MLB Daily Notes - June 22
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis
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The ball is flying this month. Pitchers got jacked up left and right this weekend.
→ Peralta: 2.2 IP, 10 H, 10 ER
→ Gallen: 4 IP, 12 H, 9 ER
→ Kolek: 1.2 IP, 9 H, 9 ER
→ Elder: 6 IP, 12 H, 8 ER
→ Gausman: 2 IP, 7 H, 7 ER
I love it when they just make a pitcher WEAR one. No respect for the guy’s ERA at all. Although sometimes it does save them a little bit because the other team gets tired of running so they end up putting up a couple of zeroes at the end of their line. The Braves said WE ARE GETTING OUR SIX INNINGS BRYCE.
MLB ERA BY MONTH
→ Mar-Apr: 4.18
→ May: 4.11
→ June: 4.56
HR/FB is up to 18% this month, and that only comes down about 0.3 points if you take out the Vegas games. The HR/Brl this month is 53%. Some people speculate that the ball has been altered. The tin foils comes out quick when this starts happening. And there’s been some actual data put on it concerning drag, but I don’t need to get into all of that.
It’s probably just mostly that it’s summer now. Home runs are hit
2024-2026 HR/FB By Month
March 17.6%
April 15.3%
May 15.7%
June 17.5%
July 18.0%
August 18.1%
September 16.9%
So you’ve gotta pucker your cheeks if you have non-elite starters, especially the dudes who give up a lot of fly balls. Disaster is coming.
Some good pitchers from the last two days:
→ Joey Cantillo: 8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 9 K, 1 BB
No reason to react to this. Cantillo will have these starts, but he’s mostly bad. This wasn’t shocking to me. Sometimes the guy just dials in the changeup and gets by with the four-seamer, and it turns into big outings like this one.
→ Connelly Early: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 7 K, 2 BB
You’ve gotta hold on to Early. He has the goods, he just needs to keep tinkering around with what pitch mix works the best. He’s going to be good. Probably not an ace, but a good big league pitcher.
→ Walbert Urena: 5 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 6 K, 0 BB
Ground balls are key in the summer, and Urena has that. He’s been very strong for the Angels this year, and you can definitely start this guy in 12-teamers.
→ Robert Gasser: 6 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 7 K, 2 BB
We like the Gasdaddy here! Sneaky add right now. I’ve talked about him plenty, including in the waiver wire pod from the weekend.
→ Troy Melton: 6 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 5 K, 3 BB
Still not sporting a good K-BB% (8%), but he has a mark of 15% in his last… two… starts. That’s a pretty pathetic sample size, but he’s showing some whiffs with the cutter and the slider is pretty decent. The GB% is 48% the last two starts as well, so that could help - but throwing a lot of four-seams, cutters, and sliders doesn’t have me banking on that trend continuing.
I’m going to do a podcast later where I go through a bunch of guys that you might be considering DROPPING. So drop your names you want me to cover in the comments or on X.
It seems like the INTERNET sucks today. Amazon Web Services runs a significant portion of these Major apps/websites, so when they’re having trouble - things grind to a hault. I’m not even sure if these notes will save and publish. So I think we’re going to be pretty brief today.
But yeah, we’ve gotta be considering dropping Emmet Sheehan pretty soon. I staked a lot of my season on this jag, and he has a 5.32 ERA. Still a 19% K-BB%, but he has delievered like four good starts all year and he’s killing the old JA home league team.
Back to the WEATHER. We want to prioritize fly ball hitters now. Some widely available hitters with super high FB% this year:
Michael Massey 40%
Connor Norby 37%
Nolan Gorman 37%
Evan Carter 35%
Tyler Stephenson 35%
Dom Smith 33%
Willi Castro 32%
Benintendi 32%
Mullins II 32%
We’d really like the fly balls to be BARRELS, since that gives us like a 50-55% chance for a dinger generally. Some of your L30 Brl/PA leaders who are under 50% owned:
Colt Keith 11.1% Brl/PA
Colton Cowser 9.9%
Joc Pederson 9.3%
Owen Caissie 9.1%
Blaze Alexander 8.9%
Dylan Crews 8.9%
Garrett Mitchell 8.1%
Joe Mack 8.0%
Weekend Hitter Leaders
Schwarber: 75 fantasy points
Langford 59
Harper 58
Bazzana 57
Caglianone 57
Guzman 57
Durbin 52
Dingler 51
Abrams 49
PCA 48
Albies 47
Neto 45
Two names stick out to me there.
DENZER GUZMAN (LAA)
Minors this year: .336/.403/.571, 12 HR, 9 SB
Majors this year: .271/.327/.500, 3 HR, 1 SB
His minor league fScores:
110 Hit Tool
105 Power
100 Speed
97 Discipline
He swings pretty hard and he can run. He has a 23% Air Pull, a 10.3% Brl%, and a 17% K% so far with an 84% Z-Cont%. The Angels might have something there. I’ve been playing him a bunch on DFS with good results. The low price is probably a thing of the past, but I’m starting to think maybe he should be added in fantasy leagues.
CALEB DURBIN (BOS)
The Red Sox got him for Kyle Harrison, which looks pretty dumb. The Red Sox really didn’t do a good job this offseason, and some key injuries (Crochet / Anthony) have sent them to a horrible season.
But Durbin’s getting it together. He has a .309/.328/.600 slash in June with four homers and three steals.
There’s not much raw power in the bat at all. His bat speed is below average and his EV90 is 100.2 this year. In June, it’s still a very weak 100.4 EV90 on fly balls with a 6% Brl%. But he has a .297 xBA with a .339 xwOBA, so he’s getting on base (10% K%). He’ll at least steal some bags while he’s getting on base, and the 28% Air Pull% is good to see hitting in Fenway where you don’t need much EV to get a ball over the Green Monster.
JAC CAGS
.379/.468/.742 in June with seven homers now. He’s third-best in the league in fantasy point scoring per plate appearance.
PCA 3.47 FPTS/PA
Dingler 3.03
Cags 2.96
Kurtz 2.78
Chourio 2.73
Gelof 2.66
Yordan 2.64
Goodman 2.56
Witt 2.51
Burleson 2.46
Soderstrom 2.45
Chapman 2.43
Scwharber 2.43
Reynolds 2.42
Alonso 42.37
Harper 2.33
Neto 2.33
Carroll 2.82
Lopez 2.25
Eldridge 2.22
Okay sorry to the BREVITY, but let’s see if this thing will publish. Back with more detail tomorrow.
There will be plenty more coming today:
PROSPECTS OF THE WEEK from Tim
SLATE PREVIEW from me for the DFS & betting bros
PODCAST from me where I get grumpy and talk about players you might be able to drop
And shout out to HUNTER for doing another great job on STARTS & SITS yesterday:
Starts & Sits - June 22-24
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I don’t think we can reasonably criticized for a lack of content here at MLBDW! Thanks for being here, let’s have a big week!