Notes and Essays, Week Ending 2/21

2/15 N1: I think I personally would be in favor of including minor league playoff games in players’ overall minor league season statistics, a practice which is not currently done. To take Brody Hopkins, for instance, a Rays farmhand who is Baseball America’s fourth-best prospect among all right-handed pitchers, his two playoff starts last year certainly should count for something versus the only 25 others he had on the year. One argument for the exclusion of postseason stats at the major league level seems much less salient here, which is that it gives those who participate a leg up on accumulating higher totals and securing various league leadership titles. This is certainly not a disincentive when an organization considers whether to promote a player from one level to another, and many minor league players traverse multiple levels in a year, meaning that the purity of league leadership is limited. I suppose the argument that playoff baseball is more difficult than regular baseball, and that therefore it isn’t fair if a player loses a batting title because he had to play in the playoffs, still applies in the minor leagues, but it seems the value that comes from more information in the player’s statistical line should carry the day. As it is, it is as if these playoff games never happened when we looking at individual players’ stats.

2/15 N2: The Pirates’ 19-year-old 2025 first-rounder Seth Hernandez has yet to throw a professional pitch. but Baseball America gives his changeup one of their only two 70 changeup grades among the top 40 right-handed pitching prospects. Interestingly, the other 70-grade changeup belongs to the Angels’ Tyler Bremner (below-slot #2 overall pick in last year’s draft), and it is also a rumor informed only by amateur play.

None of the top 20 lefty prospects were given 70 grades for their changeups.

2/15 N3: Although he had an injury-plagued 2025 (56 innings amid a sprained elbow and then latissimus dorsi surgery), there doesn’t seem to have been much trading on the Jarlin Susana stock. Baseball Prospectus has the Nationals pitcher the same #47 prospect it did a year ago, while Baseball America is down on him exactly one spot to #68, and MLB down on him exactly one spot to #80. Maybe no one knows what to do with him. His strikeout rate, unlike his prospect ranking, has been on the climb. He struck out less than 1 an inning in 2023, but then metamorphosed to a 13.6 SO/9 inning guy in 2024, and was at 15.2/9 last year. Sounds like he has Misiorowski-like velocity, and he is also 6’7”, 283 lb. Baseball America says he recalls Michael Pineda or Felix Bautista.

2/15 N4: Confounding the experts but appearing on all three prospect maps is the White Sox 6’10” lefty Noah Schultz. He’s the #26 prospect according to Baseball America, the #49 for Major League Baseball, but the #100 for Baseball Prospectus. Schultz walked 45 in 73 innings last year after he walked just 24 in 88.1 innings in 2024.

2/15 N5: Stopping once I’d gotten ten right-handers and five left-handers, I went down Baseball America’s top overall pitching prospects lists and looked up the data for everybody who made at least 20 starts last year and made at least one start at Double-A or Triple-A. What percentage of their starts went 90 or more pitches, I wondered? I had no idea of this norm, so I was interested not in one pitcher versus another but in the overall mean, and I suppose interested in the max. I knew there were some Tommy John comebackers who would always be under 90, so that didn’t interest me. This doesn’t have to be your interest, but I was interested not so much in the names but the numbers, in other words. Only minor league starts are included here. Anyway:

Carlos Lagrange 46% 90+ pitches

Jonah Tong 45%

Elmer Rodriguez 44%

JR Ritchie 38%

Bubba Chandler 33%

Andrew Painter 31%

Robby Snelling 31%

Thomas White 23%

Brandon Sproat 12%

Gage Jump 12%

Parker Messick 10%

Brody Hopkins 4%

Trey Yesavage 0%

Trey Gibson 0%

Connor Prielipp 0%

This is just a sample of 15 and a sample of good prospects only, but there are no high outliers here, and it might be hypothesized that Lagrange reveals something of an unofficial ceiling. My question is if this means that teams push their pitchers on and off, or if the ~50% just means that the target isn’t far above 90, and that pitchers will consequently then often be under it?

For most pitchers, we know that MLB maxes are very much enforced and are at a level around 105 or 110 pitches. But I sampled the top five bWAR pitchers last year (Cristopher Sanchez, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Garret Crochet and Hunter Bown) and they reliably exceeded 90 pitches. Cristopher Sanchez, who I am sure sometimes almost didn’t need to, and could go deep into games without throwing 90, only threw 90 pitches 56% of the time. But Skubal, Brown and Crochet actually had almost identical legers: 26 for 31, 26 for 31, and 26 for 32, leaving them all over 80%. Skenes threw 90+ pitches 75% of the time, in 24 of his 32 starts.

Oh, and not that anyone cares, but as the other note hinted at, looking at game logs meant that I had the call of counting or not counting playoff games towards the minor league pitchers’ percentages, and I elected to count them.

2/15 N6: Joel Sherman wrote an article this week making sure that we appreciated what Nolan McLean might be on the precipice of doing (an ace in waiting! two aces for the Mets!). But what roused me more was his off-hand mention of Sandy Alcantara as another prime Cy Young contender. From my detached fan’s viewpoint, my reflex is to be more “sell” on Alcantara than “buy,” but I was surprised to see that he did rank fourth of 52 162+ IP pitchers in average four-seam velocity last season at 97.6. Setting aside 8.1 innings with the Cardinals in 2017, his velocity peaked at 98.1 in 2021. By fastest game, the difference between him in 2025 (98.7 on July 23) and in 2021 (99.3) looks similar.

2/16 N1: A pox on Shohei Ohtani for complicating the framing, but the last exclusive pitcher to win MVP was Kershaw in 2014. Giancarlo Stanton was second in the voting, getting eight first-place votes. His 59-home run season was in 2017, and he won a nip-and-tuck vote that year over Votto. Never better than 19th in MVP in any other season, Stanton seems to rather fir with Mark Kolier’s observation that you can even win back-to-back MVPs and not really have done the things over a career that might suggest. Stanton did have a complete offensive year in 2014, hitting .288 with 37 home runs and 94 walks (if with over a quarter of his career intentional walks) in a MLB season tied for the lowest OPS for any season since the ‘80s.

2/16 N2: With the assistance of the DH, commitment to playing every game among at least some hearty souls might be said to be alive and well. Fifteen players batted in 160+ games last year, compared to only six in 2015. However, there was no increase in the number of players to play the field in 160+ games in 2025 — that was only four guys each year. There is no catch here, as the only scheduled game in 2015 that didn’t come off seems to have been a Tigers-Indians game.

The Tigers drew almost twice the fans of the Indians that season, by the way (2.73 million to 1.39 million) but lost seven more games, although the Indians were just 81-80 in an off-year for the Terry Francona era….I don’t think the Indians were going to make up those million+ fans with one more game, either. Maybe if not just the whole city but if all of the suburbs had come out. ….Starting in 2003, Cleveland has been under 2.3 million in attendance every year since.

2/16 N3: I don’t think there’s any cause and effect, but also a left-handed reliever, Tony Watson shows the John Franco pattern. By which I mean that, in his seven seasons with the Pirates, his average FIP was 3.73, his average E.R.A. 2.85. His yearly differences (FIP always higher) were 0.71, 0.30, 0.81, 1.06, 0.93, 1.31, and 1.04.

Not necessarily standing out with a three-quarters to sidearm delivery, Watson also produced a GB/FB ratio of 1.26, very close to the average for his time. He did lean into the Pirates’ ground ball movement, though, coming up as a 0.74-1 guy, but pitching his two sub-2.00 E.R.A. seasons of 2014 and 2015 at 1.50 and 1.51-1, respectively.

Watson’s knack for keeping opponents off the scoreboard can’t be interpreted in light of stellar Pirates defense, because that doesn’t seem to have been true. In five of Watson’s seven seasons, averaging their NL rank of Defensive Efficiency and Defensive Runs Saved, the Pirates ranked in the bottom half of the league. Their best yearly showing in either category was 4th.

We can continue with the Franco comparison in noting that Franco’s career E.R.A. was 2.89, Watson’s 2.90, and their respective ERA+s 138 and 136. The vast difference emerges when noting that Franco pitched just as well in a career of 92% more innings, however.

It was much harder to hit a home run against Franco. He allowed 9.9-per-575 AB-against-him in his career, versus 15.3/575 for Watson. Franco was in his 40s when FanGraphs starts publishing GB/FB ratio, so I can’t report that characteristic for him.

2/18 N1: I think we can agree that, with Bo Bichette, 2024 never happened. He had a .277 OBP that year, a .322 SLG. His other combos since 2021: .343/.484, .333/.469, .339/.475, .357/.483.

That he posted .426/.557 after the All-Star game in 53 games, though, including the World Series, gives some hope that there might be more in the tank. However, his home run trend is down, if anything: again throwing out 2024, a small decrease in home runs every year, and still more than 30 at-bats per home run post All-Star game in 2025. The key to his run was hitting .368 with a double every 11 at-bats.

2/18 N2: I don’t know what stands out to me more about Darin Erstad’s 2000: how good it was, or its vast superiority to his other seasons. He had the rare 300-times-on-base year and a posted .355 average with 25 home runs and 28 steals earned at a 78% success rate. The 240 hits he had are tied with 1985 Boggs, and since World War II, only Ichiro has had more hits in a season.

I get different reads on how rare or not rare this very high average with some power combination was. On the one hand, among the 26 220+ hit seasons since 1946, 25 home runs is 6th best. But Erstad had a home run percentage (per AB) of 3.69, and of the 72 .350+ seasons (502 PA) since 1946, this ranks him just 43rd. His slugging average was a mortal .541.

We know 2000 was a year of inflated offense in a time of inflated offense, but Erstad’s .355 was still 2nd in the AL to Garciaparra, who did quite a bit of what Erstad did (.372, 21 HR, 51 2B) but missed 22 games, so had “only” 197 hits.

In terms of this year versus Erstad’s others, whether because he was a #1 overall pick, because the year functioned like a quarterback’s Super Win often does, or because of his balls-to-the-walls style, he he had seven other 502 PA seasons, all with the Angels. So he produced a decent sample. If you go from left to right through the categories on his player page on Baseball Reference and ask if 2000 was his career best, you get “yeses” (including a couple of ties) for G, PA, AB, R, H, 2B, 3B, HR, RBI, SB, BB, BA, OBP and SLG. It’s a clean sweep in the major categories, you might say. He also had a season with more caught stealing and had four seasons with fewer strikeouts, so he did less of the bad stuff, too. By strikeout percentage, he did do better in the World Series 2002, however.

Although, particularly in the batting average department, Erstad’s 2000 far exceeds what he did in any other year, he was still a dangerous hitter before. He had OPS+es of 112 in 1997 and 114 in 1998 before falling off a cliff after 2000, even though 2000 was just his age-26 season. He retired with a 93 OPS+.

I wasn’t able to insert it after the fact without ruining the flow of the writing, but in terms of why he kept his job for as long as he did, I see that his three Gold Gloves, more than backed up by his Rfield numbers (a +146 total for his career) mean that sentimentality does not need to hypothesized as an explanation.

2/18 N3: Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the ‘80s were my frame of reference for Cardinals teams that played to their spacious, artificial-turf stadium, but I found last week that the ‘70s Cardinals had actually outdone the ‘80s teams in the art of Wee Willie Keeler baseball. The 1971 Cardinals, for instance, hit more singles than any other National League team in the decade.

With that prompt, I was later able to recollect “Joe Torre 1971” and his .363. I never thought about the team context for that before, which I guess makes sense. The Cardinals had 90 wins, but that’s not a big total, and didn’t get them the division (the Pirates went all the way), even though it would be their most of the decade.

When I looked up the team, though, it didn’t require much piecing together to see that this could have been a preeminent singles and average team, even aside from Torre. Note Lou Brock, Ted Simmons, Matty Alou. Also, after years in center field, Alou was switched to first base mid-season, and the Cardinals brought up Jose Cruz, who would be the NL’s hit champion in 1983 and get over 2000 hits. The Cardinals had done much the same with Simmons and Torre the year before, Simmons coming up at the end of May and Torre moving to third base. Simmons wasn’t ready offensively in 1970, but certainly was in 1971, hitting .304, and in a singles-friendly way, with just 7 HR, not yet showing the power that would make him a 20+ HR-a-year guy despite Busch every year from 1977 to 1980.

Alou obviously got ‘A’ grades over much of his career both for average hitting and lack of power, leading to his being 4th in the NL in singles in ‘71, after leading the league with the Pirates in both ‘69 and ‘70.

Giving the singles achievement value and not just trivial bonafides, the Cardinals did hit .275 and edge out the Pirates for the league’s best batting average, although the Pirates had more hits. The Pirates were too busy hitting home runs to lead in singles, in fact topping the second-place Cardinals by a whopping 31 points in slugging average.

The Cardinals’ .275 average stacks up well for the decade in the National League, although it was beaten by the 1976 Reds (.280), the 1977 Phillies (.279), and the 1979 Cardinals (.278).

The 1979 Cardinals is a case that works like the ‘71 Cardinals, where you jump right away to Keith Hernandez’s .344, best in the league that year.

That doesn’t work as well for the other two teams. To my surprise, with all of their starts, the 1976 Reds were actually led by Ken Griffey Sr.’s .336, which almost did get him the batting title, only spoiled by Bill Madlock’s .339.

Left-handed like his son, Griffey also hit a brilliant .393 in 150 at-bats that year against left-handers. Over his career, he held up well against lefties (.286 vs. .301 against righties; .736 vs .811 in OPS), but not that well.

The 1977 Phillies came to their .279 in remarkable fashion. Greg Luzinski, who also led the NL with 140 strikeouts, led them with a .309. Other than at pitcher, no position on the team (starters and subs combined) was under .270. Would be hard to find the like for that in this era. Even at pitcher, they got production, with Steve Carlton having a 3-HR, 26-for-97 year, and 19-game winner Larry Christenson hitting 3 home runs.

Carlton was on the 1971 Cardinals, by the way, the year before his historic Phillies year, as was Bob Gibson, who garned down-ballot Cy Young action.

This Phillies team also slugged .448, 12 points the best of any NL team of the decade. They had a 101-win regular season, but went down 3 to 1 to the Dodgers in the NLCS.

This was a seaon of “haves” and “have nots” — seven teams winning at least 95 games (led by the Royals with 102), and six losing 95 (led by the expansion Blue Jays, who coughed up 107). On the down side, think also of the Mets (trading Seaver at mid-season) and Braves, as well as the A’s, divested of their dynasty talent, sans Vida Blue.

By the way, Wee Willie Keeler didn’t play on artificial turf, so far as I know….

Also, I looked up the Ted Simmons home/away home run split over 1977-1980. His road home runs kept close company with his home home runs, 43 to 47/ And he had 91 fewer at-bats on the road, so a 4.56 HR PCT on the road, a 4.55 at home.

2/18 N4: It must have created quite the stir when Tommy John left the Dodgers after 1978 and signed with the Yankees, what with the teams having faced off in the two preceding World Series, and John having started three of the games for the Dodgers and gone 1-1 with a 3.92 E.R.A. He was a good way past his famous surgery at this point. He responded in a big win in New York, winning 20 games in both 1979 and 1980 against only 9 defeats each year. John also did his part in 1981, finishing 5th in the AL in E.R.A. and throwing 7 scoreless innings against the Dodgers in game 2 of the World Series, but L.A. got a measure of revenge, taking the series.

2/20 N1: A difference last year between Robbie Ray’s won-loss record (11-8) and the Giants’ record in his starts (22-10). Perhaps both deserve some weight, but when there is a difference between the two, my research tells me to go with personal won-loss record. I think what I found is that the norm is that pitchers usually pitch better when the team loses and they don’t than when the team wins and they don’t. Pitchers don’t control what happens when they leave the game. The idea that a pitcher can help by having his team consistently down but in striking range when he leaves doesn’t wash. That’s about as fruitful a path to victory as “just wanting to be close entering in the fourth quarter” (always the proclamation of a coach up against it).

In Ray’s case, however, he had no starts last year where he pitched fewer than four innings, but eight where he left after four or in the fourth and so couldn’t get the win. The Giants were a surprising 5-3 in these games and won only one by less than a three-run margin. Ray’s reputation is as a high-pitch-count guy, and in seven of these starts, he basically hit his pitch count, throwing in the 90-100 pitch range. Team won-loss record does take on increased interest now that five innings is is perhaps a tougher mark to reach (although my research says that the increase in starts of LT 5 innings isn’t as great as most believe, if I remember right).

The good offensive performance the Giants had once Ray left his games is evident when noting that, per inning pitched when he was in games, his support ranked him just 44th of 117 starters last year, but by total support in his game starts, he ranked 24th.

2/20 N2: Total MLB percentages for 2025 by starting pitcher game score range were

60+ .325; 45-59 .369; LT 45 .306

But for Luis Castillo, the breakdown was

60+ .500, 45-59 .188, LT 45 .313

Castillo was excellent in delivering in the top range but worse than average in avoiding ‘blah’ starts. He was low in the middle category.

Framber Valdez also had 16 60+ starts and 6 45-59 starts, but one less LT 45 start than Castillo. I tried out some other candidates for Jekyll and Hyde but didn’t find anyone compatible.

I would certainly chalk it up first to coincidence, although Castillo did have stark home/road splits last year that included a 0.967 WHIP at home, a 1.456 on the road. Eleven of his 16 60+ starts came at home, and seven of his ten LT 45 starts came on the road.

2/20 N3: Amazing difference in Luis Castillo’s walk rates vs. right-handers (3.3%) and left-handers (9.0%) last year. None of the walks were intentional. No left-hander drew more than two walks against him on the year, so it seems he was just careful against them in general. Meanwhile, Guerrero Jr., Matt McLain and Gleyber Torres accounted for 6 of the 12 walks he gave up to right-handers.

2/20 N4: Of the 107 pitchers with 502 batters faced last year, Spencer Strider had the 3rd-worst strike rate. At his peak in 2023, he ranked 5th of 100 pitchers.

2/20 N5: Batting average may be boring, but let’s not consign the “hit tool” to the dustbin. To start with, no matter how badly a pitcher fucks up everything else, if he allows a low batting average, he’s going to do o.k. Caleb Smith in 2019 is the only pitcher in history to allow a batting average of under .230 with 502 batters faced and allow an OPS over .750 at the same time (he gave up 33 home runs and 60 walks in his 153.1 innings). Smith still managed a 4.52 E.R.A., a 95 ERA+. There have only been 15 pitchers with 502 batters faced in the last 15 years to give up an OPS of over .700 while their average allowed was under .230.

Hitters have much more to do with home runs than pitchers, and a high home run total is a shortcut to a big OPS. So on the hitting side I thought these cases would abound, but really they don’t. There have been 36 .750+ OPS seasons with averages under .230 and 502 PA since 2011. .750 is not a big OPS, it should be noted. The best is only .869, Joey Gallo’s 2017 (41 HR in 449 AB), then it is a good ways to Kyle Schwarber’s .827 in 2022. Eugenio Suarez’s BA, HR combination of .228 with 49 wasn’t quite there with Raleigh and Schwarber last year, but still remarkable. He is third under the parameters with a .824 OPS. So you really do have to hit for some average if you don’t play a key defensive position and hold our hopes of being an All-Star. A low average is a limiting factor.

In support of their .750 OPS, most of these players had good walk rates. Suarez’s 2025 46 walks are second fewest on the list, to Adam Duvall’s 35 in 2021.

Suarez last year tied Andre Dawson (1987) for the most home runs ever in a season with fewer than 50 walks, and the more I go through these kinds of things, the more I think that 15 million contract he’s getting from the Reds this year is likely to be an overpay, in opposition to my initial reaction. That he didn’t walk much last year was a part of his season I missed because he normally does; it was the lowest walk total he’d ever had in a season where he’d played 100 games, and his career walk rate stood at over 10% through 2023.

Suarez’s walk/home run combination might not have been surpassed often, but it fits with many previous seasons, to tell you the truth. There is absolutely a lesson here in how much you stack the deck arbitrarily starting with something like “fewer than 50 walks” when that conforms to the player’s line. Suarez and Dawson hit the most home runs with 49, but 12 seasons are in the 45-49 home run range, including three from Juan Gonzalez, and Junior Caminero last year. And Dawson walked only 32 times, so had a much higher ratio of HR/BB than Suarez.

There have been 16 40+ HR, LT 40 walk seasons. Besides Dawson’s 1987, a couple that really stand out are Dante Bichette, 1995 (40 HR, 22 BB) and Salvador Perez, 2021 (48 HR, 28 BB). For golden oldies, note Orlando Cepeda, 1961 (46 HR, 39 BB) and Hal Trotsky, 1936 (42 HR, 36 BB).

I noted Suarez’s poor performance in contrast to his big home run total in two different particulars, though — for batting average and walks. So this makes it clear he must really stand out for his low on-base precentage relative to those home runs.

To engage in a bit more gaming of the system, Suarez had a .298 OBP. The best home run total with a OBP under .300, other than the 49 he hit, brings us again to Duvall’s 38 in 2021. But that is way, way down from 49, so I’m impressed, despite the stacking the deck. There have been nine other 35+ HR, .200-something OBP seasons, including Jo Adell’s 37/.293 last year.

This is certainly Dave Kingman’s thing; he has four of the seasons. The stats that Kingman would have put up today would really have been amazing. As a type, considering his era, he remains the measuring stick.

2/20 N6: Since 1900, Kyle Schwarber 2023 (108 R) and 2022 (100 R) mark the only two times a player has hit under .230 and scored 100 runs in a season. Both of those teams scored under 800 runs, and Schwarber scored 19 more runs than anyone else on the 2022 Phillies, so I’d have to say he earned it.

The sub-.300 OBP, 100+ R club is also one with two, although this time two different guys: Hughie Critz, 1930 (108 R), and Jimmy Rollins, 2009 (100 R). We look at 1930 National League with a jaundiced eye, rightly assuming Critz got a ton of help. He played 28 games with the Reds, then 124 with the Giants, every single one coming as the leadoff hitter. Hitting leadoff, of course, is an advantage for scoring runs, although Critz’s OBP when he led off an inning that year was .248. Again, we have competing strangeness, as even though Critz was a woeful hitter (58 OPS+ with the Giants) and arrived to the team late, he started more games at leadoff than the Giants started anyone anywhere else. Old man McGraw was evidently in love with 147-pounder!

Despite the questionable lineup construction, the Giants still scored 959 runs, third in the NL. Terry hit .401 and the prodigy Ott led the league in OBP. Critz tied for 16th in the league in runs.

Two years removed from his MVP 2007, Rollins hit just .250 with 44 walks in 2009 but had 69 extra-base hits, stole 31 bases and had the benefit of hitting leadoff. Offense was not at great heights but the Phillies matched their pennant by leading the league in runs scored.

Three of the nine total 90+ run cases with a sub .300 OBP have occurred in the last two years. Eugenio Suarez scored 91 runslast year, as did Pete Crow-Armstrong (.287 OBP). Then it was good to be Anthony Volpe in 2024 (just 12 HR and .293 OBP, but 90 R), hit leadoff 76 times and have Soto and Judge coming up behind you.

2/20 N7: When Adam Duvall came up before as a guy who was just one shy of having one quarter of his times on base in 2021 come from home runs, I searched futilely in my mind for who this was, thinking of Laroche instead. Laroche never hit more than 32 home runs in a season, but for his career had Duvall by 33 points in the average department and by 49 points in the OBP department. The picture helped me out with Duvall.

Adam is an another name that wasn’t always in vogue. Pirates left fielder Comorosky went 100 R and RBI in 1930 while leading the NL in 3B (23) and sacrifice hits (33) and placing second in extra-base percentage taken (74%). But Comorosky slumped to a 64 OPS+ the next year, and he was the last Adam to reach 502 plate appearances in a season in the 20th century.

But these days, Adams are so common I am confusing them. Since 2000, we’ve had regulars Dunn, Eaton, Everett, Frazier, Jones, Kennedy, LaRoche, and Lind. Considering his center field value, Jones was probably hands down the best, but LaRoche actually has him by a few doubles, and Eaton and Kennedy hit more triples. Dunn hit more home runs, of course, and drew almost four times as many walks. Dunn leads the Adams in runs and RBI — in both categories the only Adam over 1000.

Adam, it’s biblical enough. How could there have been such amnesia? Hey, that works on both levels! Both for the 1931-1999 gap, and my block concerning Duvall.