MLB Daily Notes - April 25th
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
It’s victory lap season for Elly De La Cruz truthers. And it’s hard to blame them! He is now seconds to only Mookie Betts in fantasy points scored this year, and he’s done it in
.313/.412/.651, 1.063 OPS, 32% K%, 13.4% BB%, 7 HR, 15 SB
Fifteen steals is outrageous. That’s an 80+ steal pace. It’s kind of amazing to me that he’s even ended up on first base that many times. Let’s break it down for funsies.
97 PA
31 K
13 BB
26 H
13 1B
5 2B
1 3B
7 HR
He has put 52 balls in plays:
GB: 28
LD: 13
FB: 10
Popup: 1
He has a .422 BABIP, here’s how that’s broken down by batted ball type (with the league BABIP in each category given in parenthesis)
GB: .321 (.244)
LD: .818 (.626)
FB: .200 (.115)
(BABIP excludes home runs, remember, so his five fly ball home run do not factor into that calculation)
You could say he’s over-performing in BABIP, and certainly he is. No matter the skills, he will not sustain a .422 BABIP. That’s not to say he can’t post a .360 or .370 BABIP this year. He’s also reached based on errors three times and one of those turned into a steal.
There’s regression coming for Elly whether you want to hear it or not, but the unfortunate fact for Elly and Reds haters is that a regressed 2024 Elly De La Cruz is still very likely a top 10 fantasy player. He will have some dud weeks where he strikes out at a 40% clip and hits everything onto the ground and doesn’t get the high BABIP, but he’ll also have plenty of weeks where he beats fantasy teams pretty much all by himself.
If you have him, and someone will give you Julio Rodriguez for him or something like that, I would do that, but by no means am I saying sell high on Elly
What I do find interesting is the takes out there saying “don’t bet on projections, bet on TOOLS”. The point being that Elly didn’t project all that well but he had the TOOLS to obviously crush his projection. And that was true in some sense, even projection bro’s like myself submitted to the fact that range of possible outcomes was extremely wide for Elly.
But we have seen two other young guys with elite tools really struggling early on. We’ve heard the same thing “bet on tools rather than projections” with these two, and in those cases that sentiment has been wrong. I’m talking about Oneil Cruz and Jordan Walker.
I was told that Jordan Walker and Oneil Cruz couldn’t possibly suck for long because they are so #young and #talented. And maybe that’s true, maybe it’s just a matter of what “for long” means. Honestly, the numbers on Walker don’t even seem that bad, but maybe they tell a rosier tale than they seem. He had not homered yet and sits with a .228 xBA and .370 xSLG. Not impacting the ball well at all despite the decent barrel rate.
Would seem to me that it’s a better idea to let him continue to work it out in the Majors. The numbers here to suggest that he could at least be a guy in the short term that wouldn’t absolutely derail the team, but I’m also not going to be a douche and sit here in my basement acting like I know better than the Cardinals front office.
We are far enough into the season where the hitter “improvers” section has started working again. Here’s what it looks like today:
What this does is take the last 30 days and get some stats, and then compare those stats for each player with what they had done prior in their career (2022-2023 in this case, I believe). And then it will mark the biggest improvers in
xwOBA
Contact%
Brl%
K%
So we see three pretty interesting names at the top of the contact improvers there, but I’ve already talked about them all in a different post. It seems like Suwinski has added contact at the expense of some power, because he has a much lower 6.3% Brl% and .292 xwOBA than what we saw last year (15.7% Brl%, .339 xwOBA). His fly ball rate has also bottomed out from 36% last year to 21% so far this year. He has been a different guy in the first month, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. Not all contact gains are good.
It’s wild to see Shohei Ohtani improving with the barrel rate this year. There didn’t seem to be much room to go up for him, and especially after the elbow procedure. But he sits with a 24.4% Brl% on a super low 17% K%, he’s taking both categories to a new level, it’s going to be a ridiculous, ridiculous season for the big man. You almost start to wonder if the Dodgers might consider just scrapping the pitching thing to make sure he’s in their lineup as often as possible over the next 10 years. But that’s silly, just the fact that he does both things brings all kinds of attention and therefore revenue their way - it would be a bad decision to ditch that, at least right now. I do think he’ll finish his career as just a hitter though.
Second in the league in barrel rate right now (80 PA minimum) by the way is Riley Greene at 20.3%. He has a decent 25.5% K% as well, so the balls are flying off Greene’s bat - good time to buy on him right now if the Greene owner hasn’t realized exactly how good he’s been given his more cool .244/.387/.488 slash line (okay that’s pretty good, he’s really ramped things up in the last week so I guess it’s probably too late).
I have brought back the Speed Tracking Sheet.
So we have sprint speed and home to first. Here’s some explanations on those from the horse’s mouth (the baseball savant leaderboard):
Sprint Speed is Statcast’s foot speed metric, defined as “feet per second in a player’s fastest one-second window” on individual plays. For a player’s seasonal average, the following two types of plays currently qualify for inclusion in Sprint Speed. The best of these runs, approximately two-thirds, are averaged for a player’s seasonal average.
* Runs of two bases or more on non-homers, excluding being a runner on second base when an extra base hit happens
* Home to first on “topped” or “weakly hit” balls.The Major League average on a "competitive" play is 27 ft/sec, and the competitive range is roughly from 23 ft/sec (poor) to 30 ft/sec (elite). A Bolt is any run above 30ft/sec. A player must have at least 10 competitive runs to qualify for this leaderboard. Read more about how Sprint Speed works here.
I was not aware that this is filtered on “topped” or “weakly hit” balls, that’s pretty smart. They do take an average of each individual sprint to first, but they take the highest one-second clip from each run, and they focus just on those batted balls where the hitter has to really be hauling ass (balls that are hit on the ground and stay in the infield). So that’s cool
There are a lot of players that don’t have a home to first reading yet, and that must be because they don’t have 10 events that qualify for measurement. This will be useful to spot guy with more or less foot speed, which matters quite a bit for BABIP and for steals. Your speed gainers:
This doesn’t necessarily mean they’re faster this year, it could still be a sample size thing. Maybe they didn’t play much last year and the balls they did hit didn’t require maxing out on their sprint, or maybe they were just dogging it last year (what up Rendon), I don’t know - lots of explanations for this stuff, but seeing the +2.6 on Winker there is wild.
Speed decliners:
The slow get slower. Lots of old guys and catchers here. Makes sense.
Some select names (30+ steals last year plus a few other guys I was interested in seeing):
With those 30+ year old base stealers you start to worry about them losing a step, and we see slight declines (so far?) with Lindor and Turner, but that shouldn’t be a big deal I don’t think.
I myself am over the [athletic] hill at 33. Yesterday I tested out how fast I could run a mile after I lifted some weights. In the past, with a one-mile sprint, I’ve been able to pretty comfortably get under 6:30, but yesterday I came in at 6:59. That’s still pretty impressive if I do say so myself, shout out to me. My health goal is to not lose a game of one-on-one hoops with either of my sons until they’re at least 18. If they can’t beat their dad in basketball until they can legally buy cigs, I’ll be happy. And maybe we’ll all take up smoking the day that happens.
I’m still not super confident on how to intepret the speed data above, so I’ll hold back from making any declarations about it. But you have access to the numbers now, it will be updated daily.
It is 9:30 am and I haven’t mentioned any SPs yet. I should probably get moving here, slow start to the day.
Reynaldo Lopez took care of the Marlins, which is very good to see, especially for ME since I just traded for him (what up Nick!)
7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 6 K, 2 BB, 22% SwStr%, 32.9% Ball%
That’s elite stuff, although he hadn’t been nearly that good before yesterday, and the Marlins are probably the third-best matchup in the league right now.
The season numbers I would call “good” rather than great. The Strike% and Ball% are right at the league average, but he gets a bump because of the higher SwStr% and GB%. The four-seam usage is a little concerning, considering it doesn’t appear to be a fantastic fastball (98 Stuff+, 9.4% SwStr%), but the command of it has been great so far and it sets up his very good slider and curveball.
The bigger concern would be that he threw 65 innings in 2022 and 66 innings in 2023. Can you really expect him to hold up like this while doubling his innings? Maybe… crazier things have happened, but I would be happy to call Reynaldo a sell-high if you can find a sucker. I don’t think I’ll be able to find a sucker in my home league, especially since they’re all reading this right now (what up guys!), so I’ll just ride it out.
Matt Waldron had a Coors Heavy last night, that’s my new term that I just came up with right now for a good start in Coors Field.
6 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 5 K, 3 BB, 1 HR, 16.5% SwStr%
He was a little wild with the walks there and the 36.3% Ball%. He’s now at a 20.4% K% and 8.8% BB% on the year, so that’s not interesting. But he throws a knuckleball so that’s pretty cool.
He’s a pitcher to watch. And by watch I just mean watch his starts to see the knuckleball, because knuckleballs are cool - don’t add him onto your fantasy team.
Jack Flaherty had a discouraging start, but it was also encouraging if you’re smart.
97 pitches, 5 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, 6 K, 0 BB, 15.5% SwStr%, 33% Ball%
His Ball% by start this year:
3/31: 34.5%
4/7: 34.0%
4/14: 33.0%
4/19: 35.1%
4/24: 33%
That is better than average every single time, which is incredible to see. We can say for sure that he has better command this year than in the past, and that’s a big deal given that he’s generated at least a 14.9% SwStr% every start as well. I would be trying to buy him right now, since he’s sitting with a pretty bad 4.91 ERA.
That reminds me that I came up with this new dashboard yesterday that shows ERA vs. SIERA and throws in xERA as well. This is pretty good way to spot under or over performing SPs.
xERA is much different than SIERA even though it seems to be the same, it’s calculated based on batted balls and other Statcast data, while SIERA just uses more basic inputs. But despite the complexity, SIERA is still more predictive of future ERA than xERA, I believe. So I focus on SIERA. Flaherty sits with a 2.65 SIERA and that 4.91 ERA, making him 12th-unluckiest SP here.
The full top 12:
Typically the guys at the top of this list will be guys that have just gotten pummeled and aren’t very good at all, that’s the case with Freeland and Hendricks. I don’t think it’s really possible to get to a SIERA above 8, so you’ll see these super high ERA guys looking much better, and that makes sense because it’s not like any professional pitcher can sustain an ERA above 10 for very long. But really we want to look for pitchers with a SIERA below 4.00 that have ERA’s much higher than that to really spot our “buy lows”. And Flaherty is one of them.
One more before I hang it up here - Garrett Crochet. Another bad outing and that’s three straight bad ones in the box score:
4 IP, 7 H, 5 ER, 6 K, 2 BB, 9.2% SwStr%, 34.5% Ball%
He is also one of these bad luck ERA guys with a 2.71 SIERA and a 6.37 ERA now, but his SwStr% has been trending the wrong direction big time
12.6%, 19.4%, 19.5%, 16.3%, 13.3%, 9.2%
I don’t know if I’d say drop him quite yet, but I’d probably only give him one more bad outing. The four-seam velo has calmed down from early on, which makes sense. He was a reliever last year, remember, so he had to learn to not go max effort all the time as a starter now.
He added some velo back yesterday but the results were the worst of the seasno with the 20% CSW% and 6.7% SwStr%. I think this is just the case of a reliever trying to figure out how to be a starter, and it’s not an easy thing to do. I call Reynaldo Lopez a sell-high for the same reason, and I called Garrett Crochet a sell-high before the wheels fell off. So that’s good news for me (I look smart) but also bad news for me since I’m holding onto Reynaldo.
Anyways, the 32% K% and and 6.4% BB% are still great numbers, and we can’t ignore them, so let’s just keep a close eye on the SwStr% and K-BB% as we go with Crochet. His projected next matchup is with the Twins, the same team that just put that bad start on him, but I’d probably start him again #yolo.
Time for a work meeting… I also intend to get the weekly projections rolling today. I have some ideas to get it work well… it could be a huge value-add here. Keep an eye out for that. Peace!
Pitcher Reports
Algo SP Ranks - Yesterday
1. Ryan Walker
2. Reynaldo Lopez
3. Joe Ryan
4. Dean Kremer
5. Jack Flaherty
6. Matt Waldron
7. Cooper Criswell
8. Kyle Gibson
9. Spencer Arrighetti
10. Nick Lodolo
11. Jon Gray
12. Josh Fleming
13. Sean Manaea
14. Jordan Montgomery
15. Joe Boyle
16. Landon Knack
17. Tyler Anderson
18. Jake Irvin
19. Garrett Crochet
20. Spencer Turnbull
21. Clarke Schmidt
22. Jameson Taillon
23. Sixto Sanchez
24. Shawn Armstrong
25. Bryce Miller
26. Ty Blach
27. Yariel Rodriguez
28. Carlos Carrasco
29. Alec Marsh
30. Bryse Wilson
Fantasy Points Leaders - Yesterday
1. Dean Kremer (vs. LAA): 29.59 Points
2. Joe Ryan (vs. CWS): 24.5 Points
3. Kyle Gibson (vs. ARI): 23.3 Points
4. Reynaldo Lopez (vs. MIA): 22.75 Points
5. Spencer Turnbull (vs. CIN): 21.65 Points
6. Matt Waldron (vs. COL): 21.3 Points
7. Landon Knack (vs. WSH): 19.9 Points
8. Cooper Criswell (vs. CLE): 19.45 Points
9. Clarke Schmidt (vs. OAK): 18.39 Points
10. Sean Manaea (vs. SF): 17.71 Points
Whiffs Leaders - Yesterday
1. Joe Ryan (MIN): 19 Whiffs (92 Pitches)
2. Dean Kremer (BAL): 18 Whiffs (101 Pitches)
3. Reynaldo Lopez (ATL): 18 Whiffs (82 Pitches)
4. Nick Lodolo (CIN): 16 Whiffs (98 Pitches)
5. Matt Waldron (SD): 15 Whiffs (91 Pitches)
6. Jack Flaherty (DET): 15 Whiffs (97 Pitches)
7. Kyle Gibson (STL): 14 Whiffs (88 Pitches)
8. Tyler Anderson (LAA): 14 Whiffs (105 Pitches)
9. Spencer Arrighetti (HOU): 13 Whiffs (90 Pitches)
10. Sean Manaea (NYM): 12 Whiffs (101 Pitches)
Strike% Leaders - Yesterday
1. Dean Kremer (BAL): 56.4 Strike%, 34.7 Ball%
2. Spencer Arrighetti (HOU): 52.2 Strike%, 35.6 Ball%
3. Jon Gray (TEX): 52.2 Strike%, 32.6 Ball%
4. Garrett Crochet (CWS): 51.7 Strike%, 34.5 Ball%
5. Jack Flaherty (DET): 51.5 Strike%, 33.0 Ball%
6. Sixto Sanchez (MIA): 50.8 Strike%, 35.6 Ball%
7. Joe Boyle (OAK): 50.6 Strike%, 41.2 Ball%
8. Joe Ryan (MIN): 50.0 Strike%, 34.8 Ball%
9. Clarke Schmidt (NYY): 48.9 Strike%, 37.0 Ball%
10. Tyler Alexander (TB): 48.2 Strike%, 32.1 Ball%
11. Reynaldo Lopez (ATL): 47.6 Strike%, 32.9 Ball%
12. Cooper Criswell (BOS): 47.2 Strike%, 33.3 Ball%
13. Bryce Miller (SEA): 47.0 Strike%, 41.0 Ball%
14. Luis L. Ortiz (PIT): 46.6 Strike%, 41.4 Ball%
15. Sean Manaea (NYM): 46.5 Strike%, 42.6 Ball%
Pitches/Out (POUT) Leaders - Yesterday
1. Reynaldo Lopez: 82 Pitches, 21 Outs, 3.9 POUT
2. Jordan Montgomery: 87 Pitches, 21 Outs, 4.14 POUT
3. Tyler Alexander: 56 Pitches, 12 Outs, 4.67 POUT
4. Cooper Criswell: 72 Pitches, 15 Outs, 4.8 POUT
5. Kyle Gibson: 88 Pitches, 18 Outs, 4.89 POUT
6. Matt Waldron: 91 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.06 POUT
7. Ty Blach: 76 Pitches, 15 Outs, 5.07 POUT
8. Joe Ryan: 92 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.11 POUT
9. Alec Marsh: 67 Pitches, 13 Outs, 5.15 POUT
10. Landon Knack: 94 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.22 POUT
Velo Changes - Yesterday
Joe Ryan's FS velo (19 pitches) UP 4.4mph to 88.9
Sixto Sanchez's CH velo (10 pitches) UP 3.7mph to 89.2
Sixto Sanchez's SL velo (22 pitches) UP 2.8mph to 85.8
Joe Ryan's ST velo (11 pitches) UP 2.4mph to 82.1
Alec Marsh's CU velo (11 pitches) UP 2.3mph to 84.0
Joe Ryan's FF velo (56 pitches) UP 1.9mph to 94.3
Jon Gray's SL velo (53 pitches) UP 1.5mph to 89.6
Matt Waldron's FF velo (19 pitches) DOWN -1.5mph to 89.6
Carlos Carrasco's SL velo (24 pitches) DOWN -1.5mph to 82.4
Yariel Rodriguez's FF velo (31 pitches) DOWN -1.5mph to 92.9
Luis L. Ortiz's FF velo (12 pitches) DOWN -1.6mph to 94.5
Spencer Turnbull's FF velo (38 pitches) DOWN -1.6mph to 90.7
Matt Waldron's SI velo (11 pitches) DOWN -1.6mph to 89.3
Luis L. Ortiz's SI velo (19 pitches) DOWN -1.7mph to 93.9
Jameson Taillon's FC velo (22 pitches) DOWN -1.7mph to 86.8
Carlos Carrasco's FF velo (18 pitches) DOWN -1.7mph to 90.6
Jordan Montgomery's SI velo (42 pitches) DOWN -1.8mph to 91.4
Dean Kremer's FF velo (47 pitches) DOWN -1.9mph to 92.6
Tyler Alexander's FC velo (21 pitches) DOWN -2.0mph to 83.7
Jordan Montgomery's CU velo (27 pitches) DOWN -2.0mph to 78.4
Dean Kremer's FC velo (29 pitches) DOWN -2.2mph to 86.3
Reynaldo Lopez's FF velo (40 pitches) DOWN -2.3mph to 95.3
Reynaldo Lopez's SL velo (36 pitches) DOWN -2.7mph to 84.4
Pitch Mix Changes - Yesterday
Alec Marsh's SI usage (22.4%) up 13.1 points
Bryce Miller's FS usage (25.3%) up 21.5 points
Bryce Miller's SI usage (20.5%) up 10.3 points
Cooper Criswell's FC usage (34.7%) up 11.0 points
Jake Irvin's FC usage (18.4%) up 16.3 points
Jon Gray's SL usage (57.6%) up 20.0 points
Matt Waldron's ST usage (26.4%) up 18.2 points
Reynaldo Lopez's SL usage (43.9%) up 14.5 points
Sean Manaea's SI usage (37.6%) up 34.1 points
Sean Manaea's FC usage (18.8%) up 16.2 points
Spencer Arrighetti's FF usage (64.4%) up 15.6 points
Spencer Turnbull's ST usage (25.8%) up 13.0 points
Tyler Alexander's ST usage (19.6%) up 13.3 points
Pitch Mix Changes - Last 3 Starts
Logan Webb Sweeper: +19.0%
Garrett Crochet Slider: -14.6%
CSW% Leaders - Last 3 Weeks
Jared Jones - 89 TBF, 39.0% CSW%
Yoshinobu Yamamoto - 67 TBF, 37.4% CSW%
Jack Flaherty - 101 TBF, 36.6% CSW%
Tyler Glasnow - 78 TBF, 35.7% CSW%
Chris Sale - 76 TBF, 33.8% CSW%
Nick Lodolo - 70 TBF, 33.8% CSW%
Jose Berrios - 77 TBF, 33.6% CSW%
Ryan Pepiot - 86 TBF, 33.3% CSW%
Michael King - 98 TBF, 33.2% CSW%
Tarik Skubal - 92 TBF, 33.0% CSW%
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