MLB Daily Notes - June 24
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 three biggest pitcher scores of the night went to Brandon Sproat in Cincy, Sonny Gray in Coors, and then Ryan Johnson. So things didn’t go as planned.
I wanted to bet on Ryan Johnson or get some action on him in a positive light. My projection model was high on him. He had some good numbers in the minors this year:
But his first two Major League outings had gone poorly, so everybody assumed he was terrible. But six shutout innings with eight strikeouts against the O’s last night. Pretty good! He had 15 whiffs with a 58.9% Strike%. The Orioles fell really flat there. He’s nowhere near earning fantasy league consideration, but it’s a lesson to be learned here on not reacting to just a couple of starts in the Majors, especially when the minor league numbers are pretty good in the strikeout department.
Lots of whiffs on his cutter and splitter in his three outings.
Now have to talk about Brandon Sproat.
→ 6.0IP 1H 0ER 0R 10K 0BB
The Reds are a very good matchup this year, even with Elly back in there.
They haven’t even been that good at home this year with a team .209/.300/.391 slash in Great American Ballpark. They have not built this lineup to match their home park very well.
Two hitters above an .800 OPS: Elly & Bleday.
Sproat has not had many good outings this year:
But since May 24th, he has a 26.7% K% with a 7.5% BB%. That’s a 19.2% K-BB%. His SwStr% is 13%, his Ball% is 36.8%. So he’s decent, but not great in that regard. It’s a 3.81 JA ERA over these last six starts.
Lots of pitch types he can throw at you, some NULLS in there as something happened in capturing the data one game, I guess.
I’ve never really believed in Sproat as a fantasy option, but give the Brewers some time and they seem to figure some stuff out. He found a nice mixture of his pitches last night:
Three fastballs variations and a putaway sweeper. He’s in play for 12-team leagues, probably just in advantageous matchups though.
Parker Messick with the nice start against the White Sox. That one was a pitcher’s duel as the White Sox took it 2-1.
→ Messick: 7.2 IP, 3 H, 2 ER, 10 K, 1 BB
→ Burke: 6.1 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 6 K, 1 BB
Burke’s better than people think, and he was an easy START against this Guards lineup. The streamer pick was on point there.
Messick has reduced the four-seam usage a bit and has started really mixing things up, which makes a lot of sense because he has a lot of good pitches.
His raw raw stuff isn’t overwhelming, so he’s going to have to make his living with command and deception. ANd he seems fit to do that with really high grades on the four-seamer, changeup, and then almost 40% of pitches left over to mix in the curve, slider, cutter.
As for Burke, he’s about a league-average pitcher.