A couple of weeks ago, I wrote in the Daily Notes that I thought that Spencer Strider might be the SP1 in baseball right now. And some people scoffed at me for that! Little old me! I received dozens of death threats. I was doxed. I had to move my whole family to a new home! But look at Strider go. Since June 14th:
2.70 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 32% K%, 8% BB%, 0.6 HR/9, 2.43 JA ERA
That puts him fifth in JA ERA since June 10th. Which is basically first.
JA ERA Leaders since 6/10, 5 Starts Minimum
Pretty surprising to see guys like Quinn Priester, Jose Soriano, Eric Lauer, and Mike Soroka there. Strider is fantastic. I guess all he needed was that velo back. It’s probably not that simple, but something really, really changed ahead of that June 14th start and he’s looked like his 2022-2023 self since then.
I tried the Ben Casparius thing for a bit, picking him up as soon as they said he’d be back in the rotation. But he has not been good, and he got tanked again yesterday.
3 IP, 9 H, 6 ER
Since ramping the pitch counts up again on June 11th:
14.4% K%, 5.6% BB%, 4.49 JA ERA
And that’s turned into an 8.24 ERA and a 1.68 WHIP. Some guys just aren’t made for the rotation. They can’t hang in the ‘tation.
Michael Soroka got thumped by the Red Sox, giving up seven earnies on nine hits. But he still had a really nice 15.1% SwStr%, a non-awful 35.5% Ball%, and a 6:2 K:BB. I’m gonna keep rolling with him.
So what about this Eric Lauer thing? I mean there’s no way he can really be good. Is there? Lauer has been in the league since 2018 and has never been very good. Could he really have turned it on at age 30 after a year spent in the KBO?
Let’s see! We do have 806 pitches to learn from.
There aren’t any major red flags there. To get a little picky, I really doubt his four-seamer can continue to be this good. He throws it under 92mph and it gets in the air a ton, but somehow he hasn’t been hurt very much by it with just the .252 xwOBA.
He has the cutter, but they aren’t evenly mixed. That’s a ton of four-seamers. I would have to think this is going to fall apart pretty soon.
The schedule has been pretty soft. So I wouldn’t add Lauer in your standard leagues, but in deep leagues or points leagues, you can consider it in decent matchups. The pitching pool is pretty rough right now, so we can’t always get everything we’re hoping for.
Lucas Giolito had a good one. And he’s been pretty good in his lsat five starts. Here’s the basic rundown on the last five:
So that’s a 17% K-BB%, which isn’t anything elite but it’s good. He’s been pretty reliant on the four-seamer recently and the velo on the pitch has been up a bit.
It’s still just an 11.8% SwStr% over the last five, and he’s been playing with fire getting very, very few ground balls (28%). He’s going to blow up again soon, no doubt about it, but good to see him at least re-establishing himself as a clear big leaguer.
His 2019-2020 sample have proven to be a pretty strange outlier in his career.
Do you remember that 2019 season? He came completely out of nowhere and all of the sudden started pitching like a legit ace, and it lasted most of that season and bled into 2020. But he’s done nothing close to that since.
And I think it’s because he’s never had a great fastball. You gotta have the great fastball.
Jesus Luzardo, you just have to laugh. Or cry. But realize that you’ll be laughing again soon.
Andrew Abbotthas had himself a weird season. His monthly stats:
The K% was bound to come down, and if you read these daily notes, you knew that all along. You cannot get a 30% K% with a 12% SwStr%, the universe just doesn’t work like that.
He has a poor 3.85 JA ERA and 14% K-BB% in his six starts since June.
To his credit, he’s still keeping the quality of contact down with a .295 xwOBA and a 34% hard hit. That’s impressive stuff, and there’s probably something skill-based to that. He’s deceptive and the command has been really good. I have no doubts that Abbott is a much better pitcher this year than we knew him to be the last few years. But he was never as good as he showed us in the first handful of starts when he was just pooping on guys.
Quinn Priester couldn’t keep it going. He gave up seven htis and four runs including two homers to the Marlins! I’m sure a lot of people streamed him for that one after those seven scoreless against the Rockies. You were probably like “okay yeah it was against the Rockies, but the next start is the Marlins, so I’ll take a shot”.
Little fun fact for you, he’s the only guy whose first name starts with Q to throw a pitch in the Majors this year.
A less fun fact is that he’s still not good. But hey, this five-start stretch since June 10th has been nice. He’s got a 22% K-BB%, a 2.59 JA ERA, and a 1.83 WHIP+. I just don’t think that keeps up.
Five more earnies for Sandy Alcantara. He’s been consistent! The big man has given up four or more earnies in 59% of his starts, that’s the third-most in the league.
On the other side of that leaderboard:
Ceddanne Rafaelaadded two barrels and no homers to his 2025 resume. He’s been awesome at hitting non-homer barrels. He is one of just ten hitters with a HR/Brl under 30%.
And that’s not bad luck. He’s just not pulling them (31%). The guys that pull them generate higher HR/Brl, almost every time.
I like to give that Barrel Details tab a look every so often. Pretty good stuff.
I’m really hoping that Tableau never goes out of business or just like deletes their website. If I suddenly lost that main MLB Dashboard I’ve developed I might actually get emotional. There’s been years of work sunk into this thing now, but I’m completely dependent on Tableau hosting it for me, and I’m not paying them anything either. This did give me the idea to download the file for it, that could end up saving me later on. So, shout out to me.
The old TWBX file. DASHBOARD DOT TWWWWWIIBBBUXXXXXXX. Man I love computers.
The Cubs hit 173 homers yesterday and aer now one of just three times above 130 hit for the season.
Here’s what it looked like yesterday, for some reason:
They brought the fireworks. They’re probably Americas team because of that. Whoever hits the most dingers on July 4th becomes Americas team, I’ve just decided that.
I live pretty close to Chicago, so there are plenty of Cubs fans around me. Maybe I should try to join them. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right? That could be fun. I could get my projector out and play some of the playoff games out on my driveway and invite the neighborhood over. And then scare them all away by talking about detailed analytics the whole time just screaming in their faces about xwOBACON and JA ERA until they call the HOA on me.
Michael Harris II hasn’t taken a walk since May 19th. That’s 145 PAs. He’s had just a disastrous season. And I have an NFBC team where I drafted that guy in the third round. The third round!
But to his credit, he hasn’t been as bad as his numbers suggest in the last month or so. But he’s still a drop in fantasy. This is some kind of dud season.
He’s still hitting the ball hard, except for he hits in the air. Then he doesn’t hit it that hard.
I’m not hitting coach and I seriously don’t know the first thing about how the mechanics of all that should work, but I’d say something is a bit screwy with his swing path.
He’s at a 109 EV90 on ground balls, a 108.3 on line drives, but a 103.3 on fly balls. That’s not what you want!
Cam Smith shows up here today:
That’s over the last 10 days. He just might be starting to really take flight.
Since June 1st:
Nice stuff! Remember that Cam Smith was the first round pick that the Cubs traded to get Kyle Tucker this offseason. That was a really wild trade looking back at it. I wonder if the Cubs have sights on extending Tucker. That’s the only way that would really make sense. I mean if they win a World Series with Tucker this year, the trade will be a win for them regardless. But I doubt that was really the thought process.
I’ve gotta roll outta here. Happy July 5th! A day that gets no respect. I mean we were had only declared our independence for part of July 4th, 1776. July 5th, 1776 was the first FULL DAY.
Is Adrian Houser legit? Would you suggest trading him for Brenton Doyle?