The NBA Finals start tonight. It’s the first time I’ve even pretended to care since LeBron was in Miami, I think. I was pretty into the NBA DFS scene for a bit, and I do admit that it’s a pretty fun sport for doing projections and reports and whatnot. Someday I might get back into it. But this year I’ve been drawn back a little bit since the Pacers are doing well. AND I LIVE IN INDIANA. I’ve always wanted to like basketball, but I haven’t been able to get there. Growing up in Pittsburgh, it’s not really a thing.
And I can’t sit here and say I actually care that much about it. But I’m going to pretend. Fake it til you make it, right?
But here’s the problem. I looked at the betting lines. And now I see that the Pacers have a very small chance of winning this series. I talked about this at some point recently on this Substack about when pitching prospects get called up for your favorite team. How it used to be super exciting and mysterious because you wouldn’t know much about them other than that they were a top prospect. Even if it didn’t work out and they sucked, you still had that period of excitement and hope for the future that improved your experience during the season.
And that still happens with some prospects, the actually good ones. But way fewer now. My example was Quinn Priester. He was a top pitching prospect for a few years when coming up through the minor leagues for the Pirates. And like ten years prior, I would have been excited to see what he had to offer when he got called up. But since it was like 2022-2023 when he was making his way into the Majors, we had all of the data on him from the minors, and it was easy to see that he wouldn’t actually be good.
Ignorance is bliss sometimes; it really is true.
This all sounds strange coming from a guy who spends a good portion of his life trying to predict the future. I’m very much trying not to be ignorant. But I can recognize what I’m trading for that.
Kumar Rocker went whiff-crazy (24.2% SwStr%) in his return to the bigs, but yeah, he gave up five earned on six hits.
Six whiffs on 30 four-seamers with a 27% Ball%. It’s too small a sample to react to, but I’m intrigued by that nonetheless. This is a 6’4’’ righty with elite “extension”, as I was made aware of yesterday by the guy who streamed him in my league. Extension, I think, is a measure of how close to home plate you’re releasing the ball. So you’ll see a bunch of tall guys here.
Here are your four-seamer extension leaders:
Mostly relievers there, which complicates things. Let’s get rid of them.
Extension is a good thing, but it’s not necessarily a good thing. Necessarily is a good word. And one I think that we misuse a lot. If something is necessarily good, that means it’s always good. It must be good. Extension can be a good thing, but of course, it requires other things - command being the main thing. Velocity and movement another.
The extension has a big impact on the difference between actual velocity and effective velocity, as we can see here:
So that 92.6 is actually more like 94.2. And that’s a big difference.
I wonder how far they would have to move the pitcher’s mound up for someone like me to be a Major League pitcher. Could I post a 3.50 ERA in the Majors if the mound were at 40 feet and still 60.5 for everybody else? 30 feet? 20 feet? I’m pretty sure I’d be too terrified to even try at 60.5 feet. George Kirby took 108 off the face the other day. So yeah, I don’t think I’m going to stand 30 feet away from Aaron Judge and throw a baseball near him while he has a bat and is trying to hit the ball really hard, no matter how much they’re willing to pay me.
This is one of the rare cases where I’m interested to see the Stuff+ marks. We don’t have them yet. Even in these days of big data, it still takes FanGraphs a day or two to get the Stuff+ numbers. But I guess we should check one of those guys on Twitter who have their own models and are really quick with this stuff.
But I looked, and none of the guys I am aware of tweeted them out. I’ve tweeted my search, and should have an answer soon.
Edit: Pitching Bot Stuff+ is available and does not grade Gipson-Long well at all.
But all of this is to say that I do think we should roster Gipson-Long in deeper leagues. The components are there for him to be pretty nasty. He’ll get the Orioles next, and he should be able to push past 80 pitches. He put up multiple whiffs on three different pitches and threw a bunch of strikes. I like that a lot.
Mick Abel made his second start, and the result was fine:
5.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 2 K, 0 BB
But he got just five whiffs (6.4% SwStr%) and posted a 44% Strike%. He was pretty lucky to give up just one run and three hits.
The Blue Jays made six outs on balls hit over 100mph.
Combining his two outings together, the numbers all still do look very good.
→ 26.8% K% → 0% BB% → 14.2% SwStr% → 30% Ball%
The first start was against the Pirates, so we put some salt on that one. And you’d have to say that he looked pretty bad, all things considered, yesterday against a decent (and quite hot right now) Blue Jays lineup.
What then do we decide? I don’t know. Here’s what he did in AAA:
Pretty mediocre stuff, honestly. The 13.9% SwStr% is good, but it makes me doubt he’s really a 14% guy in the Majors. That’s not really how that works. The 36% Ball% would be a league average number in the Majors, but we do, for whatever reason, see a lot more balls and walks in AAA. That’s partly to do with the quality of pitchers at that level, but I do think there’s more to it. Maybe that’s something to explore quickly.
I compared quickly the ball rates of pitchers who have thrown at least 100 pitches in both AAA and MLB this year. The average change was a one-point increase in ball rate from AAA to MLB. Here are the guys who dropped their ball rates the most after getting to MLB:
This isn’t a very good way to study it. I’m using one year and a pretty small sample size, and there are plenty of rehab assignments in here which shouldn’t really be considered. So, nevermind. I’d do it in a smarter way but I don’t have the time this morning.
But the one thing I know is that it’s not uncommon to see a guy with a high minor league walk rate drop it when they get to the Majors.
It is extremely uncommon to see a guy raise their strikeout rate when getting to the Majors, but the same isn’t true for walks.
The reason we’re into these weeds right now is that Abel walked a lot of guys in the minors.
We see the 0% BB% in the Majors so far and get excited. But then you see the 11% BB% in AAA over a much bigger sample, and you pause.
Which is more predictive of future MLB BB%?
AAA BB%
MLB Ball% in 180 pitches?
Those are the two options we have for Abel right now. And I don’t know the answer. But I think Abel’s done enough to warrant consideration in fantasy leagues right now. He’ll get the Cubs next. Given what we saw last night with him getting smacked all around the yard but finding leather, I wouldn’t be pumped to start him for that one, but it will tell us a lot about him. The sample size will increase by 50%, if nothing else.
The Zebinnator has his rotation spot locked in stone now with Pablo Lopez hitting the long-term IL. But he wasn’t very good against the Athletics last night:
5 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 4 K, 3 BB
Okay, hold the phone - that’s not a bad line. Sorry, Zebbinator!
The bad stuff was the 9.1% SwStr% and the fact that he was yanked after 77 pitches. He also lost velo:
He still sports a solid 13% SwStr% and 34% Ball% for the year. That’s enough to keep me very interested, but what’s up with that pitch count? I guess it shouldn’t be shocking. What goes up doesn’t always stay up. And the Twins do have some incentive to take it easy with him.
The Pablo injury also should bring David Festa back to the bigs. He recently had some arm fatigue and threw just 66 pitches in his last outing. So it’s hard to see him ripping off 5-6 inning outings in the Majors soon.
But something has to give. The Twins are in the race, and now they’re in need of innings from their starters. It’s tough to have two guys you’re limiting to 75 pitches in your rotation at the same time. That would tax the bullpen. But the arm fatigue thing is a real concern with Festa. So I don’t think you need to rush out and go over the top to get him.
Kyle Harrison maintained his velo increase, but struggled. He gave up nine hits and five earned. It was a tough matchup with the Padres, so we should be somewhat forgiving. But not great to see the 10.3% SwStr%. His season update:
Strong 15.3% SwStr% and 33% Ball% on 301 pitches. The velo has been sticking at 95 as a starter, so that’s good to see. He’s got a little more effective velo than actual:
So I think the fastball can be good. And that’s the most important thing, especially cause he’s throwing it at 68%. That’s too high IMO. But it doesn’t bode super well for his confidence in the slurve and the changeup. I’m guessing Harrison will be up-and-down and not super reliable, but he’s someone we’re watching and definitely starting in strong matchups.
I bet a lot of you woke up today asking yourselves, “hmmm… I wonder who the best hitters in the league are who have at least 150 plate appearances but less than four homers??”. Me too, man. And I have your answer.
Alejandro Kirk and Nolan Schanuel.
xwOBA leaders among hitters with 150+ PA and less than 4 HR
Schanuel had himself two more hits yesterday to bring his batting average to .275 and OBP to .367. The .349 xwOBA is strong, but he just cannot lift the ball out of the yard.
Alejandro Kirk is in the same territory. These guys are very similar hitters. Kirk has been a fantasy bat for the Blue Jays, but still somehow not very useful in roto fantasy leagues. Three homers all year with no steals. I’m only assuming he has no steals. I didn’t even check. He’s a large fellow.
How about some last 15 days low-owned xwOBA over expectation leaders?
The presence of Luis Garcia here is probably because his name is Luis Garcia and my script is grabbing the ownership of the reliever. It’s also a continued struggle for me to get useful ownership levels. Yahoo and ESPN are the only ones I’ve found easily scrapeable. But those ownership levels are really dumb because there are a ton of dead leagues on those platforms, clearly.
I’ve looked into FanTrax. But we have the opposite problem there. That’s disproportinately dynasty leagues. So you have like 40% ownership on guys like Andrew Painter - not very useful for our purposes. Maybe the NFBC Main Event is the best place for it. But I don’t think I can scrape from there. I don’t know, I’ll look into it someday.
For now, I have to retire. I think I might just take the whole rest of the day off of baseball since it’s Thursday.
I haven’t been doing the slate preview daily here on my vacation, but I’ve been jamming extra daily slate stuff out on Twitter. I’m not sure how many people follow my Substack but not my Twitter feed… probably a lot.
There is the ABS system in AAA so that might be causing the ball/walk trends.
Also, I think the bat speed increasers/decreasers might not be updating: Joc Pederson hasn’t played in quite a while and he’s still in the top 5 bat speed increasers.
There is the ABS system in AAA so that might be causing the ball/walk trends.
Also, I think the bat speed increasers/decreasers might not be updating: Joc Pederson hasn’t played in quite a while and he’s still in the top 5 bat speed increasers.