Check out yesterday’s box scores here
Player of the Day
It was a good day to be surnamed Rodriguez.
Eduardo Rodriguez: 7.0IP 2H 0ER 0R 9K 3BB
Hector Rodriguez: 3 H, 2 HR, 2 R, 2 RBI, 31 fantasy points
E-Rod and H-Rod. I wonder if anybody named Rodriguez really hates being called “First Letter of their First Name Dash Rod”. Probably. It’s too easy.
Let’s first look at Eduardo. One could argue he’s been the luckiest starting pitcher of the last six seasons. I took SIERA-ERA for every SP with 120+ IP in one of these last six seasons, and we find that Eduardo is #1 with his 2.50 ERA and 4.60 SIERA.
He has an 18% K% and an 8% BB%, that’s easy math to get you to the 10% K-BB%. He’s given up a .265 BABIP, a 9% HR/FB. Here is where those luck stats rank for him.
BABIP = 18th lowest
HR/FB = 5th highest
LOB% = 4th highest
This stuff isn’t all blind luck. There’s some skill to it. I wrote an article this winter about this:
Andrew Abbott & Defying SIERA
The more experience I get doing all of this stuff, the more I’ve come to distrust the #analytics. I still trust them, I guess I’ve just become more willing to work around them. To treat them with NUANCE. I hate the word nuance, it’s almost always the most annoying people in the world using the term, but it’s a good, descriptive word to use.
To summarize that, I found a somewhat common thread running through the lucky pitchers. They are disproportionately left-handed and throwers of changeups.
Eduardo Rodriguez is left-handed, and he throws a changeup more than a quarter of the time. The changeup has a .283 xwOBA allowed and a 55% GB%. His fastball has survived with good command, so it’s not a surprise that he’s beating his ERA. It is a surprise that he’s beating it by this much. Obviously he shouldn’t have a 2.50 ERA and he won’t have that ERA in the future. But this isn’t like a Randy Dobnak situation where a wide gap between SIERA and ERA is unexplainable.
The other part of this was already mentioned, it’s the locations. He has been hitting spots like few others have.
A 108 Location+ is very good. He’s in the top 20 in the league there. I don’t like that stat at all in isolation. The top three in Location+ this year are Miles Mikolas, Eric Lauer, and Zack Littell. So right there, you know it’s not a stat that means anything good at all by itself.
But it does speak to E-Rod’s ability to throw the ball where he wants it.
It’s going to be funny when he’s outside of the top 50 pitchers in ADP next year. People don’t buy this stuff anymore, especially from a 33-year-old.
There’s a corollary to fantasy football here, for those of you into that world too. Matthew Stafford was QB2 by fantasy points. This year, he’s around QB11 in drafts. That’s because he’s old, doesn’t run, and has some big old touchdown regression likely to come. It was a lot easier to play fantasy sports 20 years ago. Although 20 years ago I was 15 and just as dumb as everybody else playing. You get graded on a curve in life.
How about our hitter of the day now - Hector Rodriguez. I was pretty interested in him for fantasy leagues when he got the call up. His fScores from the minors:
114 fPower
102 fSpeed
107 fHit
95 fDiscipline
Power, speed, and some hit tool playing in Cincy. But he’s hit .220/.291/.440 in 55 PAs. In his first 37 PAs he had no homers and just 11 hits for a .336 OPS.
But he’s flipped the switch. The Reds feel pretty good about him, leading him off last night and getting rewarded for it. He has seven hits and three homers in his last four games. The strikeout rate is good at 21.8%. The zone contact is good at 84%. He’s hit a ball 115.2mph. His EV90 is 106. He has a 10.5% Brl%! The steals haven’t shown up yet, but he’s barely been on first base. So this might be the time to jump in. We like Hector Rodriguez here, and he might just be the Reds new lead-off man.
Speaking of the Reds, they DFA’d Eugenio Suarez and TJ Friedl last night in a surprising move. I think this will save them a couple million bucks on Suarez’s contract. The question now is whether somebody will think he’s good enough to pay those few million bucks for September and the postseason. I could see the Yankees taking a shot, but Suarez has a .703 OPS with a .208 AVG and a 35% K% this year. The 19 homers are the key point. He can still do that. I can’t speak to his defensive abilities, but he did play about 40 games at third for the Reds this year, so he must be good enough to consider at least.
Suarez was a pretty big free-agent name this offseason. The Reds gave him 15 million for this year, and that did not work out for them. Third baseman have been very disappointing this year.
So my prediction is that the Yankees add him, but most people think he’ll clear waivers. If he clears waivers, we assume he rejects the minor league assignment and becomes a free agent.
We have a prospect pitcher call up to cover. It’s Cooper Hjerpe for the Cardinals. He’s not confirmed for today, but it seems like that’s what’s going to happen.
First of all, it’s an insane last name. I’m sure you were wondering, and YES - he is the only player in baseball with an “h” and “j” consecutively in their name.
He’s not a highly touted prospect. He’s not in Tim’s top 150. And you’ll quickly see why when looking at the numbers:
Only 34 innings this year, so he’s probably a 3-4 inning guy in the bigs. That makes his 19.6% BB% a little less bothersome. But hey man, 28 walks in 34 innings is a really bad sign. The silver lining is a 35% K%. Going back to last year, he had a 35.2% K% and 13% BB% in 15 starts (52 innings).
He throws his fastball 63% of the time and it’s just 91.1mph. I have never seen him pitch, but I’m about to go check, because I have a feeling that he has some kind of insane delivery. I checked. And yes, he is a tall lefty who throws basically sidearm. He looks like Chris Sale.
So this is Chris Sale except with no velo and no command! My projection is pretty good on him, but I would not touch him in fantasy leagues. He’ll probably go like 4 IP, 3 H, 4 K, 4 BB tonight.
You have to wonder if the last name is the reason for the funkiness. If your name is Cooper Hjerpe, you don’t really have a choice but to be a left-handed sidewinder. Prove me wrong!
Pitchers - Yesterday
Jesus Luzardo has been fantastic this year, and he did some of his best work yesterday.
→ 7 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 9 K, 3 BB, 35 fantasy points
It was just another situation this year where he pitched horribly at first and became an obvious buy-low in fantasy leagues. He’s usually a guy with high highs and low lows, but it’s almost all highs for the last few months.
Since June 6th:
→ 14 GS, 90 IP, 2.50 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, 34.4% K%, 8.1% BB, 0.6 HR/9
Total stud in these last 14. His season ERA is still kinda bloated at 3.48. He has seven starts with 5+ ER allowed, and that’s tough to come back from in the ERA column. But he’s SP3 on the player rater since the two-point start he had on June 5th. Only bested by Misiorowski and Rasmussen.
Roki Sasaki - 3.33IP 6H 4ER 4R 3K 2BB
He did have 10 whiffs on 66 pitches before leaving with a blister. It wasn’t as bad as it looked with the six hits and two walks allowed, but his velo was down slightly.
None of it matters, though. He was immediately placed on the IL and no doubt he will return as a reliever. I think that was always going to happen in the postseason. He was nails in the postseason for them last year, and with Snell/Skubal/Ohtani/Yamamoto/Glasnow he was never going to be a starter in October. Makes it very easy to cut him in your fantasy leagues.
Bryan Woo - 4.0IP 5H 6ER 6R 5K 1BB
Wrecked by the Phillies. Woo will be an interesting rank for next year. He has a 4.36 ERA with a 1.10 WHIP now. A 19.3% K-BB%, though. So he hasn’t been as bad as you might think.
At home: 2.63 ERA, 0.79 WHIP
On road: 5.96 ERA, 1.38 WHIP
This one was at home. His home ERA was 1.96 before this one, but he’s still pitched like an ace in Seattle. He just can’t do anything good on the road.
If the Mariners go six-man rotation the rest of the way, Woo’s schedule would be:
at BOS
vs. TEX
at LAA
vs. HOU
That’s subject to change, and it probably will since the Mariners have a lot of problems right now. But two more home starts is likely no matter how it goes. I think he’s a reasonable drop in 10/12-team leagues. Although some websites won’t even let you drop him, which is stupid.
I’m not for “can’t drop lists”. Turn those off. I suppose those exists so some disgruntled owner can’t wreck the league by dropping studs, taking his ball and going home. But the commissioner can and should just step in in such a situation. We don’t need the higher powers trying cramming down their governance on us!
Which could lead to an interesting point about politics. What is the role of government? Should they enforce the good or grant maximum freedom and let the people decide what is good for them? I think the right answer is in the middle; there are good arguments on both sides. The problem with letting humans decide and enforce the good is that you’re assuming they know what is actually good. I guess before even that, you’re assuming that there is objective good. There certainly is objective good, but not everybody agrees, and you have to consider different opinions when laying out rules to govern large numbers of people. I’m glad I’m not in charge!
Fantasy sports is low stakes in the grand scheme of things; you should deactivate the undroppables setting where you can.
Troy Melton - 7.0IP 7H 3ER 3R 4K 0BB
What’s this guy been up to? Haven’t talked about him in a couple weeks.
It’s all good for Melton! He won’t qualify for awards, but his 1.77 ERA will be one of the best you’ll find in the league this year. He’s behind only Misiorowski and Ohtan in ERA when you filter to 10+ GS.
Plenty of “luck” for him.
→ .230 BABIP
→ 11% HR/FB
→ 88.5% LOB%
That’s the highest strand rate in the league and the fourth-lowest BABIP. Wild season for Melton.
Just a 13.6% K-BB% with a 44% GB%. We don’t like those stats, and the 3.70 JA SIERA shows you that. But he’s allowed just a .229 xBA and .287 xwOBA. There’s something about his stuff that makes him very tough to hit hard.
He only ranks #50 in hard hit rate allowed. Here’s the top 50 for SPs above 10 GS. (Full Data Here)
This is a better descriptive stat than predictive one. It doesn’t reliably stick year-to-year, but it’s not completely random either. Bad stuff in bad locations gets hits harder, this isn’t rocket science.
At the top of the list:
Gavin Williams being there is super interesting. The best way to use this stat, in my view, is to take in conjunction with K-BB%. If you have a guy with a really good K-BB% but a bad ERA because he got hit really hard, that’s a massive buy for the next season. The K-BB% is likely to stick, while the hard hit stuff can change drastically year-to-year.
I’m not sure we’ll get much of a discount on Williams, but with his blow-up the other day, maybe he will end up being outside of the top 20 at SP, and he seems like a dude I’d be happy to have as an SP1 on a fantasy team for the future.
Way more to come on that stuff this fall/winter when 2027 prep begins!
Back to Melton. His fastball is nothing special. 93.3 Stuff+, 44% Strike%, 9.7% SwStr%. Not what we like to see. He’s been pretty fortunate to only have given up ten homers this year.
BUT he has a hard cutter (a great pitch to have) and then slider/splitter/sinker/curve/changeup also in the bag. Lots to work with. Maybe he’ll go Schlittler on it next year. Ramp up the cutter velo a bit and feature that pitch more than the four-seamer.
Schlittler throws his cutter about 95mph, which is crazy high and crazy effective for a cutter. Cam also has an elite four-seamer, which Melton will never have. So Melton isn’t a Schlittler in development, but the presence of that hard cutter is a very good tool to have, and the fact he has all of these other pitches gives him plenty of room for improvement to combat the luck regression that will come next year. Very interesting pitcher.
MacKenzie Gore - 3.67IP 8H 4ER 4R 4K 4BB
Bad Gore! Eight hits, four walks against the White Sox. Chicago is vulnerable to lefties, but Gore’s enemy is himself. There’s no consistency at all to his command. He has a 4.26 ERA with a 1.23 WHIP this year, no bueno. But he does get strikeouts (26%) and has a decent walk rate (8.4%).
I think we’ve seen enough from him over the years to know that he’ll never breakout into a top 25 SP. I was hoping/thinking that could happen this year going from DC to Arlington, but alas, it did not.
And some tougher matchups must be coming for him. Right? Right!? Nope! Next two: vs. ATH, at SEA. Two of the best matchups in the league for a lefty. So hold on to Gore.
I feel like I’ve said the same thing for months now. He’ll suck in a good matchup but get some strikeouts and possess a decent K-BB%, and then we’ll look at the schedule and see cupcakes, and we’ll be like JUST HOLD ON! But it never happens. It’s like chasing your tail or something.
Pitching has just been weird in August. Nothing is going according to the projections. That has been DEATH to my DFS bankroll.
Some crazy August ERAs:
Cal Quantrill 0.72
Kyle Leahy 1.42
Noah Cameron 1.63
Ryan Johnson 1.69
Martin Perez 1.80
Ryan Gusto 1.85
George Klassen 2.02
Brandon Pfaadt 2.45
Aaron Nola 2.79
And then the other side:
Bryce Miller 9.00
Jared Jones 7.88
Zack Wheeler 7.59
Jacob deGrom 7.20
Casey Mize 7.00
Dustin May 5.87
Gavin Williams 5.56
And some of you are in the fantasy playoffs already! So you grind the numbers, stay on top of everything, and head into the playoffs just to suffer utter randomness on the pitching front.
“My stuff doesn’t work in the playoffs. My job is to get us to the playoffs. What happens after that is luck.” — Billy Beane, Oakland A’s general manager.
I censored the quote just in case you’re like 12 years and reading this. Which I’m guessing you’re not.
And now we have to talk about what Joey Cantillo did last night. They’re calling it the worst quality start of all time.
→ 6.0IP 2H 2ER 3R 1K 7BB
If you told me he went six innings with two hits and two runs and a 1:7 K:BB, I would’ve told you typed the 1:7 backwards. But no, seven walks, one strikeout, six whiffs, a 34.4% Strike%, a 48.4% Ball%, and yet a quality start.
It was the first quality start with more than five walks all season. That’s happened only twice in the last six years. Kyle Gibson threw 6 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 4 K, 8 BB back on July 24th, 2021.
There have been just seven quality starts with 6+ walks in the last six years:
Shout out to Glenn Otto and Alek Manoah.
Apparently Cantillo even had an unearned run that was his own fault for a throwing error. This was against the Angels. And what we’re learning is that when the Angels are playing baseball this year, chaos is ensues.
Sean Burke tried to join Cantillo there, but he only got halfway to the innings threshold:
→ 3.0IP 2H 2ER 2R 3K 8BB
A 50% Ball%. It was only the second outing of the year with eight walks (Cole Ragans on April 19th). Burke has a been awful in August. His last five starts he has a 7.4% K-BB% and a 4.51 JA SIERA with a 4.74 ERA and 1.42 WHIP. He had one good start this month against the Reds, otherwise he’s been horrible. So I’d cut him. It was a nice run, but he just duped us as his teammate Davis Martin did earlier this year.
AJ Smith-Shawver - 5.0IP 5H 3ER 3R 3K 3BB
Decent little start for AJSS given that it was against the Dodgers. Data from his three starts:
Not what you like to see with the 3.2% K-BB% and .340 xwOBA. Looks bad. Pitch mix:
Fastball looks terrible and he’s very reliant on it. The splitter is there, but a splitter without a fastball is not a very helpful pitch even if it’s going right. Smith-Shawver is still very young but I don’t think he has the goods to be a big league starter.
Grayson Rodriguez - 5.67IP 7H 1ER 1R 4K 1BB
Only four whiffs against a high-contact Guardians team. One run is good to have, but the 4.3% SwStr% and 48.9% Strike% aren’t friendly to see. He’s rocking a 14.7% K-BB% and .229 xwOBA over the last three though, so good signs continue to show. I still think he’s rosterable in 15-teamers, but another massive blow-up could happen at any moment.
Dustin May threw one pitch and was hit by a comeback and left the game, but apparently it’s just a bruise and he’ll be fine for his next start. This is why you should never allow the ball to be put in play.
Hitters - Yesterday
Five straight games with a homer for the worst All Star of all time - Tristan Peters. That’s right, immediate insult to the guy.
I completely missed this guy as he came up for the White Sox. His minor league stats were nothing special. 2025 in AAA:
→ .266/.355/.429, 15 HR, 11 SB, 136 G
This year in the Majors:
→ .282/.346/.475, .821 OPS, 12 HR, 7 SB, 128 G
Is the power for real?
A 5.8% Brl%, a 102.2 EV90, a 102.8 EV90 on fly balls. I’m saying no. He’s also just a middling contact hitter (83% Z-Cont%).
He does pull the ball in the air a good bit at 23%. To put that in context, the league average is 15% and the league leaders are:
Paredes 28%
PCA 26%
Jose Ramirez 25%
Neto 25%
B Lowe 25%
The lowest in the league:
Simpson 5.5%
Crawford 7%
Yandy 7%
Bohm 8%
Turang 8%
23% is very good, and that’s where the homers are coming from for Peters. You’ll certainly take a .282 average these days, but he’s playing at like a 15-homer and ten-steal pace, so there’s not much there. He’s also 26 already, so he’s not a budding prospect. Just a solid MLB player who is capable of having some big games, and he’s put five of those big games together consecutively now.
Javier Sanoja stole three bases. That was the 16th time this year someone has stolen three or more bases in the same game. Only Jakob Marsee has done four (April 7th).
Sanoja is hitting .280/.318/.420 with six homers and nine steals in 116 games. So not very useful at all. But he made some big dynasty league owner very happy last night.
Luis Garcia Jr. hit his 28th homer of the year yesterday after hitting his 27th on Tuesday. He has seven hits and 57 fantasy points in the last two games.
He’s been the breakout of all breakouts with the bat this year. 28 bombs, .287 average, four steals, .882 OPS.
Garcia is the #9 biggest OPS over-performer when comparing to preseason projection.
Bauers: .680 projected, .884 actual
Peters: .622 projected, .821 actual
PCA: .727 projected, .924 actual
Mead: .675 projected, .852 actual
Abrams: .698 projected, .870 actual
France: .691 projected, .862 actual
E Duran .621 projected, .779 actual
K Ruiz: .608 projected, .765 actual
Garcia Jr.: .719 projected, .873 actual
Hicks: .650 projected, .795 actual
There are four Nationals on that list. That new coaching staff seems to be doing some things very well. The Nats and Rockies overhauled their staffs this winter, and both have taken steps forward as an organization.
They should make a documentary about what that entails. That’d be something I’d watch. Give me all the details about what they changed this winter and show us video from throughout the spring and the regular season. That will never happen, of course, because they’d be giving away their secrets. But at least make a pretend one or something. Fake it.
Kyle Schwarber hit home run #40. He missed 12 games in 2024 or else we might be saying he just hit 40 homers for the 5th straight year.
Incredible player. Amazing to see a 7.0% HR% with a 33% K%. But Schwarber doesn’t follow the rules.
Tommy Edman hit a homer and deserves a look.
He was hurt against his will, so we have only seen 56 games from him. But a .271 AVG, five homers, five steals. That’s a 14-14 pace or so. Through the years, we have seen most of his power come from the right side of the plate (so against left-handed pitchers; he’s a switch hitter). This year he has three of his five HRs against lefties. Only 30% of his PAs have been against lefties. The K% is way higher as a right-handed hitter, but the SLG is 34 points higher, and the xwOBA is 40 points higher.
That’s all I’ve got for you today!