first career strikeout. Hunter Pence picked up Qualls with a walk-off home run in the 10th inning, but with Papelbon making $50 million over the next four years, it’s easy to question Charlie Manuel when he sits in the bullpen as a journeyman reliever blows a save. Is what we saw Monday a theme for the season?

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During the 2011 postseason, I wrote about Brandon Inge and the unusual circumstances of his season with the Detroit Tigers. In post entitled Brandon Inge’s Rare Feat, I explained that:

Based on my research, Inge appears to be the only player in the past 10 years with more than five years of major-league service who was designated for assignment, then was recalled by the major-league team that sent him down and then went on to play a significant role [for that team] in the postseason.

The Tigers had designated Inge for assignment last July after he batted .144/.202/.196 in 239 plate appearances. He reported to the Tigers’ Triple-A affiliate in Toledo, and hit his way back to Detroit in August. Upon his return, he batted .262/.315/.436 in 54 plate appearances and earned a spot on the Tigers’ postseason roster. He contributed a .429/.500/.571 line to the Tigers’ winning effort over the Yankees in the League Division Series and a .267/.389/.467 line in the Tigers’ loss to the Rangers in League Championship Series.

Heading into the 2012 season, Inge expected to play third base for the Tigers in the final year of his 2-year/$11 million contract. But Victor Martinez blew out his knee and was lost for the season, leading the the Tigers to sign Prince Fielder and move Miguel Cabrera to third base. The Tigers moved Inge to second base, where he split time with Ryan Raburn and Ramon Santiago. In twenty plate appearances, Inge hit .100/.100/.300. The Tigers released him on April 26.

Four days later, the Oakland A’s — desperate for just a replacement-level third baseman — signed Inge. In eleven games, Inge is producing for Oakland like he did for Detroit last postseason. In 50 plate appearances, Inge is hitting .227/.300/.545 with five walks, two doubles and four home runs. Two of Inge’s   homers have been grand slams, including this walk-off slam against the Toronto Blue Jays last week:

He’s also made some nifty defensive plays for the Green-and-Gold, including this catch of Omar Vizquel‘s bunt attempt in the same game as the walk-off grannie.

Whether Inge will continue to produce for the A’s remains to be seen. Fifty plate appearances is a tiny sample size and runs counter to Inge’s career numbers: .234/.304/.389, .301 wOBA and 81 RC+.

Even so, Inge has already accomplished something few other major leaguers have: getting released from one team mid-season, signing with a new team that season, and making an immediate impact for the new team.

To be sure, there are dozens of players who’ve redeemed their careers in the the seasons following an outright release. Among pitchers who’ve recently turned their careers around after getting released there’s Brandon McCarthy, Ryan Vogelsong, Kevin Millwood, Clay Hensley, and Tim Byrdak. Among  position players, there’s Casey Kotchman, Melky Cabrera, and Jeff Francoeur.

But few players turn their season around with a new team following a release. Bobby Abreu‘s been given a second chance with the Dodgers this season, after the Angels released him on April 26. After batting .208/.259/.303 in 27 plate appearances with Anaheim, Abreu’s posted a .296/.345/.444 line in 29 plate appearances for the boys in blue. Livan Hernandez has been useful out of the bullpen for the Braves this season, after getting released by the Astros at the end of spring training. In 22 1/3 innings, Hernandez has a 2.17 K/BB ratio and is stranding 81 percent of the runners on base.

Last season, the Rays released Cory Wade from their Triple-A affiliate in June only to see him become a steady reliever out of the Yankees bullpen.  The Rangers faced Arthur Rhodes in the World Series after they released him  August and he signed on with the Cardinals.

Pat Burrell turned his career around with the Giants in 2010, after the Rays released him in the second year of a 2-year/$16 million contract. At the time he left Tampa, Burrell was batting .202/.292/.333 with two home runs in 96 plate appearances. In San Francisco, Burrell batted .266/.364/.539 with eighteen home runs in 341 plate appearances and was a key component of the Giants’ first World Series Championship since the team moved to San Francisco in 1958.

Unlike Burrell and Abreu, there’s nothing in Inge’s career numbers to suggest he can sustain this offensive production for the A’s over the rest of the season. But Inge has proved us wrong before. And he may just do it again.

On March 5th, Christian Friedrich was inducted into the annual Best Shape Of His Life club thanks to this MLB.com article from Thomas Harding:

Even worse, he had bulked up to 240 pounds by the latter part of the season, partly because of his off-base workouts and partly because he had fallen into the habit of late-night meals.

But this winter, Friedrich spent a week and a half training with Phillies standout Cliff Lee. Friedrich, who said he was floored by Lee’s physical conditioning, dropped to 205 pounds, and he hopes to be in that vicinity during the season.

A 35 pound weight loss is certainly a drastic change, but as has been often chronicled, many of these off-season workout stories turn out to have little to no impact on a player’s performance on the field. In fact, so many players are noted to report to camp in the “Best Shape Of Their Life”, the story has become something of a running joke. However, getting in better physical condition can occasionally lead to significant changes, and it’s looking like Friedrich might just be an example of why these stories keep getting written.

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Danny Duffy is headed for surgery. After an MRI revealed a torn ulnar collateral ligament in Duffy’s left elbow, it looks like Tommy John surgery will sideline the left-hander until next season. A former top prospect in the Kansas City Royals’ farm system, Duffy reached the majors last season. And even though he struggled initially, the 23-year-old seemed to be making progress this year. And now that he’s out for the season, the Royals’ rise to prominence may be put on hold even longer.

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Josh Hamilton just had himself quite a week. The Rangers’ slugger clubbed nine homers in one week, including four in one game. He hit .467/.529/1.433, for a ridiculous 1.963 OPS, and piled up 1.5 WAR, which was 0.6 more than any player in the game. As Mark Simon at ESPN showed with this heat map, Hamilton destroyed just about everything thrown his way. But just how hot was he, in a historical sense?

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