Notes Week Ending 5/10

5/5 N1: Vinnie Pasquantino’s BAbip, .198 this year after .265 last year, has gone from bad to worse. His 0.56 GB/FB rate this year, while the MLB average is over 1.00, would seem to have something to do with his low average. Last year, his ratio was 0.92. If he were Anthony Santander, who also was at 0.56 last year but hit 44 home runs to minimize the importance of his .235 average, it would be a different story.

5/5 N2: Byron Buxton — 44 strikeouts and 5 walks. Surely he is just trying to provoke me? His track record certainly didn’t rule it out, but it would be ironic if the only really interesting statistical result that came with a fully healthy season for him would be 200 strikeouts, which he is currently on pace for.

I did note that his sprint speed is currently above the sacred 30 ft/sec, a level he hasn’t reached since 2019. He is 4th in bolts (30 ft/sec runs), behind Witt, Trea Turner, and Victor Scott.

5/5 N3: Checking on the latest OPS by Position data, catchers have been on a remarkable run. Last in OPS last year, they are 3rd this year. They sit at .720, 24 points better than where they were on 4/19 of this season.

My feel of exactly which catchers have been particularly hot since then isn’t good enough to take a shot at telling you, but I can tell you that we have clear runs created leaders in each league for the season. In the AL, Cal Raleigh has created 29 runs, putting him on pace for 142, and Carson Kelly (of course) has 26 in the NL. The rest of the top 10 in MLB, listed in order but not noting ties, are Hunter Goodman, William Contreras, Logan O’Hoppe, Keibert Ruiz, Joey Bart, Dillon Dingler, and Ryan Jeffers. This list is for players with 51%+ of their games at the position.

Sean Murphy is outside that top 10, but has certainly been helping the recent statistics. Salvador Perez seems to be hitting better than he was earlier in the season.

Bart’s .408 OBP has been a bright spot for Pittsburgh. So far, he’s all but reproduced his .799 of last year, but has done it without the power. He has only 1 home run in 85 at-bats, while last year, he hit 13 in 253.

Center field is also ascendant offensively, up the same 24 points as Catcher since 4/19. Since center fielders were 14 points behind catchers at that point, however, you know they haven’t been on quite as much of a run not to be able to advance more. Pete Crow-Armstrong (25), Oneil Cruz (25), Jung Hoo Lee (24), and Cedric Mullins (23) could be said to be battling for the runs created lead.

The position features no shortage of good stories, if by stories we mean statistical narratives.

There is Trent Grisham’s .605 slugging average.

Dane Myers has a .923 OPS in his 16 starts (including 2 in RF) and 24 games.

Andy Pages, still a relative baby in age, has taken a step up if one has very long legs, and two otherwise. His 1.3 bWAR matches what he did all of last year.

And then there is Javier Baez, whose .350 OBP would be the best he’s ever had. Baez is also hitting for a little pop, with 7 doubles and 3 home runs in 94 at-bats.

With all of that good, however, center field’s OPS is just .706 and just 9 points better than it was last year. You look at those guys at the top in runs created, who, to a man, were not positive contributors last year, and that there isn’t more improvement is surprising. The 4/19 check-in point showed that the position actually started the year below the 2024 level.

Who have been the laggards? Among those with 100 plate appearances, we can cite Michael Harris (.577 OPS) and Cedanne Rafaela (.602).

The 70-99 PA group probably explains more. In that window, we have Jo Adell (.504), Jacob Young (.565), Garrett Mitchell (.580), Leody Taveras (.601), Kyle Isbel (.606), and Tyrone Taylor (.647).

There is so little walking going on that a guy like Adell, with a 4.2% walk rate, almost flies under the radar. Taveras, Isbel, and Taylor have combined for 4 walks on the season.

Only shortstops trail center fielders in walks this season. There seems a bit of a pattern there — where youth and athleticism are coin of the realm, walks lag a bit behind. Designated Hitters are absolutely killing everybody in walks, supporting the thesis (z of 2.19, and they have 10.9% walks from PA, versus 7.8% for shortstops).

5/5 N4: Shota Imanaga: from the NL’s best SO/BB ratio of 6.21 last year, to 2.43 this year, exactly the current NL average. Imanaga has a 2.82 E.R.A., so it’s yet to bite him.

5/5 N5: Of the four Cleveland sub-2.00 E.R.A. relievers of 2024 (Emmanuel Clase, Cade Smith, Hunter Gaddis, and Tim Herrin), so far Smith and Gaddis have repeated at that level. Smith turned heads, and expectations that he would repeat or approach his E.R.A. were high, but Gaddis decided he wouldn’t wait for his luck to change. With 21 strikeouts in 13.1 innings, he’s been striking out batters, big time. He induced a .205 BAbip last year but struck out just 8 per 9 innings.

Gaddis was a starter throughout his minor league career with Cleveland, including when he struck out 102 in 76.1 innings for AA Akron in 2022. He began 2023 in Cleveland’s rotation, but since May 22 of 2024, he hasn’t been asked to go more than an inning. Don’t take from that that he hasn’t been very active; only Oakland’s T.J. McFarland, somehow rather able to construct a specialized lefty innings-to-games ratio despite the three-batter rule, appeared in more games last year.

5/5 N6: Toronto seems to stink, despite a 16-18 record. Getting outscored by a run a game. A team I’d have trouble watching every day. The oasis from the misery seems to be the performances of 36-year-old Chris Bassitt and 34-year-old Kevin Gausman.

Going by Baseball Reference’s PAge, there are older staffs. All in the American League: Rangers, Yankees, Orioles.

Those Blue Jay-Orioles matchups are going to be gloomy affairs for now (not that the Orioles don’t have lots of talent).

5/5 N7: Still a mystery to a box score monitor how Josh Naylor is stealing all these bases (6 now) despite 24.5 ft/sec speed….His sprint speed hasn’t ranked above the 15th percentile since 2021.

One imagines there is some trick to this, and these are not high-leverage steals. But, as I don’t think he is going to get paid based off of his steals, unless things really get crazy, one then wonders what the point is. I would imagine there are only so many low-leverage situations that can be found, and if his number is to rise to a truly impressive number, he will have to go when the other team is not conceding the point.

5/5 N8: His legacy will still be #1 overall pick of 2016, but 4 of Mickey Moniak’s first 18 hits this year going for triples does prompt a double take.

Since he still won’t be 27 for a few days and put up a .495 slugging average for the Angels two years ago in over 300 plate appearances, I can well understand why the Rockies are giving him a look. But I cop to a weakness for alliterative names (hello, Dillon Dingler).

Another link between Moniak and Dingler is some ghastly BB/SO ratios. Dingler is no walks this year, 28 strikeouts. Moniak had 113 strikeouts and 9 walks in that generally successful 2023 with the Angels. But so far this year, Moniak has been vastly improved in his BB/SO ratio, which sits at 7/20.

5/5 N9: Before this season, I don’t think too many people would have had Zack Wheeler with a better SO/innings ratio than Garrett Crochet, and Crochet with more innings than Wheeler, absent injury to either.

5/6 N1: I’m reserving judgment on Dane Myers, but I’m intrigued. I take heart from his minor league 2023, which was spread between the Southern and International Leagues. That year, in 438 plate appearances, he slashed .316/.406/.489. The previous year, his OBP was only .315, but he had 25 home runs in 450 at-bats.

There is a learning curve here, as Myers is a former pitcher. You might say, then, that he comes by the 99th percentile his Statcast Arm Strength is showing honestly.

5/6 N2: A roll call of dominant relievers so far: Kyle Leahy (STL), Steven Okert (HOU), Luke Weaver (NYY), Robert Suarez (SDP), Jeff Hoffman (TOR), Lucas Erceg (KCR), Danny Coulombe (MIN), Nick Mears (MIL), Tommy Kahnle (DET), Andres Munoz (SEA), Steven Wilson (CHW), Camilo Doval (SFG), Fernando Cruz (NYY), Wandy Peralta (SDP), Grant Holman (ATH), Mason Fluharty (TOR), Kolby Allard (CLE), Josh Hader (HOU).

That is everyone who has pitched at least 7 innings, has an E.R.A. of 2.25 or less, and has (Innings - Base Runners) of 3 or greater. They are ranked in order of the biggest difference between their innings and base runners.

Young guys on the list (age-26 season or younger): Fluharty (23), Holman (25), Munoz (26).

Hard throwers (97.5 or higher): Munoz (98.5), Suarez (98.2), Erceg (97.7).

For strong marks in everything (hits, walks, strikeouts, and runs), the three guys that stand out are Okert, Hoffman, and Hader. Munoz and Cruz have very good k rates, so would be there if not for their walks.

Teams represented twice among the 18 guys: Yankees, Astros, Padres, and Blue Jays.

5/6 N3: Not only has Maikel Garcia been great at the plate recently, but he’s stolen 6 for his last 6, seemingly putting behind him his puzzling early-season stealing slump. He had three steals against Tampa Bay last Thursday, and two against the White Sox yesterday. The three steals all came against Shane Boz, but yesterday he diversified, victimizing two Chicago relievers. If a base stealer isn’t pitcher dependent, that’s a good sign.

5/6 N4: A couple of teams that don’t pinch hit, relatively speaking, that may surprise you: Washington, with just 13 pinch hit plate appearances (ranking 29th), and the Angels, with just 15 (tied for 26th).

Among teams playing very well, that Detroit has used 43 pinch hitters, the third most overall, doesn’t surprise me, but I know less about Seattle aside from the Jorge Polanco thing. So I was surprised to see they are 2nd in pinch hitters, with 44.

The White Sox lead everybody with 48.

Milawaukee is tied for 7th, with 31. I might have thought they were even higher, as using a lot of pinch hitters seems to fit with the public facing of the team.

I also noted that Jake Bauers has pinch hit 10 times this season. He had 2 hits yesterday, and his OPS is up to .785, but if the Christian god is as patient with his subjects as Bauer’s managers have been with him, we should count ourselves lucky. The value his managers see in him defies analysis. Bauers has pinch hit 10 times this season.

5/7 N1: To have been outscored by 0.44 runs a game this year, yet be 21-15 (.583), the Guardians have really gotten their runs and allowed their runs against in the right places. It does work neatly that they’re the same “6 over” in 1-run games that they are overall, but that still means they’ve been outscored by 22 runs in their 26 other games, yet are .500 in those games.

While his play remains solid otherwise, unless you are to cite his league-leading 5 errors, Jose Ramirez is in a major power slump. Since his 3-home run game on April 4, he’s hit just 1 home run. Yet the team seems to have firmly turned the corner from the dog days of 2022 and 2023, when they cumulatively hit the fewest home runs in the majors. With Kyle Manzardo the clear team leader, they are in a three-way tie for 9th.

5/7 N2: The American League’s .240 batting average right now is the same it was last year. But if we look at the number of .270 batters, the picture is more bleak, and if the current trajectory continues, there will be an alarmingly low number.

Only 20 qualifiers are hitting .270, compared to 18 last year. The ratio should be a lot higher than essentially 1:1, with less than a quarter of the season in the books, what with the tendency for more variation in small sample sizes. It is also simply easier to qualify over a shorter period of time (fewer players will have been felled by the injury bug. etc.). Seventy-six players have officially had the chance to hit .270, while just 58 did last year.

Twenty .270 hitters over 15 teams is 1.33 a team. Five teams (the Orioles, White Sox, Angels, Twins, and Rangers) do not have a qualifying .270 hitter. It’s probably largely a coincidence, but they have an average record of 14-21, which is .400 baseball.

5/7 N3: George Springer is second in the American League in OBP, behind only Judge. This has me scrambling for whether there is a Comeback Player of the Year award. I have trouble keeping my sports straight on this. It seems there is, so I guess it comes without the dramatic unveiling afforded those awards in the nightly spotlight like Manager of the Year, Rookie of the Year, etc.

5/7 N4: The control that Tarik Skubal has (2nd in MLB in strike percentage after being 1st last year), beyond just his stuff, is what makes him rare. Currently owns an absurd 9.6 SO/BB ratio.

No one’s been at 10-1 since Phil Hughes in 2014. I have to say that I consider pulling off the feat with an absurdly low walk ratio (Hughes walked 0.69 per 9), as Hughes did, isn’t quite in the spirit of the thing. But maybe I just wanted the test to identify a better pitcher than Hughes (111 ERA+, although the AL’s 6th-best pitcher bWAR that year).

5/7 N5: On pace for 109 walks and 66 steals, Oneil Cruz is not much like the player he used to be, and the change is for the better. Had 28 walks and 10 steals in 361 plate appearances as a rookie, and 51 and 22 last year.

So even with the liberalized stolen base rule in play last year, he didn’t go wild, although I wonder if his 22 for 23 performance didn’t make him think he might be doing more of that.

5/7 N6: Other than Camilo Doval, who worked a 1-2-3 seventh and struck out Ian Happ on a 100-MPH cutter, it seems like just about every reliever I cited yesterday morning had blown up by the conclusion of the night’s game. Maybe I jinxed them, or relied too much on hits per innning. Or maybe relievers are fickle.

5/8 N1: I have to consider the “three-batter rule” a bit of a mockery when the Guardians can get away with seven pitchers over the final five innings of their win against the Nationals Wednesday. It’s not as if these pitchers were getting hit, and needed to be rescued, either; giving up 3 runs, Matt Festa did credit to John Smoltz’s “weak link in the chain makes serial relieving risky” argument, but he was the only Cleveland reliever with a scoreboard blemish.

5/8 N2: I would love to see someone do some AI-powered comparison of how often “Guardians” is used in news accounts next to “Cleveland” to refer to that team, compared to other teams. In person, I think we lean towards “Cleveland” just to be on safe ground and make sure we don’t slip with an “Indians”, but my hypothesis is that you would find the same trend in writing. Suggesting that people are just a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing and so lean towards Cleveland. Maybe we would find the same thing if we studied how often people who ask for a “they” pronoun are instead called by their name.

While not energized about it, have no kick with Cleveland changing to Guardians. Seems something that had to be done, with little real downside. But I still think people are slow to come around, to get used to the change, and they don’t fight that by loading up on “Guardian” references, which would probably be the most effective way to break habit.

It would take a Russell Wilson-style perfectionist to make a resolution to use Guardians 15 times a day! The rest of us just muddle along and go halfway.

5/8 N3: Data on Michael Soroka’s return was really interesting. 8 SO in 5 innings is very promising. He did that with only 10 swing and misses, though, versus 20 called strikes. Meanwhile, he had a high strike rate for the game, 68%.

So were the Guardians taking an unusual amount, particularly of his strikes? Yes.

Their swing rate against him for the game was 42.3%. That is a somewhat low number, it seems, with only Zac Gallen, Carlos Rodon, and Brady Singer lower on the season, among qualifiers.

Where I see a bigger difference, though, between Soroka’s start and average, is in the Zone Swing (I suppose this is somewhat tautological noting all of those “taking” strikes). I’m not sure their input source (I’m guessing Statcast), but Fangraphs has the percentage at 48.8%. In comparison, different companies use different zones, but none of the three FanGraphs provides seasonal data for shows any pitcher with a Zone Swing rate lower than .561.

In terms of repertoire, Michael threw 45% fastballs (almost all 4-seam), 44% sliders, and 12% changeups. Nothing too crazy about those numbers for him, although the proportion of the slider (it’s an 81 MPH one) is higher than it’s been historically, particularly compared to before 2024.

Not saying they’ll name the award for him, much less give it to him, but a Soroka comeback would be epic indeed….

5/8 N4: Jose Altuve’s .662 OPS is now the lowest it’s been since after the Astros first game of the year. Don’t have a good feeling about his prospects. As for that contract extension he signed before 2024, arrggh. A measure of the Astros greatness is how much work it has taken to tear it down, but the current management (including the owner) is doing their best.

5/8 N5: The BAbip against Logan Webb is .355, but he’s given up only 1 home run. Also hasn’t given up a steal. Could be having an even better season.

5/8 N6: Kansas City’s AL-best 2.99 E.R.A. makes one look at their pitching staff. An interesting contrast between Lugo and Ragans this year. Lugo, a 2.84 E.R.A. and a 4.37 FIP; Ragans, a 3.79 E.R.A. and a 2.36 FIP.

5/8 N7: There are people who serve on juries more often than Miles Mastrobuoni gets hit by pitches. He’s been hit only twice in his professional career of 3334 plate appearances. The painful exceptions were in 2016 while he was playing for the Hudson Valley Renegades, and in 2022 when he was with the Durham Bulls.

5/8 N8: A Matt Sauer, 26 years old, had an easy experience pitching for the Dodgers against the Marlins on Wednesday, holding them to 2 base runners and 1 unearned run in 4 innings of relief. Sauer was drafted by the Yankees in 2017 from Righetti High School. I have asked for every last ounce of effort from ChatGPT, while full knowing that sports is its weakest area of things I care about. ChatGPT has convinced me the namesake of the school, Ernest Righetti, frm a cattle ranching family, is no relation to Dave. The high school is in Santa Maria, CA.

5/8 N9: Insane that even with the time he’s missed, Freddie Freeman is behind only 12 players in runs created. Of them, only Judge has more runs created-per-27 outs.

Teammate Ohtani, meanwhile, is quietly tied for 2nd in MLB with Alonso in runs created. I think I’m taking him for granted.

5/8 N10: Currently, 46 MLBers have 7 HR or more, translating to a pace of 31 or 32. Three have negative bWAR: Angel teammates Mike Trout (.179 BA, 9 HR) and Taylor Ward (.180 BA, 7 HR), and Matt Mervis (.191, 7 HR).

5/8 N11: Accounting for at least 25% of his teams home runs this year:

Kyle Schwarber 31.6%

Oneil Cruz 30.8%

Byron Buxton 28.1%

Fernando Tatis 26.7%

James Wood 26.3%

Even on the White Sox last year, a player would have needed 34 home runs to be over 25%, so it’s difficult to carry out over a full year. Just hitting a ridiculous number of home runs might be the most predictable path; even playing for MLB’s top home run team last year, Judge’s 58 were good for 24.5%. A couple more home runs, increasing the Yankees total by the same 2, and he’d have been at 25%.

5/8 N12: A couple of funny moments/thoughts from the piece I am writing.

“The finesse pitcher was handled with finesse.”

I first mistook by own use of “Eck Man” for Elon Musk. Do you think THAT EM should adopt Eck Man? Thinking about Twitter and X, we know he’s all about the name change.

5/8 N13: One wonders if the phenomenon of “good pitching beating good hitting”, as we see manifested in today’s All-Star games, dates back to All-Star games of yesteryear. In the 1967 game, a 2-1 National League victory in 15 innings, there were a total of 30 strikeouts and 2 walks in the game. MLB had just a .664 OPS that year, but the SO/BB ratio was 2.01-1.

Triple Crown winner Yastrzemski showed up for the big moment, getting both of the walks, and three hits besides. Other than when Marichal struck him out, he reached base every time up.

The batting champ in the other league, Roberto Clemente (.357), had a tougher time. He struck out 4 times.

An inscrutable fact is that Orioles manager had Yaz hitting 6th in the game, and his teammate, Tony Conigliaro, 5th. It was about 5 weeks later when Congliaro got beaned. Regardless of how tantalizing his potential, he wasn’t a third of the hitter Yaz was, and sometimes even hit 5th or 6th for the Red Sox that season, while Yaz almost always hit 3rd. Conigliaro was hitting .295 at the break, which would have been a career high, but had missed time, playing in just 59 first-half games. He’d hit 13 home runs in them, but only 5 doubles.

You couldn’t have the season Yaz had in 1967 (193 OPS+, 12.4 bWAR) and not be tearing it up at the break, but for the record, he had a slugging average over .600 both halves, and very similar numbers overall.

Hitting 3rd and 4th were the Twins guys, Oliva and Killebrew. Players who can’t be faulted, at least without provoking me.

5/9 N1: It seems we hear strangely little about the most home runs ever given up by a reliever in a single season. Assuming Stathead’s records are complete enough to answer this, it is John Wyatt, who gave up 23 home runs while pitching for the Kansas City A’s in 1964. His performance didn’t stand out enough in either direction that he got more than a mention, but Wyatt was a part of my “1960s High-Save Guys” post. While he topped out at just 21, he was in a group with Hoyt Wilhelm and Stu Miller as the only pitchers to reach 20 saves three times in the decade. That triumvirate was behind Dick Radatz, who did it four times.

1964 was one of Wyatt’s 20-save seasons. He pitched 128 innings with a 107 ERA+. His home run rate of 1.62 per 9 was certainly very high, but obviously that innings total has a lot to do with his having the record.

Still, the 23 home runs he gave up are off by themselves. The second guy, Bill Henry, was used in a similar fashion, throwing 134.1 innings for the 1959 Cubs.

Henry is out of place appearing on any ignominious list for his performance that season. It was actually a career year for him: a 4.4 bWAR, a 2.68 E.R.A., and a 146 ERA+. He gave up 19 home runs. I guess there is a point that he maintained a home runs allowed rate 35% over league average pitching that many innings, but he wasn’t in the top 20 in the league in home runs allowed.

Pitching at Wrigley doesn’t seem to have contributed to his home runs given up; the multi-year runs park factor was 99, and Henry gave up 9 home runs on the road, in fewer innings than he pitched at home.

This story has a contemporary tie. Among relievers to throw at least 60 innings in a season, if Enyel De Los Santos had thrown even a third of an inning less last year, his 17 home runs allowed in 63.2 IP would have set the record for the worst per-inning rate ever. As it is, Gabe White has the record for his 2001 season with the Rockies. De Los Santos spent last with the Padres, Yankees, and White Sox. Except for his brief stint with the Yankees, he actually wasn’t terrible, and certainly wasn’t considering all of those home runs.

He’s been a featured member of the Braves bullpen this season. Having allowed 2 home runs already, it can’t be said that he’s put fears of a repeat to bed, but he has continued to perform respectably, with a 3.78 E.R.A.

De Los Santos’s pre-2024 home run history is also interesting. In 65.1 innings from 2018-2021, including 3 starts, he gave up 14 home runs, but then did a great job keeping the ball in the park with Cleveland from 2022-2023, allowing just 7 home runs in 119 innings (0.5 per 9). I am guessing there is a pattern, a coherent cause, explaining all of the home runs he allowed in 2021 and 2024, and his ability to avoid them in 2022 and 2023. The disparity in the periods is just too great.

Of Gabe White, along with all the opprobrium that must be dumped on him for 18 home runs allowed in 67.2 innings in 2001, his 2000 season with the Rockies has to be on the short list of the greatest relief seasons in franchise history. Traded from the Reds after pitching 1 game for them that season, White allowed just a 0.916 WHIP in 83 innings. He also had an 11-2 record, a 2.17 E.R.A., and a 4.5 bWAR. So it’s no wonder there would have been a bit of a loose leash in 2001.

Fifty is more of a round number than 60, and using 60 innings as the minimum for qualifying home run rates engenders suspicion that I picked that number to nail De Los Santos. Three relievers in the 50-60 inning range have indeed allowed a higher rate of home runs than White. From highest to lowest rate, Joel Peralta in 2008; Johnny Sain in 1955; and Adam Plutko in 2021.

Peralta’s ledger that season was 15 home runs in 52.2 innings. All of his 620 career games came as a reliever. He was a solid career performer, with a 103 ERA+. For all of those career games, he only had six seasons with more than 50, suggesting that when he was used, he was really used. Peralta’s ugly 2008 broke the nice run he had been on with Kansas City in 2006 and 2007. His best years were most decidedly the ones he had with Tampa Bay from 2011-2014. He pitched in at least 69 games in each of those years, and led the AL in games pitched in 2013.

Sain was certainly the name among all the names that intrigued me. Given his fame in “Spahn and Sain and pray for rain”, I was grappling for the context of this brush with the reliever record book. It was in his very last big league season.

It certainly happens with cats and dogs, and I guess with people, too, that they can be far from right and have their medical issues, but they get by, until suddenly, they don’t. And intuiting, I’m guessing that’s what happened with Sain. He had a very successful 1954 with the Yankees when made exclusively a reliever, saving 26 games, while no one else in the league had more than 15. Sain also had a 110 ERA+. But he gave up 11 home runs in 77 innings.

He was still with the Yankees when 1955 began but on May 11 they traded him and Enos Slaughter to the A’s for what seems like it was a bag of balls. The good news over Sain’s first 5.1 innings of that year had been that his runs allowed equaled his home runs. The bad news was that there had been 4 of those (3 solo, and one 2-run home run with an inherited runner).

Sain ended the year with 50 innings pitched exactly, and 14 home runs. Particularly in those days, it didn’t necessarily take a pitcher a long time to accumulate 50 innings, and the A’s were done with Sain quickly too, by July 16, releasing him.

Sain as a starter also knew little in between. He was seemingly a shell of himself after 1948, but from 1946-1948, he’d taken the National League by storm, posting a 2.77 E.R.A. with an average of 282 innings pitched a year. He led the league in bWAR in 1946, and in wins in 1948.

That “bag of balls” return I alluded to for Sain and the 39-year-old Slaughter was cash and a 30-year-old pitcher, Sonny Dixon, who had pitched to little distinction to that point and had just 4.1 big league innings left. Defying his age, however, Slaughter was not washed. In fact, he hit so well for Kansas City in 1955 (.408 OBP in 108 games) that he got a second tour of duty with the Yankees, and didn’t retire until 1959.

5/9 N2: The Twins are doing it again. They lead MLB in walks-per-9. Not that this is the only distinct thing about Twins baseball, but it is a strange thing to be a focal point, year after year. I’m reminded of the Miami Dolphins always committing the fewest penalties under Don Shula. He did coach the Dolphins for 26 years, but it’s harder to maintain culture with inevitable changes in management, which the Twins almost certainly have had.

If you need any confirmation of the trend, though, I checked. From 2000-2024, they walked 2.77 per 9, a dominant performance when the teams are sorted. The Yankees are 2nd, at 3.00 per 9. The Twins are just 19 games over .500 over those 25 years.

You’d think, or at least I would, that National League teams would be at a decided advantage in walks per 9, since most of those years were non-DH years in the NL. Pitchers almost never walk, and offense is just lower in all categories when they’re hitting. But from 2000-2021, American League teams walked 3.20 per 9, National League teams 3.31 per 9. Seattle and Cleveland get in there in the major league top 5 in walks-per-9 from 2000-2024, with the Dodgers the only National League representative.

Was that, too, a culture in the NL? A culture of walks overcoming the probabilities that a non-DH league should have facilitated? Doubtless, an offsetting factor to some degree is that the 8th-place hitter used to get pitched around in the National League.

5/9 N3: Fernando Cruz and Jose Trevino have been performed so well in the early going, they’re making that swap look like it was one of more than minor players. It’s all the more improbable given that they are 35 and 32, respectively.

5/10 N1: Atlanta seems to save its good defense for its relievers. The team has a .236 BAbip with relievers on the mound, a .296 with starters. I actually feel pretty good about their rotation right now. The overall MLB BAbip is .290, with almost no difference between starters and relievers.

Switching to good old regular batting average, hitters have managed only a .145 average against Daysbel Hernandez, a .167 against Pierce Johnson, a .173 against Dylan Lee, and a .185 against Enyel De Los Santos.

5/10 N2: I feel like I’ve lost my bearings with Patrick Corbin now shutting people down with the Rangers. It used to be death, taxes, and a 4-run, 8-hit Corbin game were what you could count on. Donnie Ecker is gone, but Mike Maddux won’t be following any time soon.

5/10 N3: Just 15 first-pitch strikes for Erik Fedde from 31 batters faced in his shutout. Have been quite a few good starts over the last few days where the pitcher went “ball one” as much as he went “strike one” in the outing.

5/10 N4: Victor Scott’s 1.6 bWAR tells the story with him. Been a real ballplayer so far.

5/10 N5: Base stealing activity a bit up from 2024. Steals are up 7.9%, CS up 10%, pickoffs up 5.9%, pickoff caught stealing up 2.6%. Success rate down from 79.0, to 78.7.

5/10 N6: Caleb Durbin, who ran roughshod through the 2024 Arizona Fall League, is finding the major league base stealing environment much tougher. Just 1 steal in his 20 games.

5/10 N7: Would be pretty cool if brother Luisangel joins his brother Ronald as a stolen base champion. Can’t imagine that’s ever happened before. Lusiangel has 10 stolen bases so far this year, and he’s made it look easy. Don’t put it past him to one day go past the 73 Ronald swiped in 2023.

5/10 N8: So Soto’s run down Lindor in OPS. I think Alonso’s looking over his shoulder.

5/10 N9: Gavin Williams leading the AL in walks, and has a 1.730 WHIP to boot, but oh, the arm! Maybe he just saved his best for when the Guardians played the Yankees.

5/10 N10: Six pitchers to give up 9 home runs or more this year. Interestingly, by strikeouts, they are all decidedly finesse pitchers. So FIP is kind of redundant in two of the categories (not that this particularly convergence isn’t a bit of a fluke).

The pitchers and their SO/9: Bowden Francis, 6.4; Zack Littell, 5.7; Jameson Taillon, 7.2; Jake Irvin, 6.2; Osvaldo Bido, 5.8; Tanner Bibee, 6.6.

I just come off my “It’s Not Bad, And It’s Not Boston” post. At the end, I found a -.23 correlation (r) between extra-base-hit percentage (defined by at-bats) and strikeouts. I just ran what that would be if you take out the doubles and triples, and just use home runs. It actually goes down, to -.09.

That was for the American League 1970s, though.

5/10 N11: Max Meyer needs some confidence. After his sensational April 21 outing against the Reds, I was struck by how he said that he just happened to have special stuff, and it only happened a few times a year.

No, Max. He’s a nice kid, but it’s your job to make sure you have that stuff as often as possible. He’s followed with game scores of 34, 25, and 45, allowing 5 earned runs each time. Get greedy, my man.

5/10 N12: A 38.8% SO rate for Christopher Morel so far this year.

5/10 N13: Austin Riley is tied for 2nd in MLB with 49 strikeouts, but has a .376 BAbip. He has a good mark for his career, too, .326. He did .368 for all of 2021, and hit .303.

5/10 N14: O.k., yes. Just to make Michael Steele happy, 4.2 innings for Antonio Senzatela yesterday, and 9 hits. With the game in Colorado, however, and Merrill and Cronenworth back, I’m not sure anyone else could have done better.

5/10 N15: A lot encouraging with Jackson Holliday now, but his Outs Above Average is 5th percentile.

5/10 N16: Sick consistency for Ohtani in his slash numbers. Is hitting .304 with a .655 SA, coming off of .310 and .304 averages, and .646 and .654 slugs.

5/10 N17: Gosh, wouldn’t you have thought 3 home runs with a grand slam would have gotten Jasson Dominguez some individual recognition on the back page of the Post? But all I see is “Homer-Happy Yanks, Mets Roll”. Ah, the injustice that is West Coast baseball for eastern players. Maybe this is why normal people don’t read newspapers anymore. At least the papers aren’t on strike.