MLB Daily Notes - May 21
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis
Check out yesterday’s box scores here
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!
NEW PRICE ON PRO MEMBERSHIPS
I’ve dropped the price for an MLB DW Pro subscription to $125 per year. This tier is what gets you the access to the entirety of the app, including the daily projections, the betting stuff, the DFS optimizer, and a ton more stuff.
And your charge will be pro-rated. So if you’ve already paid the $85 for the year, you’ll only be charged $40 more dollars to get the PRO membership for the rest of this year. And that will lock in that price for next year as well.
You’ll get the sweet Game Previews pages with that subscription. Those are pretty sweet, and I use them vigorously. Here’s a little preview I showed on X last night.
If you’re on fence, just wait until free content friday and check it all out then. Just load up the app tomorrow and type in password “friday”.
If you’re betting or playing DFS, I really believe this is a steal. The bets are making money, the daily projections are necessary to DFS success, and you’ll get access to all of the new stuff we’re adding. Let me know if you have any questions!
Something is going on on the MLB side this week. The statcast data was delayed yesterday and it’s not delayed again today. The daily automated reports and the main dashboard depends on this data being available to me every morning. So I can’t run the full stuff without it.
I’m proceeding without it and hoping it shows up by the time I’m ready to publish these here daily notes.
But we can use the box score page and the MLB & MiLB Stats Dashboard to get the numbers.
I’m not sure if everybody knows about this dashboard. And I made a couple updates to it last night. So let me talk about that for a minute.
It’s a dashboard powered by box score data for all levels (A, A+, AA, AAA, and MLB) dating the whole way back to 2021.
There are various uses of it. I like to go to the Pitching Game Logs page and just set the date to yesterday. When you do that, you can see all starting pitcher lines from yesterday. Here’s everybody who went for 20+ fantasy points last night at the MLB level.
You can select any level you want there. Here’s AAA:
So you see the prospect Gage Jump there. You can head over to the Pitcher Profile tab and see his career summary.
The new additions from last night are that I added a “Bullpen” or “Starters” radio button to the Team Pitching tab. This lets you see bullpen stats. Just choose “Bullpen” and the team stats will update:
What that does is look for player stats from games they did not start. It does not look at the list of bullpen pitchers, it just looks at the guys who did not start an individual game. So if you have an opener who started the game, his stats from that game won’t be considered. And if you have a starter that “bulked” after the opener, his stats will be considered when “Bullpen” is chosen.
The second addition is a “Lineups” tab. This shows you starts per lineup spot for whatever team or date range you want. Here’s the Reds lineup summary for the last seven days:
You can also just pick a player and see where their starts have come.
I should have added that years ago… it took me like three minutes to add it.
Yesterdays Pitchers
I was on Kyle Harrison very early. I added him in my home league right away. But then made a horrible error in dropping him after he had a four inning start and got hurt. But he’s been incredible for the Brewers all year. Last night against the Cubs
→ 7 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 11 SO, 1 BB
I have talked about him a lot this year. Mostly through a pretty skeptical viewpiont since he’s dominating with a low-velo four-seamer without a ton of secondary stuff to get excited about. But whatever he’s doing, it continues to work. He’s been unreal of late with a 38.7% K%, a 6.6% BB%, and a 0.32 HR/9 over his last five starts. That’s 28 innings, three runs, 41 strikeouts, and seven walks.
For the season:
He’s now sixth in the league in K-BB%.
Misiorowski 31.3%
deGrom 26.9%
Skenes 26.4%
Cease 24.7%
Sanchez 24.6%
Harrison 24.6%
Schlittler 24.5%
Sale 24.1%
Weathers 23.5%
Martin 22.8%
Hopefully a lot of you guys got on him early and didn’t drop him like I did.
Trey Yesavage dominated the Yankees: 6 IP, 8 2 H, 0 ER, 8 SO, 0 BB
He looks pretty studly and is probably a top 25 starter at this point.
Chris Sale’s ridiculous May continues. He’s down to a 1.89 ERA, a 0.87 WHIP, and a 24.1% K-BB% as we saw above. He had to go to Coors and then face the Dodgers and Cubs, and he had no trouble there. So it wasn’t a surprise that he carved up the Marlins last night: 7 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 8 K, 0 BB.
At least seven srikeouts in six straight outings. He’s so good and so healthy right now.
Joe Ryan has been very good again this year. Last night against the AStros: 6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 9 SO, 0 BB.
The ERA is down to 3.02, the WHIP is elite as usual at 0.97. What’s new is this 0.48 HR/9.
It’s a higher than usual 40% GB% for him this year. The pitch mix stuff, not including yesterday:
How do you end up with a 40% GB% while throwing a 24% GB% pitch 42% of the time? I guess a disproportionate amount of his balls in play have come on his non-four-seamers. His sinker, curve, splitter, and sweeper make up around 50% of his pitches, and they all end up on the ground at a high rate. His four-seamer is tough to get in play with a 13.2% SwStr%. I suppose that explains it.
But a 5% HR/FB is unheard of for anybody, especially Ryan. So he’s going to give up more homers soon. But what’s the point of saying any of this? Are you going to bench Ryan? Try to trade him? I doubt it!
Tanner Bibee had a good one: 8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 5 SO, 1 BB
That was against the Tigers, who are a pretty decent matchup. You really never know what you’ll get from Bibee.
He’s an average big league pitcher. And he gets to average by being good half the time and bad half the time.
There’s another useful tab on that dashboard mentioned above called Scoring Distributions. This will look at each pitcher’s fantasy point log and give you this:
You have the highest standard deviations there. Meaning the widest spread in their results. Bibee is at 8.9. Which basically means he’ll be within nine points of his average whenever he takes the hill, generally.
The six tighest distributions are here:
Here’s what a five-point STD looks like.
If you’re going to have an STD, it might as well be a five-pointer. That’s what I always say.
This is why we typically abbreviated “Standard Deviation” as “SD” or “StDev” or something else to avoid saying the term “STD”. But I have no Statcast data, so I need to make some jokes.
Shane Baz has been a little bit better in his last two starts.
You like the ten strikeouts, but you don’t like the six walks, and you don’t like the seven homers he’s given up and you really don’t like the 9.2% K-BB%.
He’s just not good. And can we just say the Orioles are a terrible organization? I think the most vehement supporters of that statement right now would be Orioles fans.
They had the top prospect in baseball for 29 years straight, and what have they gotten from it? Look at these bums!
Their best players are both catchers. That’s not a good sign.
Kyle Bradish has been good of late. But he’s all alone in the rotation. He’s the only one below a 4.50 ERA.
I’ve been to Baltimore a couple of times. One time me and my boy Nate Hall ripped down there from Pittsburgh for a Pirates double header. I haven’t seen Nate Hall in like 15 years, so that tells you something. It was the debut of Matt Hague, which I was excited for. And that tells you something else about when that happened, and also how stupid of a young Pirate fan I was.
I went on about this on X yesterday, but Taylor Ward is doing something I’ve never seen before. His swing rate is below 30%. He’s the first player in tracking history with a swing rate below 30% in 150+ PAs. I’m not kidding. They’ve been tracking that since 2002, and no hitter has been so foolish as to swing this rarely.
What would make a person do this? It’s like Henry Rowengarter that one time he actually had to hit.
This would be my approach if I had to hit in the Major Leagues. I would know with certainty that I wouldn’t be able to make contact, so I’d just take every pitch and hope that ball four comes before strike three.
The league average swing rate in two-strike counts is 60%. Ward is at 42.9%, the lowest rate in the league. Here’s everybody under 50%:
Trout and Acuna can be given the benefit of the doubt. But the rest of these guys are just being stubborn.
Maybe Ward, like me, hates Baltimore and he’s just doing a form of protest. If that’s the case, I appreciate it. Any other explanation is unacceptable. They should do a trade-back on the Grayson Rodriguez thing. Taylor Ward makes me sick.
Your highest swing rates this year:
It’s pretty much the same names every year. Tovar, Mangum, Baez, Yainer. They love to swing the bat.
It speaks to their inability to identify pitches. It’s possible they’re all just way too close to legally blind than they should be playing a professional sport.
I’m a big supporter of vision. Big fan of seeing things. And I’m sure these guys can all operate a car with great success. But your eyesight has to be elite to hit a baseball. I would guess the average vision score of a pro baseball player is way, way above the population average. There’s more to it than seeing the ball, obviously, but I know for a fact that this is an underrated physical element of the game that gets overlooked. Unless it doesn’t, I haven’t consulted any big league teams. Maybe they all have a team of optometrists.
I’m not a pessimist, I’m an optometrist
~ Ricky from Trailer Park Boys
But somebody get Tovar’s vision checked, please. I think he’s up there just swinging blind because he doesn’t want to get glasses and get made fun of by his teammates.
Remember last year when the Dodgers paused for a second in May and gave Max Muncy glasses? And then he immediately started crushing baseballs again?
Maybe it’s not about the payroll for the Dodgers after all. Maybe they just see better than everybody else.
I’m fillibustering hard here waiting for this statcast data. Oh, here’s something! Michael McGreevy gave up ten hits! Suck it, dude.
→ 5 IP, 10 H, 3 ER, 1 SO, 1 BB, 0.7 fantasy points
I don’t believe in “due” in baseball, but I do believe in justice. And this is justice. We cannot operate a successful society without a proper glorification of justice.
One of God’s main attributes is His perfect holiness manifested through His sense of justice. We have to reward the good and punish the bad. And you can’t do that unless you know what good and bad are. And I don’t think we know that anymore. We’re in a “post truth” world where too many people think good and evil are subjective.
Pilate might be the first recorded moral subjectivist.
Jesus didn’t reply to that, at least not on the record, but I’d like to think that Jesus appreciates those ten hits the Pirates put up on McGreevy. The Bucs sent him to a .230 BABIP. Here’s everybody qualified under a .240 BABIP:
This is double dangerous for guys with a low K%. And McGreevy sits at 17%. That means that if/when the BABIP goes back up to .270 or whatever it will be, the runs will start crossing the plate because he’s letting a ton of balls get into play.
It’s over for McGreevy. It’s OVER.
What are the Marlins to do now?
Janson Junk: 5 IP, 8 H, 8 ER, 3 SO, 0 BB
Max Meyer is their ace. Robby Snelling is super hurt, Braxton Garrett bombed hard, Thomas White apparently isn’t coming up, and they’re getting crooked numbers from Eury Perez and Sandy Alcantara almost every time out there.
Rotation strengths can turn into weaknesses in a hurry. Disaster year for the Marlins pitching.
Hitters of the Day
Randy Arozarena: HR, 3 R, 2 RBI, 2 SB, 34 points
Sal Stewart: 4 hits, HR, 3 R, 2 RBI, 31 points
Ketel Marte: 3 hits, 2B, HR, 3 R, 2 RBI, 30 points
Juan Soto: 2 HR, 2 R, 3 RBI, 30 points
Dominic Smith: 2 H, 3B, HR, 2 R, 3 RBI, 28 points
Jarren Duran: 2 H, 3B, HR, 1 R, 2 RBI, 24 points
CJ Abrams: 2 H, 2 R, 3 RBI, 23 points
Jacob Young: 2 H, 2B, HR, 21 points
Salvador Perez: 3 H, HR, 1 R, 1 RBI, 20 points
Jake McCarthy: 2 H, 3B, 2 R, 20 points
Six hitters have 150+ fantasy points over the last two weeks
Nick Kurtz 184
Kyle Schwarber 171
Randy Arozarena 169
Juan Soto 156
Jose Ramirez 153
Corbin Carroll 150
I don’t think I’ve ever once drafted Arozarena.
And as soon as I do, his career will be done. But he’s a very good player and now sports a .302/.393/.467 slash line with five homers and 13 steals. Great addition the Mariners made there a few years back.
Dominic Smith had a real homer and a triple that turned in a four-bagger with an error. Here’s that play:
This guy is hitting .337/.364/.541 this year with five homers. He has walked four times, but has struck out just 16 times. So he’s been pretty sweet for the Braves.
I thought that Smith was at one point a top prospect in baseball, but it seems I’ve mistaken him with Dominic Brown. But he was a top 50 prospect around 2016. And it hasn’t clicked for him, but the Braves are getting the most out of him this year. But he’s a platoon bat with middling barrel rate. So I still don’t think he’s fantasy relevant in most contexts.
I’m calling it man. The statcast data still isn’t here and it’s after ten o’clock. I’ll get everything updated when it’s there, but we don’t have the automated section today. Blame Pilate!