MLB OPENING DAY | Daily Notes & Projections

Spring training recap, Opening Day projections!

It is Opening Day! Actually, it’s not… but I wanted to put this post out a day or two early since we’ve got most of the information we need and we’re all anxious for Thursday. Welcome to the very first edition of your MLB daily notes!

Obviously, we don’t have much data to talk about here, things will really get juicy in these notes a few weeks into the season. But let’s take a short peek at what went down in spring to identify some of the top performers and then we’ll get into the Opening Day daily projections.

Spring Training Standouts

Pitcher K-BB% Leaders

This is really the only category I’m concerned about in spring. I’ve limited this to pitchers who achieved at least ten innings as well, so you may be missing your favorite stand-out since not all pitchers threw that many innings. Here are your top 10 K-BB% qualified starters from the spring.

1. Aaron Nola - 35.1%

2. Nathan Eovaldi - 33.3%

3. Tarik Skubal - 31.6%

4. Corbin Burnes - 30.2%

5. MacKenzie Gore - 27.7%

6. Max Scherzer - 26.8%

7. Yu Darvish - 26.7%

8. German Marquez - 26.4%

9. Daulton Jefferies - 26.5%

10. Eduardo Rodriguez - 25.8%

Hitter OPS Leaders (30+ PA)

1. Sean Murphy 1.567

2. Edward Olivares 1.559

3. Rafael Devers 1.515

4. Bryce Harper 1.504

5. Keston Hiura 1.433

6. Byron Buxton 1.424

7. Diego Castillo 1.397

8. Aaron Judge 1.386

9. Dominic Smith 1.380

10. Julio Rodriguez 1.305

Hitters, OPS > 1.000, K% Below 20%

This is a pretty large list so I’m leaving out the actual numbers, here are the qualifiers:

Sean Murphy, Edward Olivares, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Bobby Witt Jr., Connor Joe, Lourdes Gurriel Jr., Andres Gimenez, Bryson Stott, Juan Soto, Salvador Perez, Ryan O’Hearn, Jose Abreu, Andy Ibanez, Christian Walker, Owen Miller, Dee Strange-Gordon, Kevin Smith, Luis Arraez, Steven Kwan, Bobby Dalbec

Start/Sit Recommendations

I am maintaining this chart for RotoBaller, so I figured I’d share it in the Daily Notes here. Obviously, a lot of green on the chart today with every team throwing out their best guy. Check it!

Opening Day Hitter Projections

Click here to view projections

Top DraftKings Projections: Rafael Devers (10.71), Willy Adames (10.57), Byron Buxton (10.35), Starling Marte (9.56), Pete Alonso (9.32), Jesse Winker (9.28), Austin Riley (9.1)

DraftKings values: Aristides Aquino ($2200), Julio Rodriguez ($2100), Steven Kwan ($2200), J.D. Davis ($2600), Hoy Jun Park ($2000), Brandon Marsh ($2200), Christian Walker ($2600)

Top Home Run Projections

Rafael Devers - .46
Pete Alonso - .42
Byron Buxton - .32
Adam Duvall - .31
Rowdy Tellez - .30
Willy Adames - .29
Yordan Alvarez - .28
Hunter Renfroe - .27
Gary Sanchez - .26
Bobby Dalbec - .26
Austin Riley - .26
Aristides Aquino - .26

Opening Day Pitcher Projections

Click here to view projections

Here are the strikeout projections, but you really shouldn’t be relying on these for betting this early in the year. There’s very little chance that any of these guys are going to throw their full allotment of pitches, so it’s a bit tougher to project. I limited the project pitch counts to between 70 and 90 here, here are the results.

Top Strikeout Projections

Corbin Burnes - 7.8
Gerrit Cole - 7.5
Robbie Ray - 7.2
Shane Bieber - 6.2
Nathan Eovaldi - 6.1
Yu Darvish - 5.6
Framber Valdez - 5.1
Tyler Mahle - 5.2
Joe Ryan - 5.0
Max Fried - 4.8
Shohei Ohtani - 5.2
Adam Wainwright - 4.8
Zack Greinke - 4.8
Tylor Megill - 4.6
JT Brubaker - 4.1
Madison Bumgarner - 3.6
Kyle Hendricks - 3.5
Patrick Corbin - 3.5

We still need some clarity on the Mets situation. Scherzer seems to be okay but there’s no official word on if he’ll make the Opening Day start. The projections in the linked Google Sheets will update with new news - so keep an eye out there!

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That’s it and that’s all for Opening Day! Spread the word about the newsletter if you like it, it’s quite a bit of work so I appreciate the reads & subscribes. Happy Opening Day, everybody!