MLB Daily Notes - May 9
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!
MLB DW PITCH GRADES ARE BACK
On the pitcher profile tab, you’ll see “Grade” next to each pitch type. Read about that here:
Long story short, it’s a measure of pitch performance (using SwStr%, Ball%, xwOBA, etc.) at the individual pitch level where 100 = average. Ignore the Grand Total row. The way I do it, for the technical bros, is I calculate these pitch grades in Python separately, and then merge the single number into the larger dataframe as a left join. So that value says the same thing for every iteration of the pitch. It doesn’t calculate at the individual pitch level. So when I put it into Tableau, I use a “max” function. So what you see in the very top row is the max of the below, which is just the number on the guy’s best pitch.
Here’s Foster Griffin:
120 would be really good, anything below 90 is very bad.
Well, it was a nice day in Cleveland right until they started playing baseball. They played wet basically the whole game, so it was a pretty miserable experience for us. We left in like the fourth inning to try to find something else to do. We got to see Prielipp and Messick throwing before the game up close by the bullpen. Which was pretty wicked to see. These guys are large and they throw that ball really freaking hard. So that was the best part.
But let’s look at what happened yesterday.
Jacob Misiorowski: 6 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 11 SO, 2 BB
He averaged 101.1 on his fastball.
16 whiffs, a .211 xwOBA. He’s not given up a homer since April 14th.
That was the hardest average on a fastball (25 fastballs thrown minimum) from in an outing in the last ten years, outdoing himself from his last start.
Misiorowski is a clearly a stud, and maybe a top 10 arm if we were drafting today?
Dylan Cease - 7 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 10 SO, 0 BB
Drops his BB% to 9.4%. He’s at a 25% K-BB% now with a 49% GB%. He’s a new and improved pitcher this year, and he’s made the changes wtihout giving up any of the strikeout ability.
Michael McGreevy - 6.0IP 1H 0ER 0R 9K 2BB
Makes no sense. I keep telling people to pick on him in DFS / betting, and he keeps putting up numbers. The Padres are a disgrace for this. Allowing this guy 17 whiffs and nine strikeouts.
Ben Brown - 4.0IP 0H 0ER 0R 3K 1BB
46 pitches, so he’s working his way up to be at least a bulk guy if not a starter. Boyd might be back in June, so I guess they might not feel like they absolutely need Brown to become a starter.
But I’d keep going with it if I were them. This isn’t the same guy who got thumped last year.
This is a nice usage spread on the curve + four-seamer + sinker. So guys can’t just sit on the four-seamer, specifically when they know a curve isn’t coming. And the curve is vicious with a 107 Stuff+ grade and a 19.7% SwStr% on the year.
Jesus Luzardo - 3.0IP 6H 6ER 6R 6K 3BB
One of those starts! The Rockies beat the Phillies in extra innings, and it was largely thanks to Luzardo. It’s tough to give up as many runs as hits, though. Probably some bad luck.
The underlying numbers are almost always good, and they were last night.
→ 16.8% SwStr%
→ 52.6% Strike%
→ 37.9% Ball%
But there’s more to pitching than strike-earning. You’ve gotta get the ball hit at dudes, and preferably you want to not have it hit very hard. But sometimes, it doesn’t get hit often or hard, and you still give up some runs because of bad timing.
Just keep on starting Luzardo. He’s as likely as anybody to dominate next time.
Chris Sale - 7.0IP 5H 2ER 3R 7K 0BB
Nobody has much of a chance against the great Chris Sale of May. He mowed down the Dodgers, albeit in a losing effort. He certainly out-pitched Emmet Sheehan:
Emmet Sheehan - 4.67IP 6H 1ER 1R 7K 1BB
But the Dodgers scored the runs. Sheehan continues have no trouble with the strikeout. He’s at a 28% K%. His walk rate is awesome too at 6.6%. But he’s got a 4.79 ERA with a 1.35 WHIP. A .348 BABIP and 27% HR/FB isn’t helping. He’s been pretty unlucky and he’s looking like a guy who could dominating at any time (2.72 JA SIERA, 3.16 JA ERA).
Foster Griffin - 7.0IP 4H 1ER 2R 9K 1BB
He kept his good season rolling. 17 whiffs, a 16.5% SwStr%.
Just keeps mixing it up and fooling guys. This is a legitimate way to go about it in the bigs. Most guys don’t have more than five pitches, but he’s out here throwing seven pitches with pretty significant usage. No pitch is great, but as a unit they’re working nicely. He has a 2.12 ERA with a 1.03 WHIP, but a 14.2% K-BB%.
Kyle Bradish - 7.0IP 5H 3ER 3R 10K 1BB
There it was! 15 whiffs, a 15.6% SwStr%, the nice 10:1 K:BB. The slider really got cooking with a 22% SwStr%.
You can see the grades there. The slider has been good (not great), the curveball has been great, but teh sinker just has nothing going for it. But obviously it’s quite good to see him have a start like this with the slider seemingly improving a bit. I still don’t really believe he has any sort of ace upside, but maybe we’ll see a better version of Bradish from here on.
Robby Snelling - 5.0IP 5H 3ER 3R 2K 4BB
He threw 86 pitches with a decent 14% SwStr%. But the command was not there, and that’s something he’s missed in the minors. Four walks yesterday, and a 14% BB% this year.
Good to see the whiffs coming on the curve and changeup. I guess his fastball will be the x-factor. We’ll see how well it works against big leaguers. But overall, a fine debut. If you started him yesterday, just keep going with it.
Connelly Early - 7.0IP 4H 0ER 0R 8K 1BB
A breakout start for Early! This is the kind of stuff we expected. He flipped six different pitches up there.
No whiffs on the sinker, but a 50% GB% and no damage allowed on it. And then the changeup was sick and he kept everybody off balance with all of those different pitches and the good command.