MLB Daily Notes - May 10th
A daily automated report of what happened yesterday in Major League Baseball, along with other recent trends and further analysis.
Not much went down yesterday with just six games on the board. But some SP highlights and lowlights:
Hunter Greene eased off the fastball velocity, or did he!? Maybe he just LOST it!?
He didn’t get crushed as a consequence, but it wasn’t a good start all things considered:
5 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 6 K, 5 BB, 21.4% SwStr%, 39.3% Strike%, 47.6% Ball%
That’s a ton of whiffs but hardly any other strikes and he ended up throwing way more balls than strikes. For the season, he now has a 27.7% K% and an 11% BB%, so that’s not quite what we want, but still not terrible at a 16.8% K-BB%. Given the fly balls and the home park though, I would feel much more comfortable with Greene if he was a 21% K-BB% instead of 17%. But I think you just keep rolling him out there for now, it will be really interesting to see where the velo goes from here.
Logan Gilbert had a horrible start:
4 IP, 9 H, 8 ER, 4 K, 2 BB
But some other numbers might make you feel better:
19.8% SwStr%, 47.3% Strike%, 35.2% Ball%
He gave up a .286 xwOBA and a .533 BABIP, so plenty of bad luck here it would seem. What are you gonna do? Just roll with Gilbert from here on out, he’s very good.
Reid Detmers gave up six more earnies and raised his ERA to 4.96 with a 1.28 WHIP. But there’s some pretty good news along with it. He went for a pretty strong 16.7% SwStr% yesterday and a 34.4% Ball%. For the year, his K-BB% is 17.6% and his SIERA is 3.64, so there’s been some bad luck on the ERA there. I’ll take a 26% K% and 8.5% BB%, and the Detmers owner in your league is probably pretty annoyed with him right now so maybe you can try to make a move.
Sonny Gray was bad for the first time:
5.0 IP, 7 H, 6 ER, 6 K, 1 BB, 11.4% SwStr%, 45.5% Strike%, 36.4% Ball%
That’s a good 6:1 K:BB in five innings, but he didn’t have the normal command and he got hit really hard (.508 xwOBA). The SIERA is now 2.55 and that is pretty close to his real ERA of 2.29, so good stuff for Gray so far, I just think you should have tried to trade him before this bad one.
Erick Fedde Season Update
8 GS, 3.00 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 23.4% K%, 7.4% BB%, 10.2% SwStr%, 39.3% Ball%, 46% GB%
Blah.
Cal Quantrill Season Update
8 GS, 3.94 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 16.1% K%, 8.9% BB%, 8.3% SwStr%, 37.8% Ball%, 48% GB%
Still a K-BB% well below 10%, which you want nothing to do with ever, but we have to hand it to him - he has not gotten rocked this year overall. He’s given up four or more earned runs just three times, and one of those was in Mexico City.
Robert Gasser Call-Up
The Brewers have called up lefty Robert Gasser to pitch today. I think he’ll get a shot to stay in the rotation, since that’s definitely a weak point for the Brewers. Here are some numbers on him:
2023: 25 GS, 3.79 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, 28% K%, 8.4% BB%
2024: 3 GS, 5.25 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, 33.3% K%, 11.8% BB%, 14.4% SwStr%, 49.2% Strike%, 36.9% Ball%, 18.5 Brl%, 33% GB%
An injury slowed down his start to the season, otherwise I think he might have made the team out of camp. But you can’t say he’s dominated down in AAA, he’s given up a bunch of home runs and walks - but the strikeouts are nice to see.
The pitch mix:
Lower velo on the fastball but not awful especially for a lefty, and that pitch has worked fine down there. The sweeper has been incredible albeit on just 43 pitches. The sample size really isn’t there for us here. We’re just going to leave him alone in fantasy [unless you’re in a 15+ team league and hurting bad for pitching], and we’ll keep a close eye on his first couple of starts here.
His delivery looks a lot like Nick Lodolo, except he’s several inches shorter so I don’t think that will play as well with the extension and release point and all of that junk - but now I’m telling tales out of school. I don’t even know hwy I care so much about Robert Gasser.
Hitter Add of the Day
Brenton Doyle homered yesterday and now has a .269/.310/.448 slash line with four homers and four steals in 144 PAs. The Brl% is a surprising 8.5%, and he got the K% under 30% with his performance yesterday.
He’s the Rockies every day centerfielder, and having good outfield defense matters a great deal in Coors Field, so he would have to be completely awful at the plate to lose playing time, and he’s been the Rockies second-best hitter this year so he’s here to stay.
The reason we liked Doyle originally was for the steals (22 steals last year, 35.5% Attempt%), but this year that’s come down a bit (16.7% attempt%). But luckily he’s added some power (42.5 PA/HR last year, 35.5 this year) and with the lower K% and better contact, many more base hits have fallen in (he hit .203 last year).
I think he’s a decent bat for even 12-teamers, although you will have those horrible weeks when he strikes out a ton and you won’t ever be excited to play him outside of Coors, but you can do a whole lot worse if you’re in need of a guy who can steal some bags without being a zero in homers.
Reader Questions
Logan Asks:
Matt Chapman’s damage/batted ball stats look great. But his fantasy stats are trash and he looks cooked, despite still allegedly having huge exit velos and barrel rates (are the Chapman barrels in the room with you right now?). What’s going on with him? Is he a hold just based on projections?
The first question of the year is an easy one. Matt Chapman has been confusing people since the beginning of last year. Here’s a really crappy bar plot to show it:
He has a high 15% Brl% the last two seasons, but the barrels just don’t work very well for him since he hits almost all of them to center field or opposite field. He has homered just 21 times in 736 PA and has posted a .719 OPS, and he’s not a stolen bases guy.
Lowest SLG on Barrels, 2023-2024, 50 Barrels Minimum
Guerrero Jr. 1.871
Chapman 1.882
Acuna Jr. 2.000
Swanson 2.018
Arozarena 2.111
Tatis Jr. 2.127
Melendez 2.143
Witt JR. 2.167
Seager 2.186
Goldschmidt 2.250
So he underperforms on his barrels, and that will continue given the spray chart. San Francisco is also a bad place to hit in general, and then you throw in the high K% (28%) and the lack of steals and you have an incredibly mediocre fantasy player.
He’s fine in super deep leagues where just the playing time matters. He’s scored 19 runs and driven in 14 and actually has stolen three bases, so there are plenty of third baseman worse than him for fantasy, but he is someone who puts out those nice Statcast numbers but you have to be very skeptical of them given the context.
There were a handful more requests, but I’ll leave them for a podcast next week or something.
Bat Tracking Data
In other news, we’re apparently about to get bat speed metrics available to the public.
What this does is measure the swing speed of each swing. They have been doing that for a number of years now but the data was never available to us normies. I’m not sure how they’re going to deliver that data, but if it comes through the API I currently use I’ll be able to quickly add stuff to the reports and dashboards. At the very least I’ll be able to write a script to scrape it and do stuff with it one way or the other.
The advantage here is that swing speed all by itself will be useful metric. When we talk about stuff in the “exit velocity” arena, we’re really trying to measure swing speed. You can’t hit a ball far if you’re not swinging the bat fast, so it’s good to know which hitters swing the bat fast and which do not. The swing speed stuff will be a more accurate picture of that than our derivations from exit velo’s.
There will certainly be some guys swinging the bat extremely hard but not turning that into much production, because there is that one little part about having to swing the bat in the same three-dimensional space where the baseball is, but it will give us valuable information about underlying player skills.
It will be especially useful for new debuts. If we had it right now, for example, we could probably already know a good deal about a guy like Joey Loperfido. Who does he compare to in swing speed? If it’s Yordan Alvarez, we’re a bit more optimistic about him, if it’s more like Brandon Nimmo, then we’re less optimistic about his future power potential.
So that will be fun, keep an eye out for that. I feel an obligation to be the first one in the pool whenever new data comes flowing out, so that will be a focus for me next week.
So that’s it for today. I have week eight waivers coming, and a full slate preview as well… as long as I can get all the other stuff done that I need to get done.
Pitcher Reports
Algo SP Ranks - Yesterday
1. Logan Gilbert
2. Hunter Greene
3. Reid Detmers
4. Pablo Lopez
5. Michael Wacha
6. Keaton Winn
7. Ronel Blanco
8. Sonny Gray
9. Erick Fedde
10. Tobias Myers
11. Marcus Stroman
12. Ben Lively
13. Cal Quantrill
14. Slade Cecconi
Fantasy Points Leaders - Yesterday
1. Pablo Lopez (vs. SEA): 33.84 Points
2. Michael Wacha (vs. LAA): 20.7 Points
3. Cal Quantrill (vs. SF): 20.7 Points
4. Erick Fedde (vs. CLE): 19.9 Points
5. Ronel Blanco (vs. NYY): 17.96 Points
6. Tobias Myers (vs. STL): 14.8 Points
7. Jose Suarez (vs. KC): 13.09 Points
8. Jared Koenig (vs. STL): 11.9 Points
9. Hunter Greene (vs. ARI): 11.85 Points
10. Slade Cecconi (vs. CIN): 10.39 Points
Whiffs Leaders - Yesterday
1. Logan Gilbert (SEA): 18 Whiffs (91 Pitches)
2. Hunter Greene (CIN): 18 Whiffs (84 Pitches)
3. Pablo Lopez (MIN): 15 Whiffs (100 Pitches)
4. Reid Detmers (LAA): 15 Whiffs (90 Pitches)
5. Jose Suarez (LAA): 13 Whiffs (58 Pitches)
6. Ronel Blanco (HOU): 13 Whiffs (107 Pitches)
7. Sonny Gray (STL): 10 Whiffs (88 Pitches)
8. Michael Wacha (KC): 10 Whiffs (103 Pitches)
9. Marcus Stroman (NYY): 9 Whiffs (95 Pitches)
10. Ben Lively (CLE): 9 Whiffs (98 Pitches)
Strike% Leaders - Yesterday
1. Jose Suarez (LAA): 53.4 Strike%, 32.8 Ball%
2. Michael Wacha (KC): 49.5 Strike%, 35.0 Ball%
3. Tobias Myers (MIL): 48.8 Strike%, 40.5 Ball%
4. Pablo Lopez (MIN): 48.0 Strike%, 39.0 Ball%
5. Reid Detmers (LAA): 47.8 Strike%, 34.4 Ball%
6. Logan Gilbert (SEA): 47.3 Strike%, 35.2 Ball%
7. Sonny Gray (STL): 45.5 Strike%, 36.4 Ball%
8. Ronel Blanco (HOU): 43.9 Strike%, 42.1 Ball%
9. Erick Fedde (CWS): 43.2 Strike%, 34.1 Ball%
10. Cal Quantrill (COL): 42.4 Strike%, 40.2 Ball%
11. Marcus Stroman (NYY): 42.1 Strike%, 37.9 Ball%
12. Keaton Winn (SF): 41.2 Strike%, 23.5 Ball%
13. Hunter Greene (CIN): 39.3 Strike%, 47.6 Ball%
14. Ben Lively (CLE): 37.8 Strike%, 39.8 Ball%
15. Slade Cecconi (ARI): 37.2 Strike%, 43.6 Ball%
Pitches/Out (POUT) Leaders - Yesterday
1. Erick Fedde: 88 Pitches, 18 Outs, 4.89 POUT
2. Cal Quantrill: 92 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.11 POUT
3. Pablo Lopez: 100 Pitches, 19 Outs, 5.26 POUT
4. Slade Cecconi: 78 Pitches, 14 Outs, 5.57 POUT
5. Marcus Stroman: 95 Pitches, 17 Outs, 5.59 POUT
6. Michael Wacha: 103 Pitches, 18 Outs, 5.72 POUT
7. Ben Lively: 98 Pitches, 17 Outs, 5.76 POUT
8. Jose Suarez: 58 Pitches, 10 Outs, 5.8 POUT
9. Sonny Gray: 88 Pitches, 15 Outs, 5.87 POUT
10. Hunter Greene: 84 Pitches, 14 Outs, 6.0 POUT
Velo Changes - Yesterday
Logan Gilbert's CU velo (10 pitches) UP 3.1mph to 83.7
Michael Wacha's FF velo (33 pitches) UP 1.9mph to 94.2
Jose Suarez's FF velo (24 pitches) UP 1.5mph to 93.9
Michael Wacha's SI velo (16 pitches) UP 1.5mph to 93.7
Sonny Gray's CH velo (13 pitches) UP 1.5mph to 89.6
Ben Lively's SI velo (18 pitches) DOWN -1.5mph to 89.6
Ben Lively's FF velo (24 pitches) DOWN -1.8mph to 88.7
Marcus Stroman's SV velo (13 pitches) DOWN -2.2mph to 82.1
Reid Detmers's SL velo (21 pitches) DOWN -2.3mph to 86.1
Hunter Greene's FF velo (41 pitches) DOWN -2.8mph to 95.4
Pitch Mix Changes - Yesterday
Ben Lively's ST usage (40.4%) up 34.7 points
Cal Quantrill's FS usage (29.3%) up 10.5 points
Erick Fedde's FC usage (34.9%) up 11.0 points
Erick Fedde's FS usage (32.6%) up 11.0 points
Hunter Greene's FS usage (14.3%) up 12.8 points
Logan Gilbert's SL usage (48.4%) up 18.6 points
Marcus Stroman's SL usage (21.1%) up 12.8 points
Reid Detmers's CH usage (20.0%) up 12.1 points
Ronel Blanco's CH usage (33.6%) up 14.3 points
Pitch Mix Changes - Last 3 Starts
Sean Manaea 4-Seam Fastball: -41.2%
Patrick Sandoval 4-Seam Fastball: -23.7%
Jose Soriano Sinker: +19.9%
Jose Soriano 4-Seam Fastball: -17.9%
Carlos Rodon Slider: +17.1%
Chris Flexen 4-Seam Fastball: -16.4%
Patrick Sandoval Slider: +15.8%
Miles Mikolas Slider: -15.4%
Brady Singer Sinker: +15.1%
Joe Ross 4-Seam Fastball: +14.2%
Zack Littell Sinker: -14.1%
Mitch Keller 4-Seam Fastball: +14.1%
Joe Ross Sinker: -14.0%
Chris Flexen Cutter: +13.9%
Yu Darvish Slider: +13.6%
Luis Severino Cutter: -13.2%
Jordan Hicks Split-Finger: +13.1%
Seth Lugo Slurve: +12.3%
Seth Lugo Curveball: -12.2%
Max Fried Sweeper: -12.1%
Hunter Greene 4-Seam Fastball: +12.1%
Erick Fedde Sinker: -12.0%
CSW% Leaders - Last 3 Weeks
Jack Flaherty - 91 TBF, 37.4% CSW%
Zack Littell - 75 TBF, 36.3% CSW%
Chris Sale - 99 TBF, 35.9% CSW%
Yoshinobu Yamamoto - 103 TBF, 35.1% CSW%
Sonny Gray - 99 TBF, 34.1% CSW%
Patrick Sandoval - 91 TBF, 33.1% CSW%
Triston McKenzie - 87 TBF, 32.8% CSW%
Aaron Nola - 106 TBF, 32.7% CSW%
Zach Eflin - 102 TBF, 32.6% CSW%
Zack Wheeler - 96 TBF, 32.4% CSW%
Become a paid sub today to get the rest of the daily notes. It’s just $9/month and you get absolutely everything that I do here. Check out the about page here for more. 10% of your subscription goes to charitable organizations such as Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian humanitarian aid organization.