MLB Daily Notes - June 16

A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis

Jun 16, 2026

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Check out yesterday’s box scores here

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A few big spots to talk about from yesterday’s games.

DUSTIN MAY - 9.0IP 1H 0ER 0R 9K 1BB

This was your seventh complete game of the year, and it was brilliance through and through for May with just the two base runners allowed.

May has his ERA down to 3.75 with a 1.14 WHIP. He’s given up 34 earned runs, but 13 of those came in his first two starts. So his ERA in his last 12 starts is 2.54 and the WHIP is under one at 0.98.

May showed the increased velo in spring, and that got some people interested. But a ton of people dropped him after the first couple of starts, and that has proven to be a big old mistake. He’s past 75% owned now. But that shows you something about the anchoring effect. Even after he had pitched very well for eight starts following the two bad ones, his ERA was at 5.00 - and that kept people from adding him.

You can take some advantage of that. There might even be some merit in just forgiving everybody’s first few weeks of play since they’re just getting back into the swings of the things. Your ERA leaders since April 10th:

Misiorowski 0.89
Ben Brown 1.23
Ohtani 1.29
Mize 1.45
Sanchez 1.85
Schlittler 1.87
Sale 1.88
Wheeler 2.01
Burns 2.02
Martin 2.41
Harrison 2.44
Ranger Suarez 2.48
Yamamoto 2.53
May 2.54
Meyer 2.56
Arrighetti 2.57
Martinez 2.66
Urena 2.67
Kolek 2.68
Ginn 2.69
Jax 2.70

Pretty interesting to see JT Ginn and Griffin Jax there, but let’s stick to Dustin May for a minute. He has the K% up to 23.5% and the walk rate down to 6.2% in these last dozen starts. His main trick is ground balls and soft contact.

And a lot of pitch variation. The xwOBA allowed on every single pitch is below .300. That’s hard to do.

There are basically three parts to pitching

Strikeouts
Walks
Quality of contact allowed

May has been good in strikeouts, very good in walks, and elite in QOC.

You can study quality of contact allowed on the main Pitchers tab of the dashboard. Set the “Contact?” box to 1 (that filters to just the pitches thrown that were put into play), and then sort by xERA (which is just another way to display xwOBA allowed - they’re the same stat, it’s just multiplied to make it look like an ERA).

The league average is 4.95 - it’s not good to let the ball get into play, generally.

The names that stand out here:

Fried 3.65
Tolle 3.86
Walbert 3.91
Yesavage 3.99
Ohtani 4.01
Lopez 4.09
Mize 4.21
Elder 4.23
Kolek 4.34
Brown 4.35

The guys doing the worst in this:

Vasquez 5.93
Leahy 5.95
Sugano 5.90
Merrill Kelly 4.85
Freeland 5.73
Liberatore 5.70
Taillon 5.62
Gavin Williams 5.61
Littell 5.59
Bello 5.58
Lugo 5.56
McGreevy 5.52

The problem is that this stuff isn’t super predictive. But I should try to prove that first, so bring in a SCATTER PLOT.

Check it out here

What I’ve done is take all pitchers with 15+ starts in both 2024 and 2025 and compared their xwOBA allowed on contact together.

That line is pretty FLAT. Suggesting that there’s no real predictive quality to them

You’ve got Brandon Pfaadt who was great at this in 2024 and then started getting whalloped in 2025.

You’ve got Carlos Rodon who gave up a .370 mark in 2024 but then dropped it almost 30 points in 2025.

And this is what the NOOBS don’t understand. Very few people understand and properly embrace the truth of RANDOMNESS in life and in pitching. Everybody wants everything explained all of the time, but you can’t explain everything. Better not to try!

I see these betting accounts being like THIS PITCHER HAS GIVEN UP A 15% BRL% IN HIS LAST THREE STARTS as if that means anything. That’s a double fallacy there. First, you’re believing that pitchers actually control barrel rates - they don’t. Second, you’re believing that the last three starts are predictive of the fourth. Neither of those things are true.

Some of those people are just ignorant, no doubt about it. Getting hit hard seems like something that’s the pitcher’s fault, but it’s really not - at least not nearly as much as your logic would make you think.

But some of these people are just clickbaiting. That kind of content sounds smart and it’s not something that everybody has easy access to. So they can make some sales with that business. And it’s always harder to prove to them that they’re wrong. Nobody ever checks this stuff.

So if you’re a betting dude or a DFS bro, don’t listen to those guys. They’re either misinformed or lying.

That’s the negative side of it. The positive side is me telling you how we can use this truth to the positive benefit. What you do there is find the guys giving up super high xwOBA on contact, and provided that they’re doing a decent job in K-BB%, you BUY. That’s right. You BUY the guys getting hit hard! Counter-intuitive, but TRUE.

The biggest buy of them all there would be Eury Perez. He was having no trouble with whiffs and strikeouts, but he was just getting touched up when the hitters were putting the ball into play. That was going to regress, but now he’s hurt and out another two months.

But here’s the full list. Starting pitchers with K-BB% above 13% ordered by xwOBA allowed on contact descending.

Gavin Williams seems to be a buy right now. HE’s given up 26 hits and 12 earned runs in his last three. But a 20:3 K:BB in that time. Things are going to get better for him.

Jacob deGrom too, although I doubt you can really buy the guy.

Taj Bradley and Ryan Weathers also qualify.

You can do it the other way around as well. K-BB% under 13%, but very low xwOBA on contact:

Aside from Fried, who has proven to be able to do this stuff over and over again, those are pitchers to be on the fade side of.

So that took me a long time, but I think it was worth it. That’s one of those statistical rules that will benefit you in the long term, and not a lot of people understand it.

JARED JONES - 4.0IP 8H 5ER 5R 4K 1BB

It was a really brutal environment for Jones to pitch in. High temperatures in Sacramento as a righty who gives up some bombs. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world if Nick Kurtz hadn’t done this:

That’s an impressive piece of hitting. Pretty good slider way down in the zone, probably right about where he wanted to put it.

But Kurtz is one of the best hitters in the game and he somehow hit that thing 112mph out to left center field.

What do we do with Jared Jones, you’re probably asking that! He was dropped in my home league. And he will probably have to start in Coors Field next - so you won’t want to use him for that one.

But what I’ve been saying about him is still true. He has a 15.9% SwStr% and a 7.7% BB%. Those are good signs. His fastball and slider have both been great at getting whiffs. He’s just gotten hit really hard a few times. Four homers allowed in four outings, a 9.3% Brl% allowed, and a .349 xwOBA with a .360 BABIP.

Things should get better from here. In a 12-teamer I’d hold on - unless there are actually good pitchers available to swap him for. But if you can wait until next week after he probably struggles again in Coors, I’d do that and then try to add him.

I would think the Pirates would build him back up to 90 pitches, but he hasn’t pitched well enough to test that.

MacKenzie Gore - 7.0IP 4H 4ER 4R 10K 2BB

He gave up a three-run dinger in the first inning to my dismay. But he cruised after that and put up a 10:2 K:BB in the start against the Twins at home. He’s a must start guy in Texas, and a real question mark on the road.

Shota Imanaga - 5.67IP 5H 1ER 1R 3K 1BB

12 whiffs but just three conversions for strikeouts. I’d consider it a fine start. The Rockies haven’t been the same matchup on the road this year. They’re still not great, but it’s a .706 team OPS, so they haven’t been a pushover.

I think you’re starting Imanaga every time. You’ll get those disaster starts when the ball flies over the fence a couple of times, but he has a solid 17% K-BB%, a 15.3% SwStr%, and a 34.9% Ball%. More bad than good coming, I think.

Zack Wheeler - 6.0IP 2H 0ER 0R 9K 3BB

Nine strikeouts on 12 whiffs. That’s a super high conversion rate there. The average SwStr% in a nine-strikeout start is 16%. He was at 12%. There’s probably some luck there.

That’s an interesting thing to check - average SwStr% by strikeout total in a start, isn’t it?

So you can see the relationship there. More whiffs, more strikeouts. There are very few high strikeout games until you get to a 15% SwStr% or so. But there’s randomness everywhere, and Wheeler made pitches when he needed to last time. He’s very, very good still - and way better than I expected him to be.

I made that plot with this sheet’s data. That gives you some advanced data on every start this year:

Feel free to poke around, it’s updated every day.

I also have a Start Luck data sheet that checks wOBA allowed vs. xwOBA allowed. I rarel look at it, but it’s there updating every day.

You can see the luckiest starts of the year:

and the least lucky:

I’m not sure what exactly you’d use that for practically, but it’s fun.

Another quality start from:

WALBERT URENA - 7.0IP 7H 3ER 4R 3K 2BB

The guy has been kinda MONEY.

Your boy has six quality starts. He’s on the first page of that leaderboard:

Sick bro, sick. And he’s doing it with the soft contact stuff that we’re wary of. BUT at least his soft contact comes via the ground ball, which is obviously pretty predictive. If you’re throwing a bunch of 97mph sinkers, you’re going to keep getting ground balls:

He’s very, very similar to JT Ginn, who has been great for awhile now. I have always liked this guy, and I was right! Although I don’t have him on any teams - ha ha!