This guy has come out of nowhere and has pitched extremely well at the Major League level so far. He has a poor 4.25 ERA and 1.44 WHIP in the Majors, yes, but the K-BB% is 20% and that was his third start with nine strikeouts in the month of June.
His JA ERA on the year is at 2.64, that’s really strong. He’s been consistently in the rotation since May 23rd, and here’s what he’s done in that time:
4 GS, 23 IP, 31.6% K%, 6.1% BB%, 14.8% SwStr%, 37.9% Ball%, 1.63 JA ERA
I remind you that this guys fastball averages less than 91mph.
But he does have that unique left-handed release points. There’s no doubt that helps.
I compared him last time to Nick Lodolo. That only applies to the delievery, I guess. Their pitch mixes aren’t all that similar. But here’s what we have on Lopez since May 23rd:
At least a 12.9% SwStr% on all four pitches. The red flags are the high ball rate and the crazy, crazy low GB%. It’s hard to imagine he keeps this stuff up, but as I’ve always said - it’s hard to deny a 20% K-BB% over a 20+ inning sample! He’s a good deep league target and someone to keep a close eye on.
Spencer Strider kept the velo up and dominated once again.
He now has 21 strikeouts and two walks in his last two. Two excellent start now since getting the velocity back. And it’s clearly more than just velocity as well. The location has snapped back. And he’s looked like his old self, or at least the numbers have looked like the numbers from his old self. I haven’t actually seen him pitch!
You don’t like to see the walks and ball rate being inflated again, but allowing just two hits in 6.1 innings is something you’ll certainly take.
His BB% is in the double-digits again at 10.2%. But it’s still an improvement from what we’ve seen in his past. His 2024 to 2025 comparison:
His season JA ERA is 3.53 with a 2.05 WHIP+, both of those numbers are mediocre, but I can’t say they’re bad.
He’s pretty changeup heavy, which does bring volatility with it. The splits are interesting:
He has a pretty good walk rate against righties, but he doesn’t strike them out very often. He walks and strikes out lefties at much higher rates. And that’s because of that changeup. I think E-Cab is at least in the streamer territory, and he should probably be owned and started in very deep leagues.
Six walks from Clay Holmes! Yikes! The ground ball rate (53%) and lack of homers allowed (0.98 HR/9) have helped him avoid major damage this year. He still has a strong 3.04 ERA, and the Mets will certainly take that. But his WHIP is worse at 1.23 and the K% is now down to 21% on a 9% BB%. That’s a 12% K-BB%.
His SwStr% is at 10% with a 36% Ball%. Not a great combo. But again, Holmes is a guy getting the job done because he allows so few extra base hits.
Clay Holmes
First 7 GS: 25% K%, 8% BB%, 16.7% K-BB%, 3.08 JA ERA Last 8 GS: 18% K%, 9.5% BB%, 10.6% K-BB%, 4.08 JA ERA
I forgot I had this plot handy. This will be the first time I use this year in the daily notes, and it was a favorite of mine last year.
Right below it in my Python notebook I have this one:
That’s a good one too, dang!
Anyways, I don’t think Clay Holmes is a must-start guy. He was over-performing a bit at the beginning of the season and the underlying stuff isn’t looking very good. I think he’s heading to a pretty poor WHIP.
The whole Mets rotation has regressed quite a bit from the early weeks of the season when they were one of the best in the league. That’s not surprising since none of them had convincing marks under the hood.
Here’s what Megill, Holmes, and Canning did before May 11th:
And here’s what they’ve done since then:
Kevin Gausman had one of those horrible outings that I’ve been warning you about.
It has been a bumpy ride for Gausdaddy. In fact, he’s been pretty awful in June. And that comes right after his stretch of looking really really good in May.
That’s tough to handle. I bet a lot of people really don’t like this guy.
But it’s what you get with the splitter dependence. That’s another one of my rules. Never trust a guy that relies on a splitter. That’s not me saying don’t draft them, it’s just saying that you should never truly believe in them. Always be ready for disaster.
I’d probably buy low on Gausman right now.
Jac Caglianone hit his first career homer. And then he hit his second career homer! The first one is the one to look at. Here it is:
There’s been one homer hit this year on a pitch higher than that. It also happened this week.
And the third-highest also happened yesterday! What is going on!? Did physics change this week or something?
I think about that sometimes. What if the laws of nature just change someday? The only reason we think they can’t change is because they never have before. And, I mean, that’s a pretty safe bet, but it’s no guarantee. Whoever created the rules would certainly have the ability to change them.
He [Jesus Christ] is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. - Colossians 1:17
So maybe that’s happened. Maybe, starting this Monday, Jesus made it a lot easier to hit high pitches for homers.
Back to Jac though. Some of the key metrics on him:
His expected batting averag eis excellent at .334, and the xwOBA is great as well at .394. Both of those things have more to do with his exit velo rather than his launch angle. Bat speed and exit velo are not a problem for the kid. He has had trouble racking up hits, though, because of the launch angle profile.
Jac Caglianone Rolling wOBA and xwOBA
We see this a ton with young guys. Big league pitchers know how to get these guys to hit the ball on the ground way, way better than minor league pitchers.
Only six fly balls in 56 PAs. But two of those came yesterday and they both found a fence to fly over.
I think we’ll see Caglianone really turn it on soon, like we saw with Nick Kurtz. That guy hit another dinger last night as well. Since returning from the IL:
.270/.289/.676, 4 HR, 26% K%, 2.6% BB%
Two super young super talented power studs. We’ll be seeing a whole bunch of homers from this pair in the next decade or so.
Our boy Agustin Ramirez has been pretty quiet lately. He had a two-homer game last weekend, but other than that we haven’t heard much from him. The slash line is down to .234/.286/.442. And the wOBA/xwOBA stuff has been on a decline:
That sucks. Especially because I have him on my main team, and my main team’s offense kind of sucks.
The good news is that the green line is still above the league average line there. There’s been some bad luck lately. And he’s still showing this elite combination of contact (17% K%, 78% Contact%) and hard contact (108.7 EV90, 47% Hard Hit%).
His ground ball rate is at 46%. That’s not too bad. He has been kept out of the sweet spot range (31% - the league average is 35%), though. There’s a big difference between his average (.234) and expected average (.276). There should be better times ahead for Ramirez, and the sky is the limit with the skills he has. And I mean a .442 SLG isn’t anything to sneeze at in these first 213 PAs.
I talk about Byron Buxton too much, probably. But I won’t apologize. The guy is healthy and crushing right now, we should enjoy it while it lasts. I’m biased toward the guy becaus I’ve been drafting him pretty much every year for the off-chance that he actually does play 130 games sometime.
There’s no extra reason right now to think he’ll stay healthy the rest of the season. It still feels pretty unlikely, but hey he’s 2.5 months in and only had one little injury that was just a random flukey concussion thing.
100th percentile sprint speed. You can’t go any higher than that! And then to add on 91st percentile bat speed. One of the most talented players we have seen, it’s a real shame we haven’t seen what he’s capable of over a full season. But maybe, just maybe…
While we’re on the topic of skill. Here’s the updated bat speed vs. sprint speed scatter plot. I used Data Wrapper so you can actually interact with it right here. Although I doubt that will work well on a phone.
I finally fixed the Bat Speed Increasers and Decreasers below. All season so far I’ve had it picking the first seven dates of the season instead of the last seven. A stupid error, but it’s good to go now.
Last 7 Days - Bat Speed Increasers (75th Percentile)
Jose Iglesias: +3.78
Josh Naylor: +3.3
Willi Castro: +3.2
Bobby Witt Jr.: +2.88
Brandon Lowe: +2.35
Last 7 Days - Bat Speed Decreasers (75th Percentile)
Ceddanne Rafaela: -3.3
Sean Murphy: -3.17
Lars Nootbaar: -3.1
Jose Caballero: -2.9
Junior Caminero: -2.2
I’m not sure what you can do with that. But somebody asked me to do it, so I did it. Let me know what you’re hoping to use that for, if you are hoping to use it.
We have Didier Fuentes debuting tonight for the Braves. And he immediately shows up in the Today’s SP Streamer Picks. Let’s take a look at him.
He started the year in A+ ball, so this is another case of the Braves being very aggressive with their prospects. This guy turned 20 this week. He’ll take on the Marlins, so it’s not the toughest matchup in the world to debut in, but still - the Marlins are by far the best lineup he will ever have faced. His minor league season:
He’s made one start above AA. So we do have his pitch mix on the MiLB Statcast dashboard.
For the full minor league season he has a 17.9% SwStr% and a 36.4% Ball%. That’s very good. You see the good velo on the fastball. It’s only one start there, so we don’t know if that usage will hold up in the Majors, but it was heavy four-seamer in that one AAA start with a curveball and a few sinkers and splitters.
It will be interesting to see! The Braves had a lot of success with this kind of thing with Spencer Schwellenbach last year, but there have also been some guys who got promoted quick and didn’t have success (AJ Smith-Shawver and Hurston Waldrep, namely).
I have no idea what will happen there. But I do wonder if he’s like $4,000 on DraftKings. We’ll figure that out in the slate preview later.
For now, I’ve gotta go for a run before it gets to 90 degrees here, and I’ve gotta get my grass cut, it’s looking rough out there. Be back later with a ton of talk about the Friday night slate!
Elite work, as always. Thanks Jon!