MLB Daily Notes - August 13th
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
Pitcher Review
It went according to plan for Brandon Pfaadt, who took advantage of the elite matchup with the Rockies opening up a road trip.
7 IP, 8 H, 4 ER, 11 K, 0 BB, 58.5% Strike%, 20.2% SwStr%
Good to see Pfaadt take advantage of the boost there. Pfaadt now owns an 18.1% K-BB% on the season with a 3.75 SIERA. I think Pfaadt is going to settle into being a very solid and reliable SP2 to SP3. I’ll be excited to draft him next year as a mid-round rotation innings anchor.
There’s nothing fantastic about his STUFF, but his command is great and he seems to know how to pitch.
I added some more sliders to the main dashboard’s pitcher tab, so we can do more “similarity” stuff on there. I looked for pitchers with profiles most similar to Pfaadt, and here’s what we get:
This doesn’t have to do with what kinds of pitches they throw, but just the results they’ve gotten this year. I think the Aaron Nola comp is pretty good, especially since they kind of look like each other.
WHICH ONE IS WHICH WOW.
The Snell vs. Sale matchup was awesome.
Sale: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 12 K, 0 BB, 19 whiffs, 59.8% Strike%
Snell: 6.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 11 K, 3 BB, 19 whiffs, 53.5% Strike%
Five hits, no runs, and 23 strikeouts combined - beautiful stuff. Neither guy earned the win, as the it took the Braves won 1-0 in extra innings.
Snell now has a 0.99 ERA, a 0.62 WHIP, a 37.7% K%, and an 8.8% BB% over his last seven starts.
K-BB% Leaders Since July 1
The Bowden Francis stream, which was recommended, went beautifully:
7 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 8 K, 0 BB, 11.1% SwStr%, 53.1% Strike%
He took full advantage of the Angels matchup. The efficiency was crazy, he got through seven innings with just 81 pitches.
He has been used primarily out of the bullpen this year, but here are his numbers:
56.2 IP, 4.92 ERA, 1.24 WHIP, 21.4% K%, 6.7% BB%, 10.2% SwStr%, 48% Strike%, 33.3% Ball%, 101 Stuff+, 100 Location+
So he throws a lot of strikes and his stuff isn’t awful. He’s about a league-average pitcher, and that can be useful as a fantasy streamer in good matchups now that he’s being used as a traditional starter.
Remember that he began the year in the rotation after having a nice spring, so this isn’t someone who isn’t experienced with making starts.
Brayan Bello didn’t have the whiffs this time, but the box score result was nice:
6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 5 K, 3 BB, 10.5% SwStr%, 44.2% Strike%, 38.9% Ball%
He has been a lot better lately, as we talked about here last week. This wasn’t the most encouraging start with the bad Strike% and Ball%. The K-BB% still isn’t good lately (13.5% since June, but a bit better at 17% since July), so I’m not saying that he should be picked up in 12-team leagues or anything like that, but he’s certainly a step ahead of a lot of the other guys that might be on waivers.
The Yankees lost by ten to the White Sox. Luis Gil took the loss there:
4 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 3 K, 2 BB, 51.0% Strike%, 33.7% Ball%
That’s a pretty good ball rate for him, but he didn’t have his best stuff (13.3% SwStr%) and gave up a .429 BABIP, so it didn’t go well! You have never been able to fully trust Gil, and we saw that big time yesterday.
Taj Bradley has hit a rough patch. Yesterday he gave up six earned runs on eight hits in just 4.1 innings against the Astros. He’s given up 15 runs in his last three starts:
Season numbers for Taj:
13.7% SwStr%, 28.5% K%, 8.4% BB%, 10.6% Brl%, 42.7% GB%
Last 3 starts:
12.5% SwStr%, 21.4% K%, 8.6% BB%, 10.4% Brl%, 37.5% GB%
He hasn’t had his best stuff the last three outings, and the strikeouts have dropped. That’s the main problem. The secondary problem is how much hard contact he gives up. Hitters have seven homers and a .403 xwOBA on his four-seamer, despite a pretty strong 52% Strike%. So when they get the bat to it, it’s loud contact.
I don’t think that’s something that we should count on moving forward. Hard contact isn’t sticky, as we know, so it’s quite possible that this problem immediately goes away. It’s also possible/probable that there’s something to this. Maybe he tips the pitch sometimes, maybe it’s just flat or something to where it’s easy to get in the air, I don’t know!
The bottom line is that we like Taj Bradley. He has the K-BB% we want, even after this tough three-game stretch. There will be highs and lows, but overall, he should be a good fantasy pitcher. And maybe this ERA bloating will lower his cost for next year to where we can get him comfortably.
Tyler Mahle made his second start:
4.2 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 7 K, 3 BB, 16.3% SwStr%, 54.3% Strike%
Not efficient, it took him 92 pitches to get those 14 outs, so that’s a negative -but the rest of that is positive. Here’s the pitch mix:
The fastball velo is down about a half of a mile per hour, but the pitch has worked very nicely nonetheless with that great 16.5% SwSr% and 51% Strike%.
He is throwing the splitter more this year so far (20% last year, 30% this year), and that’s a pretty enticing development. A good splitter is one of the toughest pitches to hit, so teaming a good fastball with a good splitter takes you a long way. However, it’s not easy to consistently deliver a good splitter. Since last year, we’ve seen him throw just 133 splitters, so not a big data sample, but it’s a good early sign with an elite 53% Strike% and 32 Ball%, although it has been hit pretty well with a .330 xwOBA and two homers.
His recent K-BB numbers:
2021: 33 GS, 27.7% K%, 8.4% BB%
2022: 23 GS, 25.0% K%, 8.5% BB%
2023: 5 GS, 27.5% K%, 4.9% BB%
So the fair expectation would be something like a 26% K% and a 7% BB%, which would work nicely. I think you should pick him up if he’s available (but obviously that depends on who you’d have to drop), and he’ll be another good later-round SP pick in drafts next year.
A very bad one from Shota Imanaga:
5 IP, 7 H, 3 ER, 7 R, 3 K, 1 BB, 7.4% SwStr%, 46.9% Strike%
That’s just the fifth time all year he’s been under a 10% SwStr%. The matchup had something to do with this, the Guardians are a tough team to pitch against.
For the year, they’re hitting .240/.310/.400 with a 19.7% K% and a 7.8% BB%. They don’t have at on of power, but they put a bunch of balls in play and really grind out at bats. The way I grade matchups is fantasy points scored per batter faced, and they are #8 on that list in 2024:
ARI 0.50
LAD 0.51
HOU 0.51
PHI 0.52
NYY 0.53
KCR 0.53
SDP 0.53
CLE 0.55
BAL 0.56
TOR 0.57
I put together a table of the quality start rate against for each team. The Yankees are the toughest team to qualbang against at just 22.5% (27 quality starts against in 120 starts). The White Sox are the easiest at 48.7%, and you can see the rest of the league here:
One more pitcher to cover: Clayton Kershaw. Let’s just look at his advanced game logs:
He has settled into about 80 pitches. It would seem that after he crosses 75, the Dodgers will take that next opportunity to pull him. The SwStr% is scary low at 10.7%, but the Strike% isn’t bad at 48.6%. But overall, it’s not a pretty picture for fantasy purposes. The K-BB% is under 15% so far, I wouldn’t be counting on him to help your fantasy team a ton.
What a career though, man, and a fantastic person. Gotta love that guy. I’m a big fan of players with big and in-tact families. Might add that as a category to my fantasy league next year. FamilyMan+.
Hitter Review
Shohei Ohtani added another homer and another steal to his record to get him to a 36-32 season with a .300 batting average and a 1.011 OPS. Insane stuff, and he does let up.
More interestingly for fantasy purposes was Jhonkensy Noel hitting two tanks. Gotta love the guy that just swings out of his damn shoes and hopes for the best. Noel has a 16.4% Brl% on the year now with an .886 OPS, but a 30% K% and a 4.6% BB%.
Noel swings
OFTEN (59.5%, 12th-highest in the league)
HARD (77.0 average bat speed, 4th-highest in the league)
Given that, his 71.3% Contact% is decently impressive. If we look at hitters with swing rates above 52% and bat speed above 73mph, we see a whole lot of really bad contact rates:
Noel is in the top half there in contact rate. That’s a good sign. He will still strike out a bunch, but there’s a chance he gets enough balls into play to produce. He is also just 23 years old, so we could be looking at a kid with a very bright future. Maybe Cleveland will actually have some raw power for once to back up Jose Ramirez. I miss Franmil Reyes.
Spencer Steer had a spike game with two ding-a-lings, five rib-daddies, and a swipe.
Steer really knows how to have some very good games and some very bad games. For the year:
.237/.322/.433, .756 OPS, 18 HR, 7.0% Brl%, 20.5% K%, 10.1% BB%
.235 xAVG, .320 xwOBA
Whatever it means to be “streaky”, that is what Steer is:
Steven Kwan hit his 13th homer of the year to add onto his very strong year. He’s slugging .485 now, which is amazing to me. If we look at all hitters with at least a .480 slugging this year, and sort by xwOBACON ASCENDING, we get this as the top ten:
Steven Kwan (.485 SLG/.338 xwOBACON)
Jose Ramirez .544/.359
Josh Naylor .483/.379
Anthony Santander .534/.382
Jurickson Profar .487/.388
Alec Bohm .481/.390
The top three are Guardians! Have they figured something out here or is this just random?
Basically, this is a leaderboard of hitters who have figured out how to post a high slugging without the most bat speed. The way to do that is two-fold:
Low K%
Good launch angle
And that’s exactly what we see from Kwan. He does not strike out (8.6% K%, second-best in the league), and hits a ton of line drives (28%, tied for second-best in the league). Ramirez and Naylor are similar.
That will mostly turn into high batting averages and not necessarily power production, but Cleveland has squeezed 60 homers from that trio this year, so it’s all working very well.
Boring team though, I don’t want to watch too much of them in the playoffs.
Yainer Diaz has really come on lately.
His second half:
95 PA, .356/.389/.609, 5 HR, 13.7% K%, 5.3% BB%
He has his batting average up near .300 on the year with a dozen homers. We were hoping for more power than he’s given us, but it’s really rare to get this good of a batting average out of a catcher, so I’d value him pretty close to a top-five catcher moving forward.
He gets to that very low strike out rate in a different way than other guys. He just swings at everything, so he gives himself a lot of chances to get a ball in play. If you swing at everything, you have to whiff three times to strike out - that’s a lot. So that’s how Yainer does it.
2024 Swing Rates
Tovar 62.6%
Rafaela 60.5%
Castellanos 58.7%
DeJong 58.2%
S Perez 57.9%
Yainer Diaz 57.4%
Gimenez 57.3%
Moniak 56.9%
Albies 56.9%
Burleson 56.6%
You could make a pretty decent strikeout rate prediction model using two inputs:
Contact Rate
Swing Rate
If a hitter has high marks in both of those categories, they will have a good strikeout rate, and vice versa. Do you hear that sound? There’s a scatter plot a’comin!
This would be a good dataset to use in my upcoming Excel course to show how to perform a linear regression in Excel! Oh boy!
But it’s time to go now, have an enjoyable day. There is a lot of baseball on today for a Wednesday… great week for us dudes.
Update: Apparently today is Tuesday
Pitcher Reports
Algo SP Ranks - Yesterday
1. Brandon Pfaadt
2. Chris Sale
3. Pablo Lopez
4. Bowden Francis
5. Tyler Mahle
6. Sonny Gray
7. Blake Snell
8. Framber Valdez
9. Taj Bradley
10. Luis Gil
11. Davis Daniel
12. Brady Singer
13. Joe Musgrove
14. Andrew Abbott
15. Clayton Kershaw
16. Bradley Blalock
17. Brayan Bello
18. Freddy Peralta
19. Shota Imanaga
20. Ky Bush
21. Jake Woodford
22. Ben Lively
Fantasy Points Leaders - Yesterday
1. Chris Sale (vs. SF): 37.95 Points
2. Blake Snell (vs. ATL): 33.24 Points
3. Bowden Francis (vs. LAA): 33.15 Points
4. Framber Valdez (vs. TB): 30.36 Points
5. Brandon Pfaadt (vs. COL): 28.95 Points
6. Andrew Abbott (vs. STL): 24.81 Points
7. Clayton Kershaw (vs. MIL): 23.76 Points
8. Pablo Lopez (vs. KC): 19.9 Points
9. Brayan Bello (vs. TEX): 17.3 Points
10. Tyler Mahle (vs. BOS): 16.91 Points
Whiffs Leaders - Yesterday
1. Chris Sale (ATL): 19 Whiffs (107 Pitches)
2. Blake Snell (SF): 19 Whiffs (114 Pitches)
3. Brandon Pfaadt (ARI): 19 Whiffs (94 Pitches)
4. Sonny Gray (STL): 16 Whiffs (85 Pitches)
5. Tyler Mahle (TEX): 15 Whiffs (92 Pitches)
6. Pablo Lopez (MIN): 15 Whiffs (96 Pitches)
7. Taj Bradley (TB): 13 Whiffs (93 Pitches)
8. Luis Gil (NYY): 13 Whiffs (98 Pitches)
9. Framber Valdez (HOU): 12 Whiffs (101 Pitches)
10. Davis Daniel (LAA): 11 Whiffs (92 Pitches)
Strike% Leaders - Yesterday
1. Chris Sale (ATL): 59.8 Strike%, 28.0 Ball%
2. Brandon Pfaadt (ARI): 58.5 Strike%, 22.3 Ball%
3. Tyler Mahle (TEX): 54.3 Strike%, 34.8 Ball%
4. Pablo Lopez (MIN): 54.2 Strike%, 26.0 Ball%
5. Brady Singer (KC): 53.7 Strike%, 31.6 Ball%
6. Blake Snell (SF): 53.5 Strike%, 38.6 Ball%
7. Bowden Francis (TOR): 53.1 Strike%, 29.6 Ball%
8. Sonny Gray (STL): 52.9 Strike%, 34.1 Ball%
9. Clayton Kershaw (LAD): 51.8 Strike%, 32.5 Ball%
10. Luis Gil (NYY): 51.0 Strike%, 33.7 Ball%
11. Taj Bradley (TB): 49.5 Strike%, 34.4 Ball%
12. Framber Valdez (HOU): 48.5 Strike%, 40.6 Ball%
13. Shota Imanaga (CHC): 46.9 Strike%, 30.9 Ball%
14. Andrew Abbott (CIN): 46.2 Strike%, 33.3 Ball%
15. Joe Musgrove (SD): 46.0 Strike%, 31.7 Ball%
Pitches/Out (POUT) Leaders - Yesterday
1. Bowden Francis: 81 Pitches, 21 Outs, 3.86 POUT
2. Jake Woodford: 74 Pitches, 18 Outs, 4.11 POUT
3. Brandon Pfaadt: 94 Pitches, 21 Outs, 4.48 POUT
4. Andrew Abbott: 93 Pitches, 20 Outs, 4.65 POUT
5. Joe Musgrove: 63 Pitches, 13 Outs, 4.85 POUT
6. Clayton Kershaw: 83 Pitches, 17 Outs, 4.88 POUT
7. Chris Sale: 107 Pitches, 21 Outs, 5.1 POUT
8. Brayan Bello: 95 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.28 POUT
9. Freddy Peralta: 96 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.33 POUT
10. Pablo Lopez: 96 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.33 POUT
Velo Changes - Yesterday
Pablo Lopez's CH velo (17 pitches) UP 1.8mph to 90.2
Brayan Bello's CH velo (23 pitches) UP 1.7mph to 88.5
Pablo Lopez's CU velo (16 pitches) UP 1.5mph to 83.8
Pitch Mix Changes - Yesterday
Andrew Abbott's ST usage (28.0%) up 10.3 points
Ben Lively's CH usage (26.6%) up 15.3 points
Blake Snell's CU usage (34.2%) up 12.5 points
Bowden Francis's SI usage (12.3%) up 11.6 points
Brayan Bello's SL usage (33.7%) up 10.7 points
Chris Sale's SL usage (58.9%) up 19.8 points
Jake Woodford's FC usage (18.9%) up 10.8 points
Joe Musgrove's ST usage (25.4%) up 20.8 points
Luis Gil's SL usage (46.9%) up 23.1 points
Sonny Gray's FC usage (28.2%) up 12.8 points
Tyler Mahle's FS usage (34.8%) up 12.2 points
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