I have entered the next level of projection snobbery. My daily projections are now accounting for wind, temperature, and even umpires. That’s right, umpires. I never thought I would do it, but why not? It’s true that some umpires have consistent differences in how they call balls and strikes, and a good projection system should probably account for that. I did minimize the impact, because I really don’t want to overreact to something like that. But it’s in there now. You can see the weather and umpire reports in the pitcher projections google sheet. You won’t see any umpire data showing up in the morning, the home plate assignment doesn’t come out until closer to game time.
First of all, it was injury city yesterday. Here’s a tweet from ME about it.
I spelled Merrill wrong in that, so that’s nice. He’s on the IL, so that sucks for some of you. The other big ones are to Langford and Tatis. It was a side thing for Langford, which makes you think about that oblique thing that cost him a few weeks in spring training. I’d be pretty nervous if I were a Langford owner right now, but we’ll have to wait and see.
The two that are interesting for prospects purposes would be Pablo Lopez and Tyler Soderstrom. I don’t think either guy is going to hit the IL, but if they do, you’d be looking for news on Nick Kurtz and one of those Twins SPs, David Festa or Zebby Matthews. I doubt it happens, but keep an eye on the news today. It feels a little early for the A’s to go to Kurtz, but I do think that Festa or Matthews would get the start for the Twins if Lopez can’t make the next one.
I also missed Matt McLain in that tweet. He’s on the IL with a hamstring thing. It doesn’t seem like it should cost him more than the ten day minimum, but hamstrings can linger - and McLain hasn’t been the picture of health early on in his career.
Let’s get into a few standout SP performances. Clay Holmes struck out ten Marlins.
Those are strong marks, although you obviously don’t love the four runs allowed. I’ve added game logs to the pitcher profile tab on the main dashboard, so we can check that out quickly:
You can also see the pitch mix trend on that same screen:
That’s a significant movement in the four-seam usage. Yesterday, the mix looked like this:
That four-seamer was insanely dominant. It’s possible this was just because he needed to switch something up, facing the same team twice in a row, but I doubt he goes back to single-digit usage of the pitch after seeing how well it worked yesterday.
Holmes is still a work in progress. He’s going to be tinkering for a while to see what works best as a starter. More four-seamers mean more strikeouts. It probably also means more home runs allowed (0% GB% yesterday!), but it’s a trade-off that you take in the fantasy game.
The command is still in question, and it wasn’t a fantastic outing for him yesterday all things considered, but I’m getting a bit re-intrigued in the guy after seeing that. Next up is a good matchup against the Twins.
Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler faced off and both got beat up a bit:
Sale’s fastball velo was down below 93 yesterday. For the year, he’s at 93.2, and that’s 1.5mph below last year. That’s not a great sign. I think he can be fine at 93, and maybe it will come back in a hurry, but it is a reason to slightly downgrade Sale for right now.
The numbers for the year are still great at a 16.7% SwStr% and 30% Ball%:
Again, no reason to worry, but maybe you have to lower the expectations slightly off of that Cy Young Award season.
Shane Smith threw six scoreless innings, allowing just two hits and striking out six with one walk. The SwStr% was just 10.8%, however, and he threw a lot of balls at 38.6%. That’s a much better result than we would have expected from him.
I think he’s worth a roster spot in deep leagues. The four-seamer and changeup are both returning nice marks early on. The team context sucks, and we saw that yesterday as the White Sox lost 1-0. But Smith has ratios upside. I’m about to start giving you videos, baby.
He now has just an 11% K% on the year, but hats off to him - he’s allowed a .265 xwOBA. It’s been really tough to square him up.
I know you want a video of Lodolo generating weak contact:
I still have to say I’d be looking to trade him. It’s an even better sell-high opportunity this week than last, since he now has three quality starts under his belt with a 0.96 ERA.
Crazy early, but:
ERA: 0.96 SIERA: 4.44
But if you’re an xERA guy, you’ve got that going for you (2.25).
It’s the age old question of can you consistently produce soft contact. As a projections guy, my answer is “probably not”. But true baseball guys will say yes!
There are only four SPs with three starts and a K% below 15%:
That’s not the fairest sample, since most SPs only have two starts so far, but look, man - it’s not a good sign. You need strikeouts to succeed, and 19 innings in, we’re not getting them for Lodolo.
Shane Baz was another example of green in the box score but red everywhere else.
He got just eight whiffs on his 96 pitches with a putrid 41.7% Strike% and 39.6% Ball%, but he worked around those four walks and got through seven strong innings. He now has a 10.9% SwStr% and 36% Ball% on the year. That’s discouraging.
But again, I guess he and Lodolo were nasty enough to miss the barrel of the bat without missing the entire bat. Weak contact is great for getting deep into the game. How often do we see these studs rack up 15+ whiffs but find themselves at 85 pitches after five and have their outing cut short because of it.
I still want the whiffs, I’m just trying to be forgiving of Lodolo and the Bazinator.
Kyren Paris is all the rage on the hitting side of things. He has slashed .429/.538/.952 with three homers and four steals. His fourth homer came last night with some help from the ever-hated Zack Hample. Hample was wearing a shirt with his own name on it. Just when you think the world couldn’t dislike a guy more than they already do!
I got a reaction from some Angels fans before this game, because I spoke negatively of Paris. He’s a trendy pickup right now, especially after another dinger last night. I took notice of his egregious minor league strikeout rate. Here are his minor league numbers since 2021:
That’s a career 31% K%. You are going to have a lot of trouble finding a successful big leaguer who had that high of a strikeout rate in the minors.
The Angels fans told me that he made some big swing changes. I’ll assume they’re correct, and I do admit that could be significant.
He’s clearly skilled. You can see the steals there, and his sprint speed checks in at the 92nd percentile this year. The .450 xwOBA and .280 xBA pop right now, but I can’t get past this 58% Contact%:
The walks have always been there. He’s swinging at about a league-average rate right now. So he’s patient, but patient isn’t always a good thing. I mean in real life, I think it’s always a good thing, but with a baseball bat in your hands it depends. If I was a hitter with a whiff problem, I don’t think I’d want to be taking too many strikes. I want to give myself 2-3 chances at hitting the ball on a swing rather than getting behind 1-2 cause I’m waiting for the perfect pitch.
He reminds me of Rece Hinds from last year. Remember that guy? He came up to Cincinnati last July and slammed five homers in his first six games, hitting .500/.542/1.409 in his first 24 PAs, but with a 29% K%. And then it caught up to him and he went .042/.148/.083 in his next 27 MLB PAs.
So I’m not buying on Paris. I’m not buying in Paris either, not really much of a fan of Europe.
The other problem for the guy is that Zach Neto is returning soon. So any slowdown in the production with the bat will cost him playing time in a hurry.
Zach Neto Rehab Assignment Logs
Spencer Torkelsoncontinues his early-season resurgence. He hit another dinger and now sports a .310/.408/.643 line with three homers and a high 12.2% BB%. The bad news is a 33% K% with a 72% Contact%. The BABIP is at .435, and that has the xBA down at .255. But he’s getting the ball in the air (38% FB%) and hitting it hard quite often. I think he’s worth a look in a 12-teamer or deeper, but he’ll have to get these strikeouts under control to continue the production.
James Wood is off to the races with three homers in his last two games. That has the slash line up to .275/.356/.625. The K% is high (33%) and so is the GB% (72%). Those are bad signs, and those are the exact things he struggled with last year. It’s tough for a guy this tall who swings this hard to avoid high marks in these two categories. He’ll have some huge games, no doubt, but until he gets the K% and GB% in check, he’ll continue to have some rough stretches as well. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen so far.
James Wood 2025 Game Log
It is Wednesday, so we have a boatload of day games to cover. I upgraded the hitters vs. similar pitchers algorithm yesterday on the daily matchups cheat sheet. You can check that out now (link in the resource glossary), and I even recorded a video giving a demo of it here:
