MLB Daily Notes - July 12th`
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis
Check out yesterday’s box scores here
Esmerlyn Valdez hit three homers yesterday in the double header. He basically won both games for the Pirates, driving in six of the seven runs in game one (Pirates won 7-6) and then hitting a two-run homer in a 3-2 win in game two. He now has a 1.092 OPS with ten homers in 100 PAs. That is more than 60-homer pace, so things are a little bit ridiculous.
His K% is still 36% and his Z-Contact% is very bad at 73%. But he’s going Murakami on it by just not optimizing the swing in a way that does real damage when he gets to the ball.
But now that he’s at 100 PAs, we can start looking at the leaderboard.
Brl%:
PA/HR:
It’s completely unsustainable. Nobody can do this thing that Valdez and Murakami have done this year.
You can look at how good his contact has been by doing SLUGGING PERCENTAGE ON CONTACT:
Valdez 1.204
Schwarber .951
Murakami .927
Wood .870
Goodman .841
So he’s lapping the field there. He’s a rich man’s Schwarber. The Pirates didn’t have to give Schwarber $150 million last winter, they just called it up for free from AA!
I’d sell in redraft leagues. He will clearly continue to hit some homers, but his batting average is going to crater, and there will be very cold streaks.
Shane Drohan pitched pretty well in that second game.
→ 6.1 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 0 BB, 6 K, 17 whiffs
I’m still pretty interested in the guy for fantasy leagues. And they’re going to need him in the second half with the Woodruff/Harrison injuries going on.
And NOW Misiorowski has FATIGUE. I don’t know what the number of 100+ MPH pitches you can throw before you start getting tired is, but in this case it looks to be somewhere around 650.
100+ MPH PITCHES THROWN THIS YEAR:
102+ MPH PITCHES THROWN THIS YEAR:
He didn’t “recover well” from his last start. His elbow is like no shit, man, make it stop!
We’ll see how it turns out. Could be fine. It’s a reasonable start for them to skip to give these guys maximum rest over the break. And the Brewers clearly want the Pirates to win the division. They’re feeling bad about all the cheating they’ve done, and they realized yesterday what a great, humble, integrity-driven organization this is, so they’re going to go ahead and get swept today and tank in the second half so things can be made right.
Trey Yesavage - 1.2 IP, 1 H, 4 ER, 7 BB, 1 K
This is troubling for the kid. He has not gotten over whatever hump is required to get over to not do this kind of thing. Seven walks! He just couldn’t throw a strike, and that put the bullpen to work in the second inning.
His season:
A 12.5% BB%, and it’s getting really bad lately. Since June 12th:
25 strikeouts, 20 walks, five homers. He’s hard to trust in now. The fastball and splitter both have bad ball rates and the fastball has started to get hit very hard as hitters have been able to see it coming.
I’m not even sure he’s a must-own standard league guy right now. He’s 96% owned
Meanwhile George Springer went 0/5 in that game to extend his horrible season.
This is how bad the Athletics lineup is right now:
That’s a three-hit shutout from the White Sox pitching staff featuring four shutties from Erick Fedde.
Since June 20th:
Nobody is hitting besides JOSHUA KURODA-GRAUER. Even Shea Langeliers has been bad! And now Nick Kurtz is on the IL and things look real rough. Full streams ahead vs. ATH.
JKG though:
Showing the same elite contact skills as he did in the minors. 89% Z-Contact%, 84% overall, 12% K%. Swinging a lot, though, and that has him at 0% BB%. But the ground balls and line drives work with his speed and he’s got a nice .297 xBA.
You will get steals eventually, but probably not much power. He’s definitely making his case to stick in the A’s lineup even with Jacob Wilson back.
Gage Jump - 5.2 IP, 5 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 7 SO
Haven’t heard much from him lately so I wanted to give it another look. This was a pretty good start as you’d expect vs. CWS on the road.
His K-BB% is under 17%, but still fine. He did just recently give 19 hits and 1 ER in two starts at home (vs LAD and vs MIA). So it looks like he might not quite be good enough to handle MLB lineups in Sacramento. But we’ll see how he develops and changes to try to combat that, and eventually the Athletics won’t play in such a rough pitching environment.