I would say “Happy Memorial Day”, but I’m not sure that’s appropriate. Of all of the US Holidays we have, I’d say Memorial Day is the least happy. And I do appreciate the distinction between Memorial Day and Veterans Day. So there’s nobody to go out of my way to thank, right? Memorial Day is about those who gave their lives in service to the country. And I doubt they read the Daily Notes in heaven. But here is me saying once again that I’m very happy to live in the time and place that I live in. I very much realize how insanely lucky it is to exist in this century in this country. You get up every morning and do like 197 things that you completely take for granted and that most people could not even dream of doing over the course of human history.
Tarik Skubal certainly deserves himself a beer and a hot dog today. What a ridiculous, ridiculous start that was.
He has separated himself from the rest of the league, and I would say he’ll coast to his second Cy Young as long as he can stay healthy.
It’s a good opportunity to show you that I added a SIERA-like stat to the main dashboard last night. I was trying to replicate SIERA, so I asked a robot to do it for me. What the robot came up with doesn’t match, but it uses the same components and general calculations as SIERA, so it should work the same. I’ve called it “JA ERA”, which is a bad name. But not everything can be good.
I have the same top ten as SIERA on FanGraphs, but my numbers are smaller, and the order isn’t exactly the same.
It looks like I don’t punish fly balls as much as SIERA does. MacKenzie Gore, for example, has a large difference there, and he has a very, very low 37% GB%.
The point of this is not to have a better metric than SIERA or anything like that. I’m not trying to compete in this arena. But I wanted something on the dashboard for quick and easy access and all of the advanced filtering. So now you can actually go see JA ERA on any weird split you want to check.
Like… how about vs. LHB?
How about vs. RHB?
How about in TWO STRIKE COUNTS!?
How about in ZERO strike counts?
Or you can do actual useful things like filter to low-owned pitchers over the last 30 days:
That’s where it will really be useful.
We saw Will Warren up there a lot. He has been great of late. His outing was cut short by a rain delay, but he was baffling the Rockies in his four innings:
I have talked about him a lot lately - and the subject has mostly been about how his K% isn’t backed up by his SwStr%. But that’s not as true now after piling up those 17 whiffs on 57 pitches. His season SwStr% jumped from 10.9% to 12.1% yesterday. His stats in May:
It’s still not blowing me away. The SwStr% is very good but not to the elite levels that really make your eyes open - and the ball rate is kinda bad and he doesn’t get many ground balls, which is a problem as a righty in Yankees Stadium half of the time. But again, it is hard to argue with a 36% K% over a five-start sample. And it’s even harder to argue with a 21.6% K-BB% on the season.
There are only two pitchers with
→ 7+ GS → K-BB% above 20% → Less than 75% owned on Yahoo
They are Warren and Tylor Megill. And I do think it’s okay to be this simple. If you have a pitcher with a K-BB% above 20% over, say 5+ starts, just add them. There’s no other analysis needed.
"Michael always said, K.I.S.S. Keep it simple, stupid. Great advice, hurts my feelings every time."
Dwight Schrute
We had that Spencer Schwellenbach start we were waiting for:
That gave me an idea of calculating Ball to Whiff ratio. And it turns out that Schwelly’s start yesterday was the second-best ball to whiff ratio of the season.
This represents the “SwStr% + Ball% Magic Formula” thing I do pretty well. Let’s look at the top 20 for the season:
Not bad, but you do see some losers like Kyle FreelandandZack Littell sneaking in there. One way you can post a low ball rate is just by giving dudes easy pitches to hit all of the time. And that’s pretty much what Freeland does. It can turn into good outings if the hitters don’t take advantage of the pitches, but it’s generally not a recommended strategy.
Pretty good outing. So we’re 21 innings into his career and he has a 1.71 ERA with a 0.95 WHIP.
28.4% K-BB%! I don’t think this guy is available in many leagues right now, or at least not the leagues that you guys are playing in. But just in case - I’d say you should add him. The JA ERA is 1.41 and the WHIP+ is 1.40. Those are both elite marks. We are talking about just 334 pitches thrown, but it’s enough to say he shouldn’t be left on waivers while we find out what he’ll be over the larger sample.
He is already in the history books as being the guy to give up the hardest ball ever hit. Here are the ten hardest hit balls dating back to 2021:
I might think that Acuna’s 121.2mph homer to centerfield was more impressive. Here’s Cruz yesterday:
Here’s that Acuna job from 2023:
That must be some kind of feeling to unload on a ball like that.
In one of my men’s league games I really got into one once. Swung very hard and squared this ball up to dead center field. Couldn’t even feel it hitting the bat - absolute nutjob sweet-spot city #njssc (that’s the scientific term). Routine fly out to centerfield. But it felt like a double.
That really got away from me but L-Hendo looks good.
Edward Cabrera struck out 10 Angels and almost even got through six innings. So close! That was his best work, and really his first useful start of the year:
Shout out to my projection model which named him the streamer of the day. Somebody in the Discord thanked me for recommending him - and I had no idea that I had done. But I did do that. Because I programmed the projection model that makes the recommendations. It’s kinda like how I’m going to take all of the credit for the successes in life that my kids have.
My daughter is 98th percentile in reading. 98th percentile! And guess what percentile she’d be in if I hadn’t done my part to create her? To use a programming term - NULL. She’d be in the NULL percentile. Does not compute - can’t divide by zero - the limit does not exist.
Shout out to me.
The one thing I should mention in fairness to E-Cab is that his walk rate is actually down to 9.2% this year. That’s really, really good for him.
Cabrera MLB Stats by Year
But it’s still a bad 38% Ball%, and the whiffs aren’t there for the season either (11.2% SwStr%), so it looks like maybe he’s give up some nastiness in exchange for the extra command. Life is a give-and-take, you know? You can’t have it all… unless you’re Tarik Skubal I guess.
And then Jesus Luzardo struck out ten more. What a great acquisition he’s been for the Phillies. He sports a 2.76 JA ERA with an elite 1.57 WHIP+ on a 21.2% K-BB%.
The sweeper has been insanely good. The fastball has been more “okay” than good or great, and that should be a little bit of a concern. He has just a 7% HR/FB. So I think he’s been a bit lucky. I don’t think it’s crazy to sell high on him. We have seen a ton of inconsistency and injury from him in the past.
Let’s look at some hot hitters. I’ve been seeing Carlos Narvaez’s name pop up quite a bit lately. He’s a Red Sox catcher who looks like an elite defender, and he’s been hitting the ball as well.
He started very poorly with a .218/.274/.385 line prior to May (.235 xBA, .305 xwOBA). But in May:
He hits the ball hard (107.6 EV90, 14.6% Brl%, 111 max EV). This is probably just a streak of him running into the ball at an unsustainable rate - but he does look like a good target in a two-catcher league, and he’s someone to keep an eye on.
Let’s check on May xwOBA Over Expectation leaders and then wrap this up - I’d like to get a slate preview out for this Memorial Day afternoon slate.
Will Benson +.231
Ezequiel Tovar +.201
Taylor Ward +.148
Kyle Schwarber +.148
Shohei Ohtani +.146
Brandon Lowe +.143
Ben Rice +.137
Rafael Devers +.129
Rowdy Tellez +.120
Marcell Ozuna +.111
Seiya Suzuki +.110
Ketel Marte +.110
Aaron Judge +.100
Drake Baldwin +.099
Cal Raleigh +.098
Nick Kurtz +.094
Nolan Schanuel +.093
Kyle Stowers +.093
Josh Jung +.091
Will Smith +.087
Definitely some interesting names there to look into adding. I wouldn’t do it on Will Benson, by the way. I’ve been down that road before. He is the classic “swing out of your freaking shoes and hope for the best” profile. And that kind of thing will turn into some stretches where he crushes. But it will always kill you in the end.
That said, hold the freaking phone a bit here, he’s making more contact this year:
It’s 45 PAs - which is not enough to sway me, but okay, it’s not like this success has come with his usual 30%+ K%. We should keep an eye on the guy. He always has tools.
That will do it, let me turn my attention to this beautiful slate of baseball games on another Memorial Day that I am very thankful to be alive for.
Have you ever taken a dive into the Bill James game score and how well it correlates to what you’re looking at? Wonder what Skubal’s start looks like.