Made this thing yesterday with a newspaper feel box score for each of yesterday’s games. Here’s what it looks like:
Maybe you can get a scented candle that smells like newspaper and light it while you pull that page up every morning. The problem is, like usual, that it doesn’t look good on a mobile phone. You have to do horizontal scrolling, which is annoying. But it looks great when you have a wide screen, and I think a small subset of you will really enjoy that.
You’re welcome, Mitch W. I did it for you specifically.
Free Content Friday
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Yesterdays Pitchers
You know I’m going to talk about Ben Brown first.
→ 65 pitches, 4.0IP 1H 0ER 0R 7K 1BB
He cruised through four innings against the Braves of all teams!
26 curves, 25 four-seamers, eight changes, six sinkers. That’s low sinker usage, but I guess he didn’t feel that he needed it. The curveball is so insane. I guess this isn’t the best example because it was kind of a garbage pitch, but it got a swing from Olson who trotted down to first in shame.
I would not be surprised if Olson retires today.
People are doubting CHA BOY on Ben Brown. I tried to tell my league in our slack, and three people laughed at me!
Laughing at little old me. Just a guy trying to make a living and feed my children with a moderately successful fantasy baseball publication. This is truly the fruit of the depraved heart and mind of man.
I will continue to fight the good fight, to press on for the prize.
But the question remains. Is Ben Brown being built up? Or is this a stopgap to getting Boyd back?
So far, it looks like he’s being built up. 25 to 46 to 65. That’s +21 each time. So in five starts, he’ll be throwing 170 pitches. It’s science. Brown’s last two starts while working 4+ innings:
I don’t want go be overly optimistic or be hyperbolic, but The Brown Bear is clearly going to win multiple Cy Youngs in his career.
Do they call him “The Brown Bear”? Obviously, they should. A Cub is a bear. Maybe even they could go with The Brown Baby Bear. Go ahead, Cubs fans, I won’t even ask for royalties.
I did coin the term Marte Partay for Starling Marte 14 years ago, and never saw a DIME.
I had this internship with TribLIVE Radio (RIP) in Pittsburgh when I was in college, and I came up with that hashtag (hashtags were big on Twitter back, then, believe me) when Starling Marte got the call up to the bigs. He homered in his first AB and the hashtag trended.
And now I see that the Reds have ran with the ball!
And nobody knows it was me. But it was me. It was me, guys.
But I don’t need money, I’m happy to continue to make my living turning $1 into $1.80 on DraftKings head-to-heads.
Zebby Matthews - 7.0IP 4H 0ER 0R 5K 1BB
This was Matthews’ best start of the year, and his first one in the MLB at that!
He was trending up in the minors, but nobody expected him to keep that line tilted upward after getting to the big leagues again.
Under the hood, it wasn’t dominant:
The fastball velo is not what it was last year. Just 94.8 last night with a 5% SwStr% and a 94.8 Stuff+. But it worked. And the curve/change/slider/cutter were mixed in well. Last year, when he was booty-hole:
Still a pretty good mix, but he didn’t use the curveball very much. I would imagine that he went into the offseason looking to make some changes because he had no success in the Majors. I don’t like the velo being down, obviously, and it’s probably still a longshot that he’ll develop into a stud pitcher. But this was a positive debut and should certainly get him a few more looks in the Major League rotation with the current state of the Twins rotation.
Emmet Sheehan - 6.0IP 2H 2ER 2R 6K 2BB
Sheehan led the day with 19 whiffs. It was a soft matchup with the Giants, I’ll grant you that, but Sheehan has been really good this year by a number of metrics.
→ 28% K% → 7% BB% → 16.5% SwStr% → 34.7% Ball%
He has a 4.54 ERA with a 3.16 SIERA. But a .314 BABIP and a ridiculous 26% HR/FB have kept him in bondage. That’s the league’s third-highest HR/FB among starters:
I think this dude is an ace.
Fastball has been very good, the slider is a wipeout pitch with an super-elite 55% Strike%. That’s the best mark in the league on a slider:
If you have Sheehan, you have an ace. The only better pitch in the league is probably Ben Brown.
Chris Sale - 6.0IP 5H 0ER 1R 8K 2BB
This one came in another tough matchup against the Cubs. He has a 35:7 K:BB with a 1.04 ERA and a 0.81 WHIP in his last four starts, and that’s in four pretty tough matchups (PHI, at COL, LAD, CHC).
Chase Burns - 6.0IP 2H 0ER 0R 7K 2BB
Burns keeps mowing them down. He now has a 1.87 ERA with a 1.00 WHIP on.
The 18% K-BB% isn’t elite, but look at the GB% at 47%! It was 37% last year! The slider has somehow put up a 65% GB%.
He’s throwing it further down zone this year.
So it’s high four-seamers and low-and-away sliders to righties. He still throws the slider to lefties, but it’s less at 29% usage (47% vs. RHB). But he replaces some of those with changeups, and that pitch has a 60% GB% to lefties. I’m definitely not buying him as a ground ball pitcher. It’s the same attack plan pitch-mix wise as last year, but it seems like he’s improved the changeup and the slider and just has better in-zone command this season. Looks like Burns is healthy and pitching as well as we all knew he could.
Kyle Harrison - 5.0IP 5H 0ER 0R 7K 0BB
Five more scoreless innings from Harrison to drop his ERA to 2.10 on the season.
He hasn’t gotten deep into starts much this year. He threw 99 pitches yesterday, a good sign, but he was inefficient and only able to get 15 outs with those pitches.
He also looks pretty studly, and not many people saw that coming. The fastball is elite without having a ton of velo. A 128 MLB DW grade on the pitch.
I still have to say he’s a sell-high for the reasons I keep saying over and over again. He is too dependent on that fastball and the secondary stuff doesn’t have very good strike numbers. So if the league can adjust and figure out the fastball, he doesn’t have much to fall back on.
The Brewers are one of the sharpest orgs in the league, that’s clear now. They continually develop players who punch above their weight. And they’re getting the most out of Harrison after the Giants and Red Sox both sort of failed to get his stuff working.
Ranger Suarez - 5.33IP 4H 0ER 0R 8K 1BB
Jesus Luzardo - 6.0IP 4H 0ER 0R 4K 1BB
These two lefties squared off and were both great. I don’t have much to add besides saying you should just keep starting both and learn to live with the clunkers they throw in there from time to time.
Landen Roupp - 5.33IP 6H 4ER 4R 7K 2BB
Another big strikeout night for Roupp, but the Dodgers put 8 H+BB on him with four runs. I think that’s fine. The Dodgers are a brutal matchup for anybody, and the Giants have to feel pretty much fine with that line from him. They lost the game, so I guess maybe they don’t, but Roupp is a 12-team start for me. He’s in the top ten in xBA allowed:
We’re nine starts in now. Dudes just can’t get the barrel on the guys’ mix.
Foster Griffin - 4.33IP 7H 9ER 9R 7K 3BB
There it was… the Reds took his 2.12 ERA and turned it into 3.53. He’s now given up a .367 xwOBA on the cutter (31% usage) and a .399 mark on the four-seamer (16% usage). He throws a lot of different pitches at you, so you can’t often sit on a pitch, but his stuff is all very hittable.
Mike Burrows - 5.67IP 8H 7ER 7R 4K 3BB
The 4:3 K:BB drops his K-BB% to 13%. So it’s not looking good. I think we have enough data now to say that it’s not happening for the guy.
Everybody glazed the Astros pitching development after that 2016-2023 run. But maybe that was just because they had prime Verlander, prime Cole, and prime Framber Valdez for those years.
A lot of front offices get credit for just having really good players. Which I guess is to their credit. But we can’t give the Pirates credit for Paul Skenes being an ace, can we? I think I could’ve drafted that guy and just said “Okay go ahead” and he would’ve been an MLB stud. But maybe I’m wrong about that. It’s impossible to know.
Michael McGreevy - 6.0IP 5H 1ER 1R 3K 1BB
mmmk. Whatever, man! He gave up an immediate dong to Nick Kurtz and I thought the walls were finally starting to crumble, bu then he ripped off a quality start and kept his ERA at 2.38 with a 0.95 WHIP.
I’m still not going to pick the guy up or tell anybody he’s a start. I refuse. His K-BB% is 13%, his BABIP is .203… it can’t go on like this.
Braxton Garrett - 1.33IP 4H 5ER 5R 3K 5BB
Robby Snelling is probably heading for Tommy John, so they pulled up Garrett and he got trucked. He’s not a good pitcher, that much is pretty clear to me.
Before his injuries, he was one of the game’s lowest walk guys. He would throw strikes. But he never got whiffs. This year, the walk rate is 15% (including the AAA time), so it seems the injury or a change in approach has zapped the elite walk rate. Last night:
A bad sinker, a so-so slider. Don’t use Garrett.
The takeaway now is about how long they’ll wait to get Thomas White into the fold. He’s their best pitching prospect, even better than Snelling. They probably don’t want him to throw many innings this year (90 last year). He pitched in AAA last night and wasn’t good (two homers, 3:2 K:BB), so I’m not thinking the promotion in imminent. But his stuff is sick, and he’ll be a big part of their rotation in the future.
Given the innings and the sudden lack of performance in AAA (13, 2, and 2 fantasy points in his last three), he’s not a stash candidate in your redraft leagues right now.
But you never know! One more injury or another Garrett blow-up could get them desperate enough to bring him up and see how the stuff works in the bigs.
Chase Dollander - 1.0IP 5H 3ER 3R 0K 1BB
He’s a clean cut now. He’s been bad, and he got hurt yesterday leaving in the second inning with an arm injury. Even if he’s fine, it looks like the hot start to the season was fake.
Nolan McLean - 7.0IP 6H 3ER 3R 7K 3BB
Pretty good stuff from McLean again. Not his best, but you’ll take that start every time. He’s a unicorn of sorts. Eight pitchers have 60+ strikeouts this year. He’s one of them, but he is way behind the rest of the group in whiffs:
64 strikeouts, 91 whiffs. Pretty incredible stuff. But that speaks to the movement of his pitches and how often he just straight up fools dudes. Getting strikes without a swing, that’s a good thing to be able to do.
Kris Bubic - 4.0IP 5H 5ER 5R 4K 3BB
The command is a problem for him. He has a 38% Ball% with a 12.6% BB%. And he’s not an elite strikeout pitcher either (24.6% K%, 12.2% SwStr%). I kinda just don’t think he’s very good.
Hitters
from the new box score page:
JJ Bleday
More walks than strikeouts with six bombs now on a 16% Brl%.
That’s a strong gain in plate discipline (29% K%, 9.5% BB% last year). So maybe McLain can have a half-decent season at the plate from here on out.
Yordan Alvarez
He had been struggling in May, but three hits with a bomb will clean that up.
Ryan O’Hearn
He had been struggling for a couple of weeks, but two bombs in the last two days bring him back up to an .845 OPS with seven homers and a nice .363 xwOBA. He’s a professional hitter, and the Pirates are getting their money’s worth so far after making him their first multi-year free agent sign in like ten years or whatever it was.
His home run rate at 4.0% is the best of his career. He’s air pulling at 16%, a good number, and he’s always been a pretty consistent batting average and OBP contributor.
Austin Martin
The story with this guy is a high walk rate (17%). He does not like to swing the bat (36% Swing%). But a 2.3% Brl% with a 100.8 EV90 shows that he doesn’t have power. But he does have a 22% attempt rate with that high .454 OBP, and that’s turned into seven steals. So he’s doing plenty of things to like for our OBP/points leagues.
Luke Raley
He’s a terror on right-handed pitching with a .415 xwOBA this year. He’s 12th in the league with that xwOBA vs. RHP.
Marcus Semien
Will he get going to help out the Mets? He’s a known slow starter:
Marcus Semien Career Splits by Month
In May so far: .250/.313/.409, 11.4% Brl%, 19% K%, 8% BB%, .367 xwOBA
Looking a lot better! He has five steals with a decent 15% attempt rate.
Gage Workman
In the minors this year: .358/.413/.590, 4 HR, 12 SB
That got him the call-up to the Tigers big league club, and he’s hit two homers with a 1.455 OPS through 11 PAs. Probably nothing to do about that. He’s 26 with a career minor league .782 OPS. This is probably just a hot start driven by variance, but he made the leaderboard yesterday so I figured we should mention him.
Other Dudes
AJ Ewing homered. He now has a triple, a homer, and a steal in just three games. He is super fast and has shown above-average bat speed and a 110.5 max EV through these three games. He’s a highly touted prospect with elite plate discipline (more walks than strikeouts in the minors this year, 19% K%, 12% BB% last year). He homered just three times all of last year (124 GP), so we don’t expect homers. But maybe he’s developed on that front because he already has shown us the ability to hit the ball hard this year.
Jordan Walker: Homered again. He hasn’t been doing a ton of that since that torrid first few weeks. But the K% has ticked down under 28% now, the GB% remains very good (36%), and he has a .387 xwOBA with a .279 xBA and a super-elite 110.5 EV90. Only a dozen hitters have EV90s on fly balls above 108, and he’s one of them.
Zack Gelof: The plate discipline gains he showed in the minors have carried over to some extent in the Majors. He has a nice 23.5% K%, but a bad 76% Zone-Contact%. A 10.5% Brl% with a very high 23% Air Pull%, though. And he’s a guy who will steal some bags. Not as many as before (5 steals, 13% Attempt% this year including the minors), but he’s a much better player this year, it would seem.
One more pitcher shout out: Aaron Ashby. He leads the league in wins! And he’s really found a homer as a long man for the Brewers out of the bullpen. Look at these SwStr%:
Three pitches above 20%. I’ve rarely seen anything like that. 97mph sinkers and then 83mph curves and 85mph sliders. Sick stuff. The wins thing is random, and that’s where he’s getting most of his fantasy value from, so I don’t think he’s a standard league add, but man he’s been dirty! He has more strikeouts than Framber Valdez, Logan Webb, and Ranger Suarez!
There you go! I feel like this has been a fantastic week in the daily notes. I’m having a lot of fun, and I hope you’re enjoying them in one way or another. Enjoy the rest of free content Friday!
Ha, thanks for the shout out. I do love it!
Ben Brown or J.T. Ginn?