MLB Daily Notes - March 28
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
Here we are. Opening up another season of the daily notes. This post is the reason I started this Substack in the first place, so it has a special place here.
Opening Day is over. I bought and wrapped gifts for my wife and kids in an effort to get their excitement level to match mine. We bought a cake and everything. My daughter thought “Opening Day” was something I completely made up. I turned on the Yankees games, and it said “Opening Day” on the screen, so she read that and she goes “how do THEY know about opening day??”. She told a bunch of her teachers at school about it too. They probably thought she was talking about hunting or something. There are not a ton of MLB enthusiasts in northern Indiana.
It wasn’t my best day for actual results. My DFS lineup was awful and I lost my annual Twitter contest where I give away money if somebody predicts correctly who will hit two homers. Adley Rutschman, Tyler Soderstrom, Wilyer Abreu, and Cedric Mullins II all did it. Five people had Rutschman; nobody had any of the others. So that means I’m paying five people $30. It was not worth it.
My Pirates lost to the Marlins. It’s one game, but no single loss stings more than on Opening Day with your best pitcher facing probably the worst team in the league. I feel like you have to win those. So the Pirates season is over already, that’s too bad. But that’s why we have fantasy baseball. The fun never ends.
I have to lead the notes with MacKenzie Gore. What an insane outing he had.
6 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 13 K, 0 BB, 21.5% SwStr%, 29% Ball%
You do not see many 13:0 K:BBs. There might be a handful this year, and Gore put one up immediately. Here’s the pitch mix (Arsenals tab of the main dashboard).
A 66% Strike% is also an absurd number. For reference, anything above 50% is very good. My calculation for this is different than other sources. I do not count balls in play as strikes. So it’s:
Strike% = (Whiffs + Called Strikes + Fouls) / Total Pitches
There were only three instances of a starter posting a 65%+ Strike% in all of the 2024 season (out of 4700 tries).
This work from Gore was so good that it makes no sense. You’re not going to see that again from him. I would not be viewing Gore much differently than I was 24 hours ago. He’s always been a guy with a high ceiling, but he has a history of a mix of walk issues and home run issues. He’s never been able to put everything together.
He has improved the BB% in each of the last two seasons, and last year he even got the HR/9 to a nice mark of 0.8. But the strikeout rate came down with it, and you can see that he wasn’t actually good with that 1.42 WHIP.
Has he magically improved his command issues for 2025? It’s possible, but I don’t think it’s likely. This is just the case of everything going right for a guy with good stuff. I think Gore will break your heart before long.
Here’s the Yesterdays SP Data google sheet. It’s fired up again for the new season:
Nathan Eovaldi was quite good in his own right. A little 9:0 K:BB with a 19.5% SwStr% and a 31% Ball%.
No whiffs on the 33 four-seamers and a very poor 42% Strike%. That’s not a god sign, but the curveball was untouchable.
Eovaldi is probably more of a streamer-type in a 10-team league, but in any kind of league of depth, he should be owned and started most of the time. He knows what he’s doing up there and throws a ton of strikes (24% K%, 6% BB% last year).
Hunter Greene and Logan Gilbert did their usual thing. Greene struck out a ton of dudes, as per usual. The command was great yesterday as well. I’m not sure if I’m going to buy into that. And these cold weather games help him a good bit as a fly ball pitcher. He was elite last year, and while I do expect some regression from those sick ratios, he’s one of the best pitchers in the league in terms of raw stuff. If he is locating his pitches with any level of success, he’ll be a guy you’re very, very happy with.
Gilbert just went right after the Athletics and ripped through seven innings to start his season off. In true Mariners fashion, he wasted no time, posting an elite 27.7% Ball%. That’s really hard to do.
But let’s not spend a bunch of time on guys that we know are already good!
Okay a little bit more time on that. Sandy Alcantara was great. It was the Pirates, yes, but it’s a huge boost of confidence that he’s truly back.
The biggest thing to notice there is that 17.6% SwStr%. That’s not normal for him. He’s been a below-average whiffs pitcher in his career. This was probably just a one-off thing, but we’ll see. The changeup was sick and he even kicked in some whiffs on the slider and curve. There aren’t too many better matchups in the league than the Pirates, but Sandy is an absolute must-start every time.
How about some of these newer names. Clay Holmes struggled with command.
4.2 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 4 K, 4 BB, 43.8% Strike%, 40.4% Ball%
That’s a very bad ball rate. It’s not what we wanted to see with him at all. The one thing you have to do when going from a relief role to a starter role is throw strikes. You can nibble as a reliever and give up some walks, but you cannot afford much of that as a starter. It was against a competent Astros lineup and his first regular season start in a long, long time. We’ll certainly be forgiving, but he’s not someone I’m going to hold on to if we’re 3-4 starts in and he still is not throwing strikes. I’m looking for at least a 35% Ball% from him.
The other note here is that he threw 80% sinkers and sweepers.
He was much more spread out during the spring. The “kick change” was the big thing for him, but he threw only four of them yesterday. That’s strange!
If he’s going to have that pitch mix, I’ll be completely out on him. I think he needs to use four pitches to have success as a starter, and this isn’t a good sign for his confidence in the changeup. But who knows, maybe he’s just easing in.
Sean Burke was the other guy we were watching closely. His box score line was strong:
6 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 3 K, 0 BB
But you can see the lack of strikeouts there. The SwStr% was just 11% and his overall Strike% was awful at 42.5%.
He has a decent three-pitch mix. Even usage of the four-seamer and slider is good. He didn’t locate the slider very well yesterday, but it also didn’t get hit hard (no hits allowed, .270 xwOBA on it). He will have to throw the four-seamer for strikes to stick as a fantasy league starter. Overall, it’s a thumbs-down for me right now, but he’s someone to keep a close eye on for sure.
Blake Snell did “early season Snell” things.
5 IP, 5 H, 2 R, 2 K, 4 BB, 15.2% SwStr%, 42.4% Ball%
More balls than strikes. The SwStr% was good, but they didn’t come at the right time and he got you just two strikeouts in his five innings. I doubt you’ll see that again. Just remember that Snell has long been a slow starter.
I have this “Blake Snell” category in my head. Those are the pitchers that are brutal to watch. They’re all over the map, but at the end of the season the numbers are good. The good will eventually overcome the bad with Snell. So what you do is just hold him, start him every time, and don’t watch the games.
If you don’t have Snell, you should try to trade for him in a few weeks, provided that he’s still struggling a bit. There will be a month this season at some point where Snell is the best pitcher in the game. But April is not the best bet for that to happen.
Justin Steele got a win, but wasn’t good. He’s now had two poor outings and sits with a 9.0% SwStr% and three homers allowed.
The good news is the 31% Ball%. He’s a command specialist. He gets outs with soft contact, and I guess that can take some time to develop. It’s also gotta be tough to start your season in Tokyo and then go back to exhibition and then make an Opening Day start. I don’t know. You’re sticking with Steele.
We really should not be changing our minds about any pitchers from their first outing. We do have to make some decisions early on with our fantasy rosters, but if you have a guy that you liked going into the season, I’d advise you to wait at least three starts before making a judgment on them.
It’s not very useful for our purposes to talk about single days of hitting. I will hit a handful of hitters to target in the waiver wire article which will come out this weekend. But I suppose it’s only right to shout out the Orioles for their huge game. They hit six homers and have a team 1.291 OPS after one game.
The Padres (five steals) and Pirates (six steals) both ran wild on the bases. We saw the Pirates running a ton in the spring, so that might be a team philosophy. That’s something to watch. It could mean big things for Oneil Cruz and even maybe get some value back in Ke’Bryan Hayes and others.
As for potential breakouts. Tyler Soderstrom hit two bombs and Spencer Torkelson hit one with four walks. Four walks! I can’t say that’s a good sign, because it’s five freaking plate appearances, but it’s certainly not a bad sign!
Those two are worth watching early on, and they should be owned in deep leagues right now. But again, we have to save the hitter analysis for at least 2-3 weeks from now when we have some data that approaches usability.
And that’s it for me. There is an absolute ton of stuff I have to do still to get things running smoothly. Your inbox is going to be full of my emails starting right now.
If you’re reading along with the stuff I’m doing, I recommend grabbing the Substack app on your phone. That’s a much better reading experience than looking at these posts from your inbox. It’s a great app.
Now we go to the automated section of the daily notes. It will be really short at the beginning. Most of the automation requires several weeks of data to work. And the minor league season hasn’t started yet, either, so there isn’t any of that stuff.
But once we’re a couple of weeks into April, you’ll start seeing a bunch of new stuff popping up here. If you have a question about any of it, leave a comment and I’l get back to you.
Everything here will be free for all to read for a few days, but by early next week the paywalls will start showing up. Enjoy!