It is our first Monday of the year; always a busy day of the week as we catch up from the weekend.
I have added a ton of stuff below. I was going to wait a couple of weeks to show some of the sections like barrel leaders, contact rate leaders, K-BB leaders, etc. since you shouldn’t pay much attention at all to that stuff when we’re talking about 3-4 games of data, but I figured why not just show it - so that’s all below.
We have a couple of brand-spankin’ new additions to the notes as well:
Minor league top performances (hitters & pitchers)
Pitcher & Hitter streamer picks for today
You’ll get to all of that eventually if you keep scrolling, but for now, it’s soap box time.
Quick update on the league-wide stats:
Steals Stuff
Everybody creamed their chicken after Opening Day about the 91% SB success rate, but that has fallen every day since, and now we’re down to 83%. My guess is that it settled in around 77%-80% since it is logical to assume it would go up with the new rules, but yeah 90% was never going to be a real thing.
The Twins, Tigers, Royals, and Marlins have yet to attempt a steal (in the case of the last three there that’s probably because they all have sub-.300 OBPs currently). The teams running most aggressively are the Orioles (26% attempt rate), Mariners (25%), Yankees (22%), and Diamondbacks (21%). That’s funny because the Diamondbacks did not attempt a steal until yesterday when they swiped four bases on four attempts.
Home Run Stuff
Last April, 12.8% of fly balls went for homers (4,026 BIP). So far this season, it’s 13.3% (624 BIP). I’m not sure when a stat like that would stabilize, but we’ll keep an eye on it, because stuff like this with the make of the baseball can typically be interpreted pretty early on. Jason Collette has been keeping an eye on the trends, I recommend you give him a follow if you haven’t already.
The attention-grabbing SP of the day on Sunday was probably Jeffrey Springs, but that’s a bit of old news. If you don’t know, now you know! He’s probably a legitimate fantasy ace and the sharps (even me, yours truly, who everybody loves so) were drafting him aggressively with his mispriced ADP.
The name that really stands out is Jhony Brito. Certainly, he was not a part of the Yankees’ rotation plans in February, but with all of the disasters they’ve had so far they had him starting their third game. And hey, he pitched great:
The changeup-first pitcher tends to be quite volatile, but he started the year on the positive side of that volatility and a 39% SwStr% on 28 changeups is just ludicrous.
The four-seamer did not perform well in 22 tries, just getting the one whiff and being hit in the air when it was hit, but hey the sinker looked decently effective as well so he has two options there on what to back up the changeup with.
Over the last two seasons in the minor leagues, Brito has just a 22.4% K%, but a strong 5.9% BB%. Far from dominant there, but the first start of the year should at least have us pay attention to what he does next time.
Seth Lugo should be added in more leagues, he threw seven innings yesterday with seven punchies, no walks, and just one run allowed. It came with an uninspiring 9.7% SwStr%, but overall - good stuff there but a pitcher that has always been quite good - but just has never gotten serious run in a rotation.
Noah Syndergaard earned 13 whiff daddies. He was still sinker-first, which makes me doubt he’ll actually have a good SwStr% this year, but it worked out yesterday:
Great performance on the changeup, and good to see him utilizing both fastball variations - even though the velocity is still gone. Remember how hard that dude threw early on in his career? He was the league’s main attraction for a minute there.
Chris Bassitt threw everything at the wall and nothing stuck. He scored -17 DraftKings points and didn’t strike out any of the 19 batters he faced.
Allowing a barrel on five different pitches might be a new record. His velocity is gonezo, and that was evident several weeks ago. I would never say panic after one start, but I say a lot of things I would never say - panic!
Trout was the JA hitter king of the day, which he so often is.
Don’t look now but Oneil Cruz has struck out just once in 13 PAs, although the 68% Contact% is still bad, so don’t get too excited.
Here is a list of hitters with a contact rate above 90% and at least a 10% Brl/PA
Vlad
Chapman (eyes emoji)
Verdugo (eyes emoji)
Steer (eyes emoji)
Franco (eyes emoji)
Grandal (eyes emoji)
Alright here goes our first full-length automated report of the year, what a great time to be alive! Man I love baseball.
Everything is above the paywall today just to let the leeches really get a feel for what they’ll be missing soon. Sorry for calling you a leech, I don’t even know you, man - but give me $7, c’mon.
