MLB Daily Notes - May 11
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!
I lost my phone yesterday morning, and I haven’t found it since. It’s somewhere in the house. But I’ll tell you that it’s been pretty nice not having it. It’s much harder to check baseball scores and see what’s going on, but it’s also a bit more fun to go look one time at the end of the day and see it all at once. Like the old days. Maybe I should get a newspaper subscription and write the daily notes from what I see in the sports section.
So what happened Saturday that we missed?
Spencer Strider at LAD: 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 8 SO, 2 BB
Pretty good news there. 43 fastballs (11.6% SwStr%), 32 sliders (22% SwStr%), ten curveballs (20% SwStr%), and six changeups (16.7% SwStr%). The curveball showed up last year, but it’s back and had a great night. Four pitches from Strider with the velo at 96.4 in that one. Really good sign there.
Tanner Bibee vs. MIN: 6 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 9 SO, 2 BB
He took advantage of a pretty mediocre Twins offense, although he couldn’t figure out Byron Buxton, who did 100% of the Twins damage in a win. But Bibee looked sharp and had a season-best 20 whiffs.
His K% ticked up to 23% in that start and he has a 13.7% SwStr% now. That’s a 3.74 JA ERA. His cutter has become his main pitch, and it’s been pretty strong with a 19.6% SwStr%. However, most of his pitches are getting pretty hard.
But at least the whiffs are back. I think Bibee is a 12-team guy that you’ll like sometimes and not like other times. We’ll see where he lines up on the grading series I’m doing, I’m going to try to finish that by the middle of this week.
Braxton Ashcraft at SF: 7 IP, 6 H, 1 ER, 6 SO, 0 BB
He’s pitched like a stud. He’s holding to a 26.7% K%, a 7.3% BBB%, and a 48% GB%. He might be a top 30 starter right now.
Cam Schlittler at MIL: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 6 SO, 0 BB
Not a ton of whiffs in this one, but nobody is mad about six scoreless and a 6:0 K:BB.
I guess it’s worth mentioning that he’s been trending in the wrong direction, although, really, with the start he had, there was only one way for him to trend.
His last three start K% is 26%, which is still good, but it’s not 30%+ like it was early on. But I’m being nitpicky. Schlittler is a top ten SP if drafting today. I have no issues with that.
Landen Roupp vs. PIT: 4 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 8 SO, 3 BB
He was piling up the strikeouts, but it was inefficient and he left in the fifth inning. But I thought that was still pretty good to see. His K% is up to 29% now. The SwStr% is still under the league average at 11%, so we don’t think he’s a high strikeout guy like this, but he continues to be really, really hard to hit and the strikeuots have been there pretty much every time.
Blake Snell vs. ATL: 3 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, 5 SO, 2 BB
Just a classic Snell line. Loads of strikeouts, a few walks, and a short outing. He threw 77 pitches, so he’s not far off from being fully built up. Start Snell every time. If he has a bad start, just start him next time. That’s how you play it with the guy.
Trey Yesavage vs. LAA 4 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 6 SO, 2 BB
He was also inefficient, but good. He had a 17.2% SwStr% and a nice 34.5% Ball% with six quick strikeouts in his four innings. But the pitch count got too close to 90 and they shut it down.
Fastball watch: 92.6 Stuff+, 9.3% SwStr%, 53% Strike%, .230 xwOBA
That would work beautifully if it continues! But I think the numbers will get worse, we’ll have to wait and see. Very little data on this guy.
Kyle Harrison vs. NYY: 4 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 6 SO, 4 BB
They pulled him after 78 pitches, but he was playing with fire there with the eight H+BB in four innings. It wasn’t a good outing, but you can forgive dudes for down starts against the Yankees. He did throw 101 and 93 pitches in the two starts before this one, so they’re willing to let him get up there. And the season numbers here…
… are excellent. A 20% K-BB%, a 2.90 JA SIERA, a 1..84 WHIP+. It’s all pretty good. There’s some luck there with the 10% HR/FB, but nothing is out of control. The worry is that the league figures out this fastball and starts it hitting it better, because he’s throwing it 58% of the time and doesn’t have another pitch that grades super well.
Edward Cabrera vs. TEX: 5 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, 6 SO, 1 BB
You can simply never trust the guy to give you what you think he’ll give you. When you think he’s bad, he gets good. When you think he’s good, he goes bad.
But it was still 13 whiffs, a 14.8% SwStr% and a 51.1% Strike%. He just gave up two homers and had a bad BABIP. The key point on E-Cab is 21:4 K:BB in his last three starts.
Jack Kochanowicz vs. TOR: 4 IP, 9 H, 6 ER, 0 SO, 3 BB
Justice! The world is correcting itself in the case of J-Koch.
Sunday Pitchers
Jacob deGrom vs. CHC: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 10 SO, 0 BB
deGrom finally gets the big result after a bit of a rough patch. This was a tough matchup, but he was too good foro the Cubs. When deGrom is on, nobody is going to hit the dude. And he looks just as good as he was last year:
33% K%
4% BB%
29% K-BB%
1.47 WHIP+
Great marks across the board. A little bit of a homer issue (six homers, 19% HR/FB), but he’s easily a top ten starter for me if we’re drafting today.
Logan Gilbert vs. CWS: 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 9 SO, 0 BB
Finally, the big result for Gilbert.
It was his second really good start of the year. And it was a pretty easy matchup. The White Sox strike out a ton.
Gilbert’s profile:
It’s all a little bit worse than the previous years, but overall the numbers are still pretty strong. A 21% K-BB% will work, and maybe the HR/FB can tick down a couple more points to the league average to help out.
The fastball has gotten exploited with a .405 xwOBA.
The 9.7% SwStr% isn’t horrible, but not what you really want from a guy you think is a stud pitcher. The 57% Strike%, though, is elite.
It’s the same thing with the slider. Plenty of strikes, whiffs, everything looks good besides what happens when he doesn’t get a whiff or a called strike. What does that mean? I’m not sure. Tipping, bad locations in the zone, maybe? But also, probably plenty of positive regression in that xwOBA column is coming. I like Gilbert just fine for the rest of the year.
Gavin Williams vs. MIN: 6 IP, 10 H, 5 ER, 6 SO, 1 BB
Rollercoaster Williams!
He has teh strikeouts down pretty consistently. 66 of those in 55.1 innings, and the walks haven’t been a big issue either with just nine walks in his last six starts. But now he’s getting hiti around! 18 hits in the last two outings.
What I hang my hat on is the K-BB% stuff. And while he’s gotten hit around a few times in these last two, that stuff has improved.
I like this version of Williams better. Last six starts for the big man:
→ 26% K%, 5% BB%, .314 BABIP, 19% HR/FB
The bad luck will correct, and he’s a 21% K-BB% guy in this sample, and we’ve never seen that before because of his constant walk problems.
Davis Martin - 6.0IP 3H 1ER 1R 9K 2BB
Now we get into the weirdos. Davis Martin continues to crush. He has a 1.62 ERA with a 1.00 WHIP this year, and the K-BB% is now convincingly good at 22%.
He had just a 10.8% SwStr% in his first three starts while putting up good numbers, and I was on the total fade train for awhile there. And people will say I WAS WRONG. Producer Lee got on Martin right away, and he was literally in tears every time I’d write about him not continuing it. And now he probably wants to take a victory lap on this pristine 1/4th of a season he’s had. But I’m stopping that victory lap. I’m taking his legs out from under him.
Martin was LUCKY GOOD at first, and now he’s just been GOOD GOOD since
.The pitch mix needs a look:
Look at this four-seamer! A 14.4% SwStr% with a 33% Ball% and no homers. That’s a good one. The Stuff+ is bad, but we’re almost to the point where I’m throwing it out. Almost. 195 pitches gives us a sample big enough to just look at the results rather than the stuff plus model. And the MLB DW grade on the pitch is 113.3, way above the Stuff+ mark.
Let’s do something I hate to do, watch the actual guy pitch.
Immediately, you can see, I hope, the absurdity of what I just did. Picking out two putaway whiffs on the four-seamer out of the full sample. Unbridled selectivity. That could be a decent podcast name. Unbridled Selectivity.
The pitch has enough velo to matter, although maybe that bar is rising these days. Point is, it’s not a 92-93 pitch, he’s above 95 quite a bit.
And he’s also throwing six pitches above 10% usage. So he’s mixing it up, throwing strikes, and getting results that I can’t ignore anymore.
Now that he’s 90% owned, I’ll tell you that he should be owned. You’re welcome!
Justin Wrobleski - 8.67IP 7H 7ER 7R 7K 1BB
This is what’s so great about only looking at the final results and paying no attention to how the game actually went.
This line is something we have literally never seen before.
WHAT HAD HAPPENED WAS that Wrobleski got into trouble early, and then cruised in the middle, and then got tanked in the ninth.
This was his best start of the year (by far) in K:BB, but of course it comes with his worst (by far) result in ER.
This is an encouraging result from Wrobleski with the 14 whiffs, seven strikeouts, and 14% SwStr%.
Baseball is funny, man. But we should always lean on the bigger sample. He has a 2.42 ERA, a 0.99 WHIP, but a 12.4% K%. That K% needs to come way up before I’m ever recommending we start the guy. But you’ve been starting him the whole year, and you’re loving life!
Not a single pitch with a double-digit SwStr%. He has a .221 BABIP and a 5% HR/FB (up from 0% before yesterday!). I don’t think he’s good at all, and I still think he’s destined to go back to the bullpen. I’d be trying to ship him away if possible. That remains unchanged. But what a line!
How many times has a guy gone above eight innings with at least seven earned runs since 2021? That would be ONE. There have only been two instances of more than eight innings with more than five earned runs!
I remember that Cecconi start well because I had streamed him for it and my family was gone for the weekend. So I was smoking a big old cigar on the back porch watching the start on my computer. And this dude was ripping through the Athletics making me extremely pleased. And then they just hung him out to dry in the ninth and it all got washed away.
We should enjoy the unexpected and unlikely things in life. You may never see another 8.1 IP, 7 ER start as long as you live. You’ll be telling your grandkids about it.
Logan Henderson - 5.0IP 4H 2ER 2R 5K 1BB
Just 74 pitches before the little guy. But a 55.4% Strike% and 27% Ball%. Good news there, keep starting Hendo.