MLB Daily Notes - March 31
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis
The Daily Notes are the flagship resource of MLB Data Warehouse. Every morning, Jon breaks down the current goings on in the fantasy baseball world, and an automated daily report gets you up to date on key stats and trends. Become a paid subscriber at MLB Data Warehouse to get this unlocked in your inbox every morning!
It was a horrible pitching slate yesterday. Every team was playing their fourth game, so we saw some very fringey arms on the mound, to say the least.
Ryan Johnson (LAA): 3.1 IP, 7 H, 6 ER
Taijuan Walker (PHI): 4.2 IP, 10 H, 6 ER
Justin Verlander (HOU): 3.2 IP, 6 H, 5 ER
Jacob Lopez (ATH): 4 IP, 5 H, 3 ER, 0 SO, 5 BB
Kyle Leahy (STL): 5 IP, 8 H, 4 ER
Chris Paddack (MIA): 4 IP, 8 H, 8 ER
Chris Bassitt (BAL): 4.1 IP, 6 H, 4 ER
But we got some good ones as well:
Lance McCullers (HOU): 7 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 9 SO, 1 BB
Mike Soroka (ARI): 5 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 10 SO, 1 BB
Landen Roupp (SF): 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 7 SO, 2 BB
Chase Burns (CIN): 5 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 7 SO, 3 BB
Edward Cabrera (CHC): 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 1 BB
Jack Leiter (TEX): 6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 8 SO, 1 BB
Luis Castillo (SEA): 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 7 SO, 2 BB
Parker Messick (CLE): 6 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 5 SO, 0 BB
CODY PONCE
Cody Ponce was rolling (15 whiffs on 47 pitches) before going to field a ground ball and getting hurt.
I would say that we shouldn’t react to the Lance McCullers thing. We didn’t see McCullers at all in the Majors from 2023-2024. He came back in 2025 and did this:
→ 55 IP, 22.3% K%, 14.2% BB%, 4.94 SIERA
I suppose you could say his 34% Ball% was a good sign yesterday. But there’s a rule I follow. The longer you have sucked, the longer it’s going to take you to convince me that you no longer suck.
EDWARD CABRERA
Edward Cabrera is similar to McCullers in that it was several years of the guy having no command. But he massively improved that in 2025, and he couldn’t have begun 2026 on a much more positive note. It was against the Angels, but it was an 18.8% SwStr%, which is elite. The ball rate was near 39%, which was not good. But he threw strikes when he needed to. He once again led the arsenal with a changeup:
I’m not sure if we should even call that a changeup. Last year, the changeup averaged 94.2mph, the fastest changeup in the league. And that creates very little daylight between his fastball and changeup. I CHECKED! I got FF and CH velo for qualified starters from last year and this year and then took the velo difference:
The average difference is more than seven miles per hour. Cabrera is out here below a three mile per hour difference.
I was curious, so I checked something else. I compared velo differential with xwOBA allowed on changeups. The question was - is a bigger or smaller difference actually better, statistically? Can we say that it’s better for your real-life results to have a big gap between your fastball and changeup?
The correlation coefficient between velo difference and xwOBA was -0.25. So that’s a very weak relationship that leans in favor of a bigger gap. But -0.25 basically explains nothing, so we can ignore it.
It seems to work for Cabrera, who now has a 25.8% K%, an 8.2% BB%, and a 3.14 JA ERA since last season.
Good early signs for the move by the Cubs (although Owen Caissie is making noise as well!).
CHASE BURNS
I traded Emmet Sheehan for Chase Burns a week ago. And I know with 100% certainty that the guy I traded with pulled up these daily notes SCOURING to see if I would talk about Burns. I bet he thinks I’ll tuck my tail and ignore that sick outing from Burns last night because I’m too ashamed by my bad trade. But here’s your bone, Nick - you can eat shit.
→ 5 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 7 SO, 3 BB, 19.2% SwStr%, 41% Ball%
Any start you get, where Chase Burns, where these two things happen:
He doesn’t give up multiple home runs
His elbow doesn’t explode
You’re going to like those stars. We’re not supposed to root for injuries, I know that. And I’m not rooting for injuries. The trade is done, I’m moving on with Sheehan. If you dump a girl, and then later regret it, it doesn’t actually help your life if that girl turns out to be a big hoe bag or whatever else could happen. What’s done is done, you can’t live in the past.
This all does bring a country song to mind.
It’s about this guy who gets dumped by a girl and then she hooks up with this other guy, so the first guy fights the second guy. The second guy gets married to the girl, the first guy is really upset about it. But yeah, the girl ends up cheating on him and ruining his life. So he kinda feels bad about fighting him. And he tells anyone who sees him drinking off his sorrows to buy the guy a beer.
So let’s hope some happy variation of that happens to me with this Sheehan/Burns trade.
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