MLB Daily Notes - May 12
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!
Points / OBP League Hitters
I wanted to take a look at some points/OBP league hitters to know. There’s an edge in those types of leagues since so much content is focused on roto leagues or at least leagues where OBP isn’t the most important thing.
So let’s look at some dudes at each position that have much higher OBPs than AVGs. Of course, all players will have higher OBPs than averages, but you get what I’m saying.
CATCHERS
Ivan Herrera (.262 AVG / .393 OBP / 14% BB%)
Ryan Jeffers (.276 / .384 / 14%)
David Fry (.250 / .371 / 16%)
Miguel Amaya (.228 / .366 / 14%)
FIRST BASE
Nick Kurtz (.252 / .395 / 19%)
Spencer Horwitz (.261 / .382 / 16%)
Willson Contreras (.259 / .380 / 12%)
SECOND BASE
Gleyber Tortes (.259 / .389 / 17%)
Edouard Julien (.267 / .368 / 13%)
Brandon Lowe (.267 / .367 / 13%)
Vaughn Grissom (.279 / .356 / 12%)
SHORTSTOP
JP Crawford (.204 / .362 / 18%)
Vaughn Grissom (.279 / .356 / 12%)
Brayan Rocchio (.278 / .355 / 9%)
THIRD BASE
Max Muncy (.273 / .367 / 13%)
Carlos Correa (.279 / .364 / 12%)
Miguel Vargas (.230 / .363 / 16%
Isaac Paredes (.256 / .351 / 9.5%)
OUTFIELD
Taylor Ward (.262 / .426 / 22%)
Mike Trout (.248 / .401 / 19%)
Aaron Judge (.267 / .386 / 155)
Trevor Larnach (.263 /.381 / 15%)
JJ Bleday (.262 / .380 / 16%)
James Wood (.244 / .372 / 15%)
Dane Myers (.235 / .371 / 16%)
Nick Loftin (.244 / .360 / 16%)
Ian Happ (.233 / .360 / 15%)
Lane Thomas (.208 / .356 / 18%)
Kyle Schwarber (.227 / .353 / 14%)
Isaac Collins (.241 / .352 / 13%)
So much of walk rate is just about not swinging. So we can chart it pretty nicely with Swing% vs. BB%:
If you don’t swing, you’ll find yourself walking 90 feet pretty often. The real impressive names are the guys who walk a lot with higher swing rates. You can zoom in on the plot like this:
Those names, from top to bottom on the y-axis:
Bryce Harper
Kyle Tucker
Zach Neto
Brandon Lowe
Nasim Nunez (the dot next to Lowe)
Manny Machado
Jose Ramirez
Willson Contreras
Ronald Acuna Jr. (the dot between Contreras and Correa)
Carlos Correa
Dansby Swanson
Jonathan Aranda (the dot right below Correa)
Pitchers
Six games last night, so not a ton to look at. The good:
Joey Cantillo: 6.0IP 5H 0ER 0R 4K 1BB
Threw more strikes than usual (47% Strike%) and exploited a bad Angels lineup with 14 whiffs and six clean innings.
I love this Team O Breakdown tab on the main dashboard for paid subs:
Pick a team, see their splits & totals, see their stats by moth, some trend charts, and a table with basic data on each player. All filterable by date range and pitcher hand.
The Angels looked kinda decent in mid-late April, but they’ve been bad again lately. Some of the strikeout rates are still down:
Mike Trout 26%
Jo Adell 22%
Logan O’Hoppe 25%
But Adell isn’t slusgging (.418) like he usually does, and O’Hoppe’s quality of contact has been bad.
Zach Neto is having a disappointing start to the season with a .222/.325/.395 slash line with six homers and seven steals. I guess that’s still a 25-25 pace or so before the weather even gets going, but a 31% K% is costing him the batting average.
He’s in the 6-6 club, though. And there are only 11 hitters with 6+ homers and 6+ steals:
Neto is making a profit for you even without the batting average, and he’s probably not going to hit .200 all year.
Jo Adell hit two homers on Sunday and we didn’t mention him yesterday. His .274 xBA is great for his standards, and he’s striking out way less this year. But the power stroke hasn’t been great (6 homers) and he has just two steals. The 7.1% Brl% is not what you want from the guy, but he’s still got elite bat speed and elite EVs. The power probably has to show up soon. He’s just not lifting it often enough.
So that Cantillo thing took me off onto an Angels tangent.
Ryan Weathers: 6.33IP 1H 2ER 2R 9K 3BB
Great stuff from Weathers. The Yankees bullpen blew it behind him and the Yanks didn’t light up Brandon Young like they were supposed to. But man that’s a good start from Weathers who takes his K% up to 29.8% and his BB% to 7.2% for an elite 22.7% K-BB%. That puts him 12th in the league.
K-BB% Leaders
Misiorowski 29.9%
deGrom 28.9%
McLean 25.7%
Glasnow 25.1%
Cease 24.8 %
Schlittler 24.5%
Skenes 24.1%
Warren 23.7%
Luzardo 23.5%
Skubal 23.0%
Sale 22.7%
Weathers 22.5%
I wrote about Weathers in the NL East pitcher grading post yesterday. And I came away thinking he’s a pretty decent sell high right now. Last night will accentuate that. I think he’s a really talented pitcher with tons of upside. But we have the innings questions since he’s never stayed healthy for a full year as a starter, and we also have righties hitting him pretty hard (.334 xwOBA). His fastball has given up four homers and a .433 xwOBA. I think he’s going to get himself into trouble with the homers more than he already has, and we just might see the body break down as we go through the summer.
But obviously you’re going to have to love the return, because Weather is healthy right now and getting great results for your fantasy team.
Peter Lambert: 7.0IP 6H 3ER 3R 6K 1BB
Lambert did some good work against the Mariners last night. He now has a 2.45 ERA with a 1.07 WHIP on a 14.5% K-BB% and a 0.41 HR/9.
Let’s take another look at the profile:
First thing I see is a 13.8% SwStr%, which is nice. But the 36.8% Ball% is a bit high and the Strike% is around the league average of 47%.
We see a 47% GB%, which is higher than average and helps with some of that home run prevention we’re seeing. His 5.2% Brl% allowed is very strong. The .263 BABIP is low, but not egregiously so. Same with the 10% HR/FB.
He’s definitely been lucky, but it’s not all luck.
His two main pitches grade out poorly in Stuff+ models, which would make you think there should be some more hard contact and homers. But his fastball xwOBA is .399, so he has been hit hard, just not for homers.
But the SwStr% is good on both pitches, so he must be deceptive or something of that sort - the stuff we don’t have numbers for. He’s new to the league this year, so he might have some of that lack of familiarity boost going on. To me, he looks like a league-average pitcher overall who is pitching above his head right now. But he’s seven starts in now, and he’s more than handling his business. I’m sure the Astros are really appreciating that with how rough their rotation looks right now.
Roki Sasaki - 5.0IP 6H 3ER 3R 5K 1BB
One walk! We had this on the slate preview stuff that the Giants just don’t walk, and that Sasaki has been throwing more strikes lately.
Last night, he went back to the four-seamer after featuring his splitter more in the last few starts.
You might think his fastball worked well last night given the line, but nope:
Zero whiffs on 47 pitches and a .510 xwOBA allowed. He was very lucky there to survive the way he did.
He can throw the splitter for strikes, which is saving his job right now. It’s a good pitch, it’s just not a standalone pitch that can work without at least a half-decent fastball.
So it all continues to look pretty rough for Sasaki. The fastball is so egregiously bad, and you just can’t hang as an MLB starter with that going on. Maybe he needs a sinker, or he should throw more of his cutter, or something.
Drew Rasmussen - 6.0IP 4H 3ER 3R 6K 1BB
Rasmussen goes out there and pretty much does the same thing every time. Throws a bunch of cutters, four-seamers, and sinkers and fools a bunch of dudes into soft contact.
The most notable thing in this start was the pitch count. He threw 100 pitches!
And his velo was up a bit
He was a 97-98mph guy when in relief. I don’t think he’s going back there, especially as he tries to cover six innings a start this year instead of five like last year, but this is the most volume we’ve seen from Rasmussen in his career, and that’s a pretty great thing.
George Kirby - 5.0IP 7H 1ER 1R 7K 2BB
Good start for Kirby! Seven strikeouts is a season-best. Something interesting has happened with his pitch mix.
The MLB Savant pitch classification model didn’t have the sweeper in his mix until April 29th. And now that’s been his most commonly thrown pitch.
That makes me think it’s not a truly new pitch? Maybe just a tweaked variation of the slider? I guess that’s what all sweepers are, but you know what I’m saying. You typically don’t introduce a new pitch and then immediately throw it 30% of the time.
But how’s it working? Here’s the pitch mix data since he started throwing it.
104.5 Stuff+, 14% SwStr%, 51% Strike%, 33% Ball%, .188 xwOBA. That’s a really good pitch. But every other pitch is lowering his overall SwStr% to 10.2%. The fastballs have worked for limiting hard contact, but that four-seamer isn’t getting whiffs like it used to.
Sometimes I get too hung up on strikeout rate. Kirby’s K% passed 20% last night, but it’s still a handful of points lower than we expected. BUT he has a 2.84 ERA and he’s gone 6+ innings in every start but three.
Trevor McDonald - 5.33IP 9H 3ER 3R 4K 2BB
He got the four strikeouts to hit Trevor’s parlay from last night, so that was nice. But nine hits and an 11.9% SwStr% cost him a good outing against the Dodgers.
The 69% GB% is super, super high. I doubt it can stay that high, but he’ll be a 55%+ guy, we’d think. He’s throwing a ton of sinkers early on, but the slider behind it is a pitch that hitters need to prepare for, because it’s pretty wicked.
I’m kinda liking what I’m seeing from McDonald. He’s not going to be a 12-teamer guy, but maybe in your deepest leagues you can give him a look.
Michael Soroka - 6.33IP 3H 0ER 0R 5K 1BB
The Rangers are so bad at home, and Soroka took advantage of it. 5:1 K:BB for Soroka with 10 whiffs. He threw the slurve a bunch and it worked.
Kevin Gausman - 4.67IP 10H 6ER 7R 5K 0BB
One of those Gausman starts! They happen from time to time. He didn’t have the splitter going (28% Strike%), and that leaves him naked up there on the mound. The Rays jumped on his fastball and had a big day.