MLB Daily Notes - April 19th
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
A subscriber asked me to explain the Automated Hitter Ranks. I kind of forgot I even had that going, so let me explain that. They look like this currently:
I’m not going to lie to you and say that everything I do here is great or super useful. It’s really hard to rank hitters together for fantasy purposes because there are various, unconnected ways to be a good fantasy player. You can hit a bunch of homers, you can hit for a high batting average, or you can steal a lot of bases. There’s not much correlation between those three things, so it becomes hard to compare different hitters together for ranking purposes.
So what I did here was grade hitters by three criteria: power, steals, and “bat skills” which basically means contact ability (the frequency and quality of contact).
Power relies mostly on barrels and pulling fly balls, steals is looking a lot at attempt rates and some speed stuff, and then the “bat skill” one is about having a high contact rate and a higher line drive rate (trying to isolate batting average there).
So I rank all players above a PA qualification threshold and then put those three together to get a final rank.
How should you use them? I would say that if you don’t use them, you’re fine. They aren’t the most useful thing in the world, it’s more just a for-fun thing. The one way it is useful is just to highlight names that might be worth a closer look. Right now we see Jesse Winker up at in the top 20, so at that point you could wonder what’s going on there and go check him out to see that he’s posting an 11.6% Brl% with a 79% Contact% and two steals, which means he’s been a good fantasy player so far so that’s interesting. The link to the ranks is in the Resource Glossary if you want to check that out.
Very little happened in baseball yesterday as most teams got the day off. Ryan Pepiot was the pitcher of note witha nice 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 7 K, 3 BB line. Here’s the updated arsenal numbers:
That’s a huge SwStr%, but he doesn’t have the command to get him into ace territory at this moment. The Stuff+ from his first three starts was at 111, and the Location+ was at 103, so that’s actually pretty great. If you’re wondering if Location+ correlates with BB%, I can help with that:
There is definitely a relationship there. Last year, Pepiot was at a 104.4 Location+ and a 3.1% BB%, but that was a pretty small sample size. His career walk rate in the Majors is above 9%, so that’s not a good sign. Anyways, what are you gonna do? It seems like Pepiot is good, I just think there will be some bumps along the path.
Griffin Canning also had a better outing. It wasn’t quite good (5.1 IP, 4 H, 2 ER, 4 K, 1 BB), but the velocity was up and he finally got some whiffs (14.3% SwStr%):
But yeah, still a sub-par Strike%, so he’s not good, which is one of the saddest things that has happened in 2024, baseball-related or not.
It was a real rough debut for Jack Leiter:
As a Pirate fan in 2024, I have no time or respect for prospect pitchers that don’t throw 101 miles per hour with a 92 mile per hour slider.
Leiter did not command his pitches well at all with a very bad 42% Strike%. That was the 141st-worst Strike% of the season for starters (out of 560 total starts sampled). How did I know that? Because I have this resource that gives you numbers for each individual start all season long. I know my Google Sheets are all over the place and sometimes confusing and hard to find sometimes, but hey I’m one guy just throwing stuff at the wall here. Someday, I think I’ll clean this up and get things on a new website where everything works better. But most of these resources are intended just for my own writing-aid.
I like using this one to do some queries, like this one, where I look for starts with
Strike% above 55%
No walks
Or something like
Highest Ball% in starts with 70+ pitches
The file already has 560 rows as stated above, and that will grow to 4,800+ by the end of the season, so you have to know how to filter to get any good use out of it (or #learntocode), but there it is. It’s free and updated daily.
We have 3-5 starts for AAA pitchers done now as well, so we can look at some standouts there. We’re going to need some SP help this summer with all of these injuries. You should pick up Paul Skenes at this point if he’s available. It’s pretty clear to me that he’s only 2-3 weeks away from being in the Majors, and he’s going to be good.
The SwStr% is 21% and the Strike% is 56.2%. He hasn’t given up a run in 12.2 innings and has struck out 57% of hitters he’s faced. Only Reed Garrett (Mets reliever) has a 50%+ K% in 10+ innings.
He’s not learning anything facing AAA hitters, this is all about the Pirates getting the extra year of control and being very careful with his workload.
It’s too bad that the Pirates finally get their super-ace in the days of being ridiculously careful with pitchers. Between college and the pro’s last year, he threw 130 innings. If the year were 2010 or something, he’d be ready to rip 160 innings without much question. But whatever, I understand the patience and the kid gloves and all of that. I’m not going to throw a fit about it.
The other guy really dropping deuces on people in AAA is the Mets’ Christian Scott.
14.1 IP, 46.4% K%, 5.4% BB%
He’s given up three dingers though so the ERA is at 3.77. I would think he’ll be in the Majors pretty soon. He didn’t even reach 90 innings last year, so there’s a bit of a concern on that front, and his SwStr% isn’t quite like unbelievably good:
But the advantage Scott seems to have is elite command. A 33.8% Ball% is really impressive and now he’s at a career 5.7% BB% in 31 starts, which would be elite in the Majors but is even MORE elite in the minors where walk rates are high. Be ready to jump on him when he gets the call, or just go ahead and get ahead of it right now if you have a free stash spot.
Cade Povich is the last guy I’ll mention. He’s an Orioles prospect, and there’s an open rotation spot there now with Tyler Wells hitting the IL. Although Kyle Bradish is on a rehab assignment already, so it won’t be long before he takes that spot. But Povich is too much for AAA hitters right now:
3 GS, 16.1 IP, 42.1% K%, 8.8% BB%, 1 HR
Sup with this 14.3% SwStr% though? That’s kind of lame. And ew the fastball velocity.
His fastball is slower than Paul Skenes’ changeup, and I’m not even kidding, Skenes takes that one 92.8 to 92.0.
But I can’t deny a K-BB% above 30%. If all three of these guys got promoted today, the order is clearly
Skenes
Scott
Povich
And I probably wouldn’t even touch Povich in a standard league, but there you go - three names to monitor.
I think that’s probably all I have to say. Huge slate tonight with everybody back in action. Join the DraftKings league here if you want to play a $5 contest with us tonight (no commitments, no extra fees or anything like that).
And the podcast is ripping this week with two good episodes out, check that out on Spotify or Apple (click those links or search “MLB Data Warehouse”).
Pitcher Reports
Algo SP Ranks - Yesterday
1. Brennan Bernardino
2. Ryan Pepiot
3. Griffin Canning
4. Carlos Carrasco
5. Jack Leiter
6. Logan Webb
7. Kenta Maeda
8. Ryne Nelson
Fantasy Points Leaders - Yesterday
1. Logan Webb (vs. ARI): 27.95 Points
2. Ryan Pepiot (vs. LAA): 25.9 Points
3. Carlos Carrasco (vs. BOS): 18.56 Points
4. Griffin Canning (vs. TB): 12.99 Points
5. Logan Allen - 663531 (vs. SF): 12.11 Points
6. Jose Leclerc (vs. DET): 9.05 Points
7. Ryan Walker (vs. ARI): 8.25 Points
8. Brennan Bernardino (vs. CLE): 7.9 Points
9. Luis Garcia - 472610 (vs. TB): 7.76 Points
10. Jose Urena (vs. DET): 6.95 Points
Whiffs Leaders - Yesterday
1. Ryan Pepiot (TB): 17 Whiffs (92 Pitches)
2. Carlos Carrasco (CLE): 12 Whiffs (89 Pitches)
3. Griffin Canning (LAA): 12 Whiffs (84 Pitches)
4. Jack Leiter (TEX): 9 Whiffs (85 Pitches)
5. Logan Webb (SF): 8 Whiffs (102 Pitches)
6. Logan Allen (ARI): 6 Whiffs (58 Pitches)
7. Justin Slaten (BOS): 5 Whiffs (24 Pitches)
8. Kenta Maeda (DET): 5 Whiffs (63 Pitches)
9. Andrew Chafin (DET): 4 Whiffs (21 Pitches)
10. Ryan Walker (SF): 4 Whiffs (13 Pitches)
Strike% Leaders - Yesterday
1. Logan Allen (ARI): 48.3 Strike%, 27.6 Ball%
2. Logan Webb (SF): 48.0 Strike%, 35.3 Ball%
3. Ryan Pepiot (TB): 46.7 Strike%, 39.1 Ball%
4. Griffin Canning (LAA): 46.4 Strike%, 34.5 Ball%
5. Carlos Carrasco (CLE): 42.7 Strike%, 37.1 Ball%
6. Jack Leiter (TEX): 42.4 Strike%, 38.8 Ball%
7. Cooper Criswell (BOS): 40.0 Strike%, 40.0 Ball%
8. Kenta Maeda (DET): 34.9 Strike%, 44.4 Ball%
Pitches/Out (POUT) Leaders - Yesterday
1. Logan Allen: 58 Pitches, 14 Outs, 4.14 POUT
2. Logan Webb: 102 Pitches, 20 Outs, 5.1 POUT
3. Ryan Pepiot: 92 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.11 POUT
4. Carlos Carrasco: 89 Pitches, 17 Outs, 5.24 POUT
5. Griffin Canning: 84 Pitches, 16 Outs, 5.25 POUT
6. Jack Leiter: 85 Pitches, 11 Outs, 7.73 POUT
7. Kenta Maeda: 63 Pitches, 8 Outs, 7.88 POUT
8. Cooper Criswell: 55 Pitches, 6 Outs, 9.17 POUT
Velo Changes - Yesterday
Kenta Maeda's FF velo (18 pitches) DOWN -1.7mph to 89.0
Carlos Carrasco's FF velo (19 pitches) DOWN -1.8mph to 90.6
Carlos Carrasco's SI velo (16 pitches) DOWN -1.9mph to 89.4
Logan Allen's SL velo (14 pitches) DOWN -1.9mph to 80.9
Logan Allen's CH velo (16 pitches) DOWN -3.2mph to 79.3
Pitch Mix Changes - Yesterday
Logan Allen's SL usage (24.1%) up 20.5 points
Logan Allen's SI usage (22.4%) up 21.8 points
Logan Webb's ST usage (20.6%) up 19.0 points
Ryan Pepiot's SL usage (41.3%) up 21.7 points
CSW% Leaders - Last 3 Weeks
Jared Jones - 88 TBF, 38.3% CSW%
Jack Flaherty - 79 TBF, 36.7% CSW%
Garrett Crochet - 65 TBF, 35.1% CSW%
Tyler Glasnow - 73 TBF, 34.4% CSW%
Tanner Houck - 105 TBF, 34.0% CSW%
Joe Ryan - 70 TBF, 33.7% CSW%
Chris Sale - 71 TBF, 33.5% CSW%
Max Meyer - 65 TBF, 33.2% CSW%
Nathan Eovaldi - 73 TBF, 33.0% CSW%
MacKenzie Gore - 65 TBF, 32.9% CSW%
K% Leaders - Last 3 Weeks
Freddy Peralta - 66 TBF, 39.4% K%
Jared Jones - 88 TBF, 36.4% K%
Tyler Glasnow - 73 TBF, 35.6% K%
MacKenzie Gore - 65 TBF, 35.4% K%
Garrett Crochet - 65 TBF, 35.4% K%
Reid Detmers - 86 TBF, 34.9% K%
Joe Ryan - 70 TBF, 34.3% K%
Zac Gallen - 68 TBF, 33.8% K%
Yusei Kikuchi - 88 TBF, 33.0% K%
Hunter Greene - 92 TBF, 32.6% K%
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