MLB Daily Notes - April 12th
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
The Statcast data from yesterday isn’t loaded yet, but there were only five completed games anyways, so I’m not too worried about it today. I am just going to write a bunch of stuff here and then all of the automated reports will return tomorrow.
So, good morning out there! I hope everybody is having as good of a week as Colton Cowser. He hit the first two homers of his big league career last night. I’m going to use this as an opportunity to take a walk through on the MLB & MiLB Stats Dashboard, which paid subscribers have access to. This thing is great, it has data from all levels going back to 2021. First, we can check on Cowser’s 2024 season via the game logs:
He made the team out of camp, but didn’t become a starter until just recent, and you can see that’s he’s taken the opportunity and run with it, going 6/13 with those two dingers and 10 RBI since April 9th. He’s now hitting .458/.462/.917 in these 26 PAs, and he’s even added a steal.
I like to use the “Stats by Level” tab to see the player’s history:
We don’t have anything here from before 2021, but with most minor leaguers that covers it since we didn’t have a minor league season in 2020 and 2019 was five full years ago now. You can see most of Cowser’s career at this point has been in AAA where he has hit .280/.398/.498 with a solid home run rate, but a pretty high K% - and so far he has struggled in the Majors.
The “Hit by Year” tab is useful as well:
You can select your level there, but right now I didn’t put a filter on so it’s just his stats from all levels combined. You can see the home run rate has improved every year, which you like to see since he was just 21 back in 2021. That’s right, he was born in 2000. I’m no old man or anything, but it does feel weird to have ten years on a lot of these Major Leaguers.
I don’t think the Orioles have much of a choice but to play Cowser against all righties for now, but he’ll probably sit a lot when a lefty is on the hill (all five of his starts so far are against righties). He should be rostered in most leagues, but I think he’s probably a bit overrated right now given the youth, the lack of steals, and still the questionable playing time. It won’t take a very long slump for the O’s to start getting someone else in there, they have a ton of options in the outfield.
The only hitter to outdo Cowser yesterday was Bobby Witt Jr., who is having a ridiculous season so far. He’s behind only Mookie Betts in fantasy points scoring, and Betts has the advantage of 13 more PA’s. Witt is hitting .358/.414/.755 with four homers and three steals, and he’s been caught stealing thrice as well so there could be even more steals there, and he’s going to continue to rack those up with his very high 46% attempt rate.
Here’s a HR% vs. SB Attempt% plot from that same dashboard, it compares HR/PA with steal attempt rate (which is steal attempts divided by singles+walks+HBP to isolate those times where the hitter was on first base)
The stud there is clearly Witt Jr., in elite territory in both. Elly and Benson are running a ton with decent home run rates as well, and then you have Mike Trout at the top there creeping out further on the x-axis than we’ve seen in a long time.
Your top 20 hitters in fantasy points scored per plate appearance (using the DraftKings scoring system):
Elly De La Cruz
Spencer Steer
Christian Yelich
Brice Turang
Bobby Witt Jr.
Mookie Betts
Tyler O’Neill
Mike Trout
C.J. Abrams
Marcell Ozuna
Anthony Volpe
Jose Caballero
MJ Melendez
Brandon Marsh
Adolis Garcia
Lourdes Gurriel Jr.
William Contreras
Teoscar Hernandez
Ozzie Albies
Michael Conforto
Steals is a big factor there.
We should highlight how good MJ Melendez has been so far, slashing .325/.426/.675 with three homers, one steal, and a much-improved 17% K%. He’s also walked 15% of the time, so he’s seeing the ball well and making a lot of contact - or maybe just getting really lucky. This is a guy who had an insane minor league résumé
That’s a combined 14.1 PA/HR and .951 OPS in the minor leagues. Things obviously haven’t gone nearly as well in the Majors with the .230 batting average and the league-average home run rate, but it’s not ridiculous to think he could be finally having that breakout season at age 25. He had a 28% K% last year, and while I don’t think the sub-20% K% will stick around for long this year, if he can get that down to 24-25% that’s a big deal with the amount of raw power he has. He should be owned in deeper leagues for sure, and could hit himself into standard league lineups soon.
Here’s your standard data for yesterday’s SPs:
I really don’t like to analyze pitcher performances without the more advanced numbers, but we do have those on the live game tracker so I guess I can make this work.
Ranger Suarez had a big night with a rare high strikeout night and six scoreless innings to give the Pirates their second-straight loss (very sad), but you could argue that Jared Jones was once again the best SP. 15 more whiffs, a beautiful 8:0 K:BB, and another elite ball rate.
It’s really hard to post a SwStr% above 15% and a Ball% below 32% at the same time (that’s only happened in 8% of the MLB starts this year), and Jones has done that all three times out now. That means you’re throwing hittable pitches (in terms of locations at least) but still getting whiffs. What more could you want from a pitcher? It allows you to be super efficient without the risk of allowing a bunch of balls in play.
Here’s the top five starts by SwStr% that also featured a Ball% below 32%:
So this was start was a step backward for Jones as he lost about eight points on the SwStr%, but a 17% SwStr% is still completely elite. It’s exciting stuff, man.
Grayson Rodriguez struggled again earning strikes at just 45.7%. But even when he’s not pitching his best, he’s still been really hard to score runs on. He has a 2.24 ERA in his last 14 starts dating back to last year with a 25% K% and a 6.5% BB%. The 25% K% is shy of elite, but he’s at 28% so far this year, so there are no legitimate complains about the guy right now. Maybe he’ll be more “very good” than “ace”, but you’ll take that, he wasn’t even drafted a fantasy SP1.
Both of these names show up in the top 12 for K-BB% on the year when requiring at least three starts:
Jones and Crochet are running away with it right now, which is wild since neither guy was on many people’s radar during drafts. I hope you got your hands on both guys.
Sorry about the missing reports and whatnot, I just don’t feel like waiting until 10 or 11 o’clock to get everything in here when there was such limited action yesterday.
No afternoon games today, which means we have all 30 teams in action after 6:30pm eastern, which is my favorite. One more reminder about the DraftKings league we have rolling, daily $5 contests in there, no commitment or anything needed. Join here, I’m trying to grow it just a bit more.
Only thing below the paywall today is the resource links.
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