Notes Week Ending 5/17

5/11 N1: What gave me the idea that Jacob deGrom had been much better over his career with men on than with the bases empty? Maybe that was just an aspect of his legendary seasons. The truth is that he’s allowed a .622 OPS over his career with men on, .571 with the bases empty.

When you look at data with runners on 3rd base, you always have to be careful of the sacrifice fly bias, but I guess for runners on in total, that’s less of a concern, as the .224 average deGrom has allowed with “runners on” decreases to .220 if sacrifice flies are counted as outs. His average allowed with no one on is .204.

This year, however, the reality has met the reputation. DeGrom’s sub-3.00 E.R.A. (and no unearned runs) is a bit surprising in light of a .386 slugging average allowed. But the OPS against him with men on is just .502, compared to .711 with no one on. Six of the seven home runs he’s allowed have been solo. The MLB average this year is 60% solo home runs.

5/11 N2: Kerry Carpenter leading off? Maybe the idea is to get him fastballs, but I am opposed. He has 9 home runs this year, 2 walks. Even before this year, his career walk rate was on the low side at 6.9%.

5/11 N3: Following up on my note about Erik Fedde yesterday, at first I was just going to say that Jack Kochanowicz’s Sunday start gave more support to the idea that “first-pitch” strikes isn’t the be-all, end-all, as the back-end-of-a-rotation starter gave up only 1 run in 5 2/3, while recording just 10 first-pitch strikes to 23 batters faced.

But actually, this was just an atypical JK outing in general. He walked 4, and struck out 4. Those 4 ks might slightly cool the concern around his strikeout rate, but what is more interesting is that the first-pitch balls did indeed lead to walks (3 of the 4 came after he started 1-0). The argument that there’s a long way to go after 1-0 would be stronger if it didn’t lead to walks. To show just how disparate a 4 BB, 4 SO game from Kochanowicz is, last year, in 65.1 innings, he had just 10 BB and 25 k.

Of course, he’s not necessarily the same guy he was last year. He has a 63.4% strike rate, while the MLB average is 63.7%. His strike rate was 68.3% last year, more or less matching his excellent walk rate.

5/12 N1: Luis Ortiz has only gotten mediocre results so far in 2025, but he’s made an early turnaround in strikeouts. His career strikeouts-per-9, despite an average fastball of 95 or 96 MPH, was only 6.9. This year, he sits at 10.2, which makes him among a group of just 18 from 88 qualifiers who are over 10. He’s had individual games of 10, 9, 8, and 8 strikeouts.

Looking at his pitch mix, though, I wouldn’t say there is anything dramatically different. It is true that he’s cut his sinker use from 26% of his pitches in 2024 to 14%, while simultaneously increasing his four-seam use four percentage points. (It was everyone’s strong hunch that this would play out, I know.)

But Ortiz is actually striking people out on his sinker this year. He had only 9 sinker strikeouts last year; this year, he already has 7.

The sinker can be a very broad category, I think, encompassing both the real downer, and the two-seam comeback. You can see strikeouts more with that than with the bowling ball.

Ortiz is returned to throwing some changeups, which he didn’t do in 2024. The changeup has been a good strikeout pitch for him, already accounting for 8.

Finally, Ortiz’s four-seam strikeouts are ahead of his slider strikeouts this year, 19 to 14. Last year, the ratio was 44/48. His slider use is about the same as last year, 26% versus 27%.

The data are complex, and hard to break down, but one thing seems to be that he is getting more strikeouts on his fastballs, both four-seam and sinker.

5/12 N2: It is quite something that Judge isn’t in the top 15 in MLB in walks this year. All while having 6 intentional walks, 2 more than anyone else. Of course, look for a steady ascent for Judge in the overall-walk standings.

5/12 N3: He’s deserving enough, a really good hitter, but it might surprise some that Wilyer Abreu has 4 intentional walks.

Nolan Arenado has 3 intentional walks for some reason.

Teams without an intentional walk: Washington, oddly, which seems to have some stars but less depth than you’d like. And Tampa Bay.

Luis Robert is the only member of the White Sox to have an intentional walk.

Colorado has 4, with 2 of those going to Michael Toglia. With his career .206 average, which is .172 on the road, I can’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t want to pitch to him. Teams are always making the mistake of factoring power too heavily in their intentional walk decisions, when the threat that prompts the intentional walk is a runner in scoring position.

5/12 N4: The Dodgers’ offensive turnaround has been absolutely remarkable. Consider that. over the first 24 games of this season, they had 10 hits exactly 4 times, but never more than that. Over the last 17 games, they’ve had 11 or more hits 11 times! 0 for 24, then 11 for 17. Or, if you think that is data manipulation, and want to use double-digit hits as the cut-off, 4 for 24, then 11 for 17. Quite a difference in either case.

The Dodgers were hitting .229 through their first 24 games, and have hit .311 since. The rest of their slash for the last 17 games is also pleasing, and the whole thing comes out to .311/.374/.520. However, the team’s home run power is actually down, and not just a smidge. They hit 39 home runs in 778 AB in the early action and have hit 25 in 617 AB since. That’s a reduction in rate of 19%. It is true that, if you don’t make outs, you keep the ball rolling, and generate more team at-bats, and thus more home runs, too. You can see that the Dodgers’ AB-per-game over these two periods has increased from 32.4 to 36.3.

5/12 N5: Relief pitchers (12 innings pitched, 80% games in relief) who have recorded at least 71% strikes this year.

1) Tanner Scott 73.1 LAD

2) Tyler Rogers 72.8 SFG

3) Chris Martin 72.4 TEX

4) Nick Mears 72.3 MIL

5) Kolby Allard 72.3 CLE

6) Mason Montgomery 71.9 TBR

7) Josh Hader 71.5 HOU

8) Gabe Speier 71.4 SEA

9) Dennis Santana 71.0 PIT

All but Montgomery (the youngest guy on the list, and the owner of a 99 MPH average fastball) have E.R.A.s under 2.50. Montgomery has given up 4 home runs and is at 4.20.

If we want to complete the top 10, that’s Matt Strahm (70.9), who was an All-Star for the Phillies last year.

Rogers is the examplar. He topped all relievers (50 innings) at 72.4% last year. From the list above, and also in the top 10, was Strahm, who ranked 4th last year.

The median E.R.A. of the 10 pitchers was 2.08.

5/13 N1: With his .467 start in 15 games, Jackson Merrill is now a career .309 hitter.

5/13 N2: Strikeouts with Luis Arraez are on life support. He’s struck out just 3 times this year, or in 2.0% of his plate appearances. He figures to beat his mark of 4.3% strikeouts last year, and if he does, it will mark the fourth year in a row that his strikeout rate has been lower than it was the year before.

One of the reasons I am confident that Arraez will strike out less than he did last year is that he maintained this 2.0% rate throughout the second half of the season last year; he struck out just 5 times after the All-Star break.

I know I would be convicted in any court for making too much of small samples this year, or at the very least, I would be chastised, but Arraez’s career strikeout rate of 6.5% projects to 10 strikeouts in the 152 plate appearances he’s had so far. So I think the trend is notable.

Over his career, the strikeout reduction has come about both because Arraez has made real improvements in his contact rate, and been more aggressive (most notably in the strike zone). He swung at between 42% and 44% of pitches every year from 2019-2022. But over the past three years, his swing percentage has been 50% or 51% each season.

But this year, not only is his strikeout rate down, he’s taken his contact rate to new heights, making contact on 97.4% of pitches. I believe he’s only swung and missed 7 times this year: (545 pitches)*(.495 swing)*(.026 miss).

It can’t really be argued that Arraez’s contact-first approach has improved his game, but I don’t think it has hurt him, either. Going by OPS+, the first year that Arraez was so aggressive, 2023, is tied for his best year ever. He hit .354 that year for Miami. There is bound to be a small cost in walks with his changed approach. Ultimately, whether there is a cost in home runs, too, probably determines whether he should concentrate on quality of contact and not just quantity. He’s hit 3 home runs this year (if only 6 2B + 3B), so he is in good position to beat the 4 home runs he hit last year, and is really why I don’t think there is necessarily a correlation between more contact with him and less power. He has severe limitations, and certainly could be said to be an overrated player, but his 108 OPS+ this year is broadly consistent with his career performance.

I will save you the trouble of looking up the three pitchers who have struck out Arraez this year, although I don’t know that there’s anything interesting in it. Clarke Schmidt (Yankees), Shota Imanaga (Cubs), Justin Sterner (Athletics) are the guys.

5/13 N3: I must say that I find Trent Grisham’s 1 home run per 9 ABs this year, and .663 SLG, quite disconcerting. I feel like I don’t have my bearings. I guess Grisham is an example, more broadly. of Posnanski’s incredulity about how the Yankees keep lucking out. Goldschmidt reviving is another case. And I know we have to look past his brief stay with Dartmouth and understand that Ben Rice does have real talent, but the fact is he did hit .171 in 152 AB a year ago, so was right with Grisham and his .190 in 179 at-bats. Rice this year has hit .256 with 9 HR and 10 2B in 129 AB.

So, as I said, because I like to get me bearings, one reason I have faith that Trent will come down to earth is that he only has 1 double and 1 triple this year, to go with his 12 home runs. While hitting .198 in 2023, Grisham hit 31 doubles and 13 home runs.

That said, he does make more sense as a home run than a double hitter, because he’s become a real fly ball hitter, with a 0.55-1 GB/FB ratio, while the average major leaguer is at about 1.1. His GB/FB ratio was 1.18 in 2020, and it dropped every season through 2024, when it was 0.72-1.

You know he hit 2 home runs in Seattle yesterday, and that’s a trend that’s been there throughout the season, that Grisham’s been homering home (5 times) and away (7 times). So, while he may have cultivated a Yankee Stadium swing, Yankee Stadium doesn’t explain his home run barrage.

5/13 N4: Is a positive revisionist history of Tony La Russa’s time in the Arizona front office possible? Probably not, but I will say that, 9 years later, the two guys (Shelby Miller and Gabe Speier) La Russa acquired in the infamous Dansby Swanson trade are both still going, and both are having very good seasons as relievers. Miller, ironically, is doing it for Arizona, where he was last active in 2018.

Although he was just 20 at the time, my read is that Speier was just a fringe prospect, a throw-in. Five-foot-eleven and a 19th-round draft pick, his final minor league season prior to the trade consisted of 33 games in relief, 0 saves, and a 2.86 E.R.A. He certainly was a down-the-line investment, not making the majors until 2019, and not establishing himself until 2023 with Seattle, where he remains now. He left the Arizona organization in 2018 when they acquired Jon Jay.

The first time he entered my consciousness was yesterday, when he appeared as the reliever with the 8th-best strike rate this year. His control has been a fascinating Jekyll-and-Hyde case. He began in the Gulf Coast league with the Red Sox, walking just 2 in 33 innings. But then his walk rate gradually deteriorated, culminating with 31 walks in 69 innings for Double-A Jackson in 2017.

His success with the Mariners in 2023 was very much built around throwing strikes. He struck out 64 and walked 11 in 54.2 innings. But last year, he totally regressed, walking 14 in 23.2 innings. As the yo-yo continues, this year his control has been excellent. Maybe you can be streaky with your control.

5/13 N5: We haven’t heard much from Jung Hoo Lee recently, as Giants take turns hitting. Lee’s hitting .191 in 11 games this month and hasn’t drawn a walk. A home run on May 6 against Colin Rea has been his only extra-base hit.

5/14 N1: There are a lot of different directions I could go with Javy Baez. We’re about a quarter of the way through the season, and he already has 2.0 bWAR, with no small thanks to his 5 Defensive Runs Saved, 4 of which have come in center field. Outs Above Average is more or less in line with DRS, having him at +2 in center, deriving from his making 95% of the plays he’s been rated on while 90% was expected. I’m certainly doubtful he can keep this up, but that he’s lost his speed (now runs at the 52nd percentile), and can play center field this well, never having played the position before, is just incredible. He clearly has special instincts.

On the trivia front, Baez had a game this year where he scored 4 runs on only 2 hits, and he scored 3 yesterday on only 2 hits, although you can’t say he lucked into the tallies, since he hit 2 home runs. But this made me think he might have a high runs scored total on the year.

In fact, he’s scored just 20 runs, which places him behind 72 guys in MLB. To offset those surprising high-runs-scored games, his highest hit games have been on the other side of the ledger. In the four games he’s had three hits this year, he’s scored just 1 total run. Since all of Baez’s starts have come in the bottom half of the lineup, with the highest total in the #9 slot, he wouldn’t figure to be a candidate for high efficiency in scoring runs per time on base, and he hasn’t done that.

Those 20 runs scored contrast with 27 RBI, which have him on a pace for 102. Baez is hitting .424 with runners in scoring position. Since that number is .583 (7-12) with 2 outs and RISP, and I know the RE24 statistic assigns extra value to that situation, I thought Baez might be a real standout in RE24.

The extra points he shows there aren’t dramatic in light of his RISP average and 2 outs and RISP average. He’s 21st in RE24, compared to 31st in Offensive WAR.

His teammate Gleyber Torres is actually the remarkable one in RE24. Despite about a 15-day IL stint earlier in the year and “just” an .839 OPS, Torres is 20th in MLB in RE24, one spot ahead of Baez. He doesn’t have the same pattern as Baez of doing better with 2 outs and RISP, but is hitting .429 with RISP overall. So I don’t know why he stands out so much on RE24. He’s 51st in Offensive WAR. I’ve documented the importance of bases loaded batting to RE24, and Torres is 4 for 4 with the sacs loaded this year, although those are simple hits, as he doesn’t have a grand slam.

That Jacob Wilson is 8th in RE24 surprised me, what with so much of his value consisting of singles (although he is up to 5 home runs), but he’s 9th in Offensive WAR, too, although he gets a boost in that because he’s compared to other shortstops.

Freddie Freeman is already 2nd in RE24, so obviously ahead of Ohtani. He’s 13th in Offensive WAR. I’ve been thinking about him and Jackson Merrill together a bit, what with their both missing time but being brilliant when they’ve been out there, and Merrill also happens to elevate when you look at the situation: 16th in RE24, 41st in Offensive WAR.

My perception was that Bryan Reynolds was more off to a bad start than really putting up shockingly bad numbers, but RE24 has him as the second-worst hitter in the majors, behind only Joc Pederson. His .573 OPS has him ahead of 11 of 166 batting-average qualifiers, but I guess if you’re behind Michael Conforto, as he is, you certainly have a bad OPS. Conforto’s 3 doubles yesterday did lead to a 63-point one-day climb in OPS for him.

Offensive WAR isn’t too divergent from RE24 on Reynolds, having him 5th-worst in MLB.

5/14 N2: Speaking of Gleyber Torres, he better watch out or A.J. Hinch will platoon him. This season, he has a 1.158 OPS versus left-handers, and a 0.698 OPS against right-handers. Although his career slugging average against lefties is 99 points higher than against righties, Torres does not profile for me as a good bet to have big platoon differences going foward, as he’s actually struck out less often against right-handers (19.7%) than against left-handers (20.5%) in his career.

5/14 N3: You’re well within your rights not to like watching Blake Snell pitch (Meg Rowley?), but if you don’t, I hope you don’t like watching Aroldis Chapman pitch, either. I’ve been over him for many years, and was puzzled at the Red Sox interest in him as a closer. I can’t believe they’re getting away with it so far.

5/14 N4: -6 Defensive Runs Saved for Nolan Schanuel so far this year. He’s our reverse All-Star first baseman, although LaMonte Wade is at -5. It’s just interesting to see so much supposed negative impact at first base. I can actually believe that it is easy to really screw things up at first, but hard to make a big positive impact.

5/14 N5: Prompted to check team totals because Duran and Devers have the most individually in the major leagues, Boston does have the most teams plate appearances. They’ve played 2 more games than the Yankees, but with a team OBP 19 points worse, you’d still think they wouldn’t have 63 more plate appearances. Part of it is likely the Yankees winning a lot of home games and not batting in the bottom of the 9th in those games. Maybe the Red Sox have played a lot of extra innings. And maybe the Red Sox have been more efficient with things like double plays, runners thrown out on the bases, etc.

5/14 N6: Xavier Edwards 44 hits this year, but just four extra-base hits. Eugenio Suarez hits that many home runs in a game.

5/14 N7: How the Pirates’ MLB-worst 131 runs filter down to the individual level….Ke’Bryan Hayes has just 9 in 41 games.

Hayes is hitting .260, but I will say that the disparity between his runs ranking and some of his other numbers isn’t as great as I would have expected. Rounding up for ties, he ranks 137th in total bases, 181st in walks, and 254th in runs But that #254 ranking in runs does mean that, on an average team, 8 guys have more runs.

Hayes is 79th in MLB in plate appearances. He is a distant 2nd on the team behind Bryan Reynolds.

5/14 N8: I really just needed someone from the audience, I don’t mean to pick on Nolan Schanuel. If only he had looked away at a suitable time. But, with his lack of power at first base, when we think of Schanuel, we think of lack of impact, generally. But even beyond his .368 slugging average this year, it seems to me he’s had a very quiet season, and I was wondering why that is.

One thing I hit upon is that he had a 3-hit game Tuesday, but that was only his second of the season. I assumed that was a low number for someone with his overall production (also a .265 BA, and 36 hits, having him on pace for 142), but I thought I would check.

I thought I would sample guys with 34-38 hits. I guess it makes sense there are so many if you think about it, but there are 54 of them, so doing that was out. I therefore took the other 15 players with exactly 36 hits for my reference group. Their number of 3+ hit games broke down this way.

5: 2

4: 1

3: 3

2: 2

1: 7

The average number of 3-hit games was 2.3. The median was 2, but the mode 1, as you can see. So, Schanuel with his 2 3-hit games is not atypically low at all. (Bryce Harper was one of the 1 3-hit-game guys, by the way, although he is hitting just .232, so that makes some sense).

What is the most hits anyone has who doesn’t have a 3-hit game? I assumed those with 50+ hits, putting them on a pace for near 200, had all done it, so I started with 49 hits and under.

The answer is 40 hits, in the case of Juan Soto and Ke’Bryan Hayes. Neither has a 3-hit game yet.

On the other side of the spectrum, Wilyer Abreu and Luis Arraez have 41 hits, but 7 3-hit games. It’s interesting there are these kinds of disparities. Maybe it’s randomness and not streakiness, but there are disparities. Obviously, if you are better against lefties or righties or something, that could be one element of a lot of 3-hit games relative to total hits.

Abreu and Arraez are both under .300 for the season. I mention that because it is true that the fewer games it takes you to get the same number of hits, the more 3-hit games you are likely have. I could see this just in rifling through the statistics, where there was a great deal of variety in how many games these guys with the same number of hits had actually played.

Elly De La Cruz is worth a mention here. He’s hitting only .250, but because he’s on pace for well over 600 AB (he’s played every game), he has 42 hits. But he hasn’t had a 3-hit game since March 31. That was actually a 4-hit game.

5/15 N1: Time to get my bearings on team bullpen performance so far this season.

While I am not generally a fan of “tiers”, believing them artificial, they do seem pretty applicable to the data so far this year. Quite a bit of categorization, of different sorts, is helpful.

Of course, a couple of days can change it this early in the season, but the best bullpen, without question, has been Houston’s. They have pitchers with E.R.A.s of 1.23 (Okert, 22 IP), 1.47 (King, 18.1 IP), 1.50 (Hader, 18 innings), 1.50 (Abreu, 18 innings). The team has given up the lowest OBP in the league, has the second-best E.R.A., and has the second best k-per-9 rate.

Whom you see as the second best bullpen depends on whether you like strikeouts (Minnesota is just 0.44-per-9 behind Houston, with very good marks in E.R.A. and OBP as well) or E.R.A. (San Francisco is 0.01 ahead of Houston, but has only 8.51 ks-per-9). Minnesota and San Francisco have both allowed a .287 OBP, versus a .277 for Houston.

There are bullpens, like the Dodgers, with very strong statistical selling points and a likelihood of eventually joining the first rank, but the other excellent bullpens to this point of the season are the ones belonging to the Padres, Mets, Yankees, and Tigers. Just in terms of sheer success, it is pretty hard to contend that others in the same category.

The Yankees do walk too many (4.28-per-9), but they compensate with almost the same strikeout rate (10.12-per-9) as Houston, and have the best home run rate in MLB. Both the Yankees and Astros bullpens have given up 10 home runs.

Toronto and Kansas City are among the best from one point of view, which isn’t something that can be said for most of the bullpens. Most are categorically mediocre. Toronto’s strikeout rate of 11.05-per-9 is far and away the best, but their E.R.A. sits at 4.04, ranking 17th. KC, meanwhile, strikes out just 7.71-per-9, but has a 3.11 E.R.A.

The strongest team trend this year is at the bottom. Unlike with the Rockies and White Sox and their overall difficulties, I wouldn’t say an intervention is necessary, but the Angels and Nationals are just on another level from everyone else. The two teams have E.R.A.s of 6.97 and 6.86, respectively, while the third worst E.R.A. is just 5.24. The z-approach converts these E.R.A. into 2.73 and 2.62, validating that these are exceptional numbers (it is all the more remarkable to have twozs like that in a sample of 30.) Zs found the teams’ OBPs Allowed as also notable, but not quite on the same level (2.53 for the Nationals, 2.15 for the Angels). The Nationals have allowed a .392 OBP and the Angels a .381, with the third-worst team at .358.

One area where there is more hope for the Nationals than the Angels is in home runs allowed. They’ve allowed 0.99 home runs-per-9, compared to the MLB bullpen average of 0.98. Home runs have been a big part of the problem for the Angels; at 1.86-per-9, they’re not far from twice the Nationals rate. The second-worst team (this time not the Nats!) has only allowed 1.47 HR-per-9.

Part of why the Nationals are almost there with the Angels in E.R.A. is their walk rate, which is MLB’s worst at 5.13-per-9. They have some competition there from the Athletics (5.01-per-9), however.

While the Athletics are more extreme, they and the Orioles can be thought of as a pair, as high walk/high strikeout,/high BAbip-Allowed bullpens. Not surprisingly, that mix of characteristics is not working, as the Athletics have a 5.24 team bullpen E.R.A., Baltimore a 5.04 (even though Baltimore’s E.R.A. has come down from the last I checked. Here’s where each team ranks in these categories.

Walks: Athletics 29th, Orioles 25th

SOs (per 9): Athletics 6th, Orioles 9th

BAbip: Athletics 26th, Orioles T27th

E.R.A.: Athletics 28th, Orioles 26th

In case you were wondering (cheers, Joe Buck), the Angels are 26th in walks-per-9.

I also should point out the strikeout rates for the Angels (14th) and the Nationals (16th) are perfectly representative. I guess that is where there’s hope for the Angels, and explains how someone might have been able to talk himself into believing in their bullpen arms over the winter.

Boston seems likely to move up from its 13th ranking in E.R.A. They are allowing 2.76-walks-per-9 (1st) and just 0.68-HR-per-9 (5th), while their 8.78 SO/9 (15th) are competitive.

What actually motivated me to do this analysis (which at least in contemplation, is probably even more tedious for researcher than reader) was my curiosity about the Cleveland bullpen, which I believe did end as baseball’s best last year.

Emmanuel Clase’s postseason lapses have carried over, but Hunter Gaddis has picked off in the good place where he left off. With 12.8 ks-per-9 and a 2.75 E.R.A., opponents still don’t want to see Cade Smith enter. The lefty pair of Kolby Allard and Joey Cantillo is promising, even if Cantillo has been erratic. So I wanted to see where everything came out in the wash with them.

The composite is deflating for those who believe in bullpens. The Guardians have a 4.15 E.R.A., 19th in MLB, and have allowed a .335 OBP, placing them in a tie for 23rd. A vestige of the 2024 bullpen greatness can perhaps be found in their k rate, which rates 8th. The .335 BAbip they’ve allowed, tying them with the Orioles, reinforces the idea that they’ve been unlucky.

One statistic where the Guardians rate well is that they have a 13-4 won-loss record in their bullpen. That goes along with a team that’s been winning close games, as we know is true of them.

But faith that this tells us anything about their bullpen performance wanes when we notice that the Nationals bullpen is 8-8, and the Angels bullpen 10-6! And it’s not like those records can be explained by the Nationals’ and Angels’ being good teams generally. Moreover, Minnesota, with a bullpen I rank 2nd, is just 10-11 (the average team is 8.6-7.1, for a .547 percentage).

The Nationals and Angels in particular seem to bring up the thought that maybe bullpen winning percentage figures inversely with actual quality of performance. This is a question worthwhile of asking, particularly with its possibilities for analyzing individual relievers more astutely.

But how could that be, that a good relief record could mean poor relief pitching on the whole, and vice versa? It’s true that a reliever can get a win after blowing a lead, but he is more likely to get a loss in that scenario. So I think relief records are more reasonably thought of as only very slightly correlated with performance. Looking at this year’s data, however, you can question even the “only very slightly.”

One confound I’ve thought of with relief records is that it seems to me that some situations give relievers more opportunities to lose a game than to win it. That’s true with closers going for saves, of course, but more challenging to analyze is the case of a reliever entering a tie game in the bottom of the 9th. It seems to me that, even though he can hold the opponent, have his team score, and end up the winner, that is not balanced by the probability that he just loses the game right off and doesn’t have a chance to be redeemed. And a reliever entering in the top of the 9th of a tie game might be at a special disadvantage because he may have to hold the opponent twice (in the 9th and 10th), while only having his team hit for him once before he is pulled.

We need to put the analysts who figured out that a team should “go for 2” when pulling to within 8 points late in a football game, “so that they can have “two chances at getting the win”, and “so that they can know what they have to do”, etc., to work on this. I think there is an analogy to be drawn.

5/15 N2: Given his excellent strikeout/walk data this season (50 IP, 12 BB, 51 SO), I would tend not to panic about Sonny Gray, but it is true that the average velocity on his four-seam fastball is the worst of his career, and the velocity on his sinker, the worst since 2017.

The dropoff is small.

5/16 N1: I don’t know if the St. Louis Cardinals have a proud history of triples, but claiming five players who’ve reached the century mark, they certainly do have a history, one they are not living up to this year. The 2025 Cardinals have 1 triple. That’s particuarly surprising, because they would seem to have some candidates, with players like Victor Scott, Masyn Winn, and Brendan Donovan checking one or more boxes for speed, gap power, and hustle. Scott is the guy who has the triple.

The Cardinals career top 10 in triples, in order, is comprised of Stan Musial, Rogers Hornsby, Enos Slaughter, Lou Brock, Jim Bottomley, Ed Konetchy, Willie McGee, Joe Medwick, Pepper Martin, and Tip O’Neill.

So, yes, those five guys with 100+ are all Hall of Famers, although their longevity is probably the key underlying factor, and what the triples really represent. If we looked at triples rate, I doubt we would find a high correlation with stardom.

The actual path here is probably that the guys on the list were great players, and therefore given the opportunity to play for a long time. In turn, with that playing time, they hit a lot of triples.

Before I had run the data, I was groping for a Cardinal of my lifetime I could reference who had hit a lot of triples, and I was thinking of Vince Coleman, overlooking the possibility if McGee. McGee is probably forgotten, but was obviously a much better player than Coleman (a 25.6 Cardinals’ bWAR, vs. 12.2 for Coleman).

In terms of Cardinals triples from that era, it’s 83 for McGee, 56 for Coleman, and 50 for Ozzie Smith.

The shortstop the Cardinals gave up to get Smith, Garry Templeton, actually hit 19 more Cardinals triples than Smith did in just over a third of the games for them. From 1977-1979, Templeton had seasons of 18, 13, and 19 triples, leading the NL each time. I was alive then, if not a baseball fan, so a Garry Templeton reference, something like, “The Cardinals are failing the legacy of Garry Templeton,” would have worked well. But at that point, being rusty on my Templeton triples knowledge, I wouldn’t have gotten my own reference.

5/16 N2: Despite an OPS edge of .660 to .613, the Royals offense (154 runs in 45 games) has been 99% as bad as the White Sox offense (149 runs in 44 games).

One of the things that is striking in the equivalence of the offenses is that the Royals do have a couple of guys who are having very good seasons: Witt has a .904 OPS, Maikel Garcia .836.

You look at the White Sox, no one is having a good year. They have 13 players with 50 or more plate appearances, and the best OPS is .728 (Edgar Quero). Because it’s the “year of the catcher”, the other member of the team with 50+ PA and a .700 OPS is also a catcher, Matt Thaiss.

It might not have anything to do with why the White Sox are overachieving their OPS, but they don’t have the number of players really sucking that the Royals do. In that group of 13, the only two guys on the White Sox with an OPS under .600 are Jacob Amaya (.232) and Andrew Vaughn (.550).

By contrast, the Royals also have 13 players with 50+ plate appearances, but six fall in the sub-.600 OPS category: MJ Melendez (.343), Hunter Renfroe (.452), Michael Massey (.524), Cavan Biggio (.546), Freddy Fermin (.579), and Salvador Perez (.598). (Word of the year of the catcher has clearly not reached Kansas City.)

I don’t want to conflate separate issues. This high number of poor performers does go a long way toward explaining how Witt and Garcia have needed to carry the team, and have obviously not been able to do so. It does not explain why Kansas City can’t outscore Chicago — as, the fact is, even with all of their poor perfomers, Kansas City does have a better OPS than Chicago.

My initial assumption was that Kansas City was underachieving in runs scored given their OPS. But it’s probably more the case that Chicago is just defying the odds scoring at all with a .613. They trail the Pirates by 16 points and the Rockies by 24, despite the fact that those teams are behind Chicago in runs. It would appear then that the White Sox haven’t fulfilled their potential for offensive futility, as sad as that is to say, and as bad as things have been.

5/16 N3: Bo Bichette has hit 3 home runs in May to get his overall batting numbers looking respectable, but I don’t think he will have any takers on the open market unless his Sprint Speed (26th percentile, vs. 75th percentile as recently as 2021) and OAA (-5, 2nd percentile) bounce back, particularly the latter. In a horse auction, Bichette would likely be what we call RNA, Reserve Not Attained.

Here is another player consistent with my thesis that slow middle infielders are not good defenders, by the way.

5/16 N4: Kudos to position player-pitcher Jhonny Pereda for actually competing and throwing the damn ball when striking out Ohtani. That pitch was 89 MPH. I am so sick of watching company softball in major league games.

5/16 N5: Travis Jankowski is in his 11th-consecutive big league season, but is still looking for his 100th RBI. He has 98. Now, with my vague knowledge of Jankowski, if someone told me that, I’d just think he’d spent a lot of his time pinch running, but considering his actual at-bat total, which is 1552, Jankowski does seem to legitimately have a very low RBI rate. He’s almost surely in the single percentiles for his home run rate, but he does have 11. There are many, many hitters beneath his career .236 mark. What is more strange considering his low RBI is that his RISP mark, .230, also isn’t horrible.

A couple of singular seasons came in 2016 and 2018 with San Diego. Jankowski missed most of 2017 with a broken foot, but played a very similar role for the Padres in the year before and after. To use the the old and not the new trio, in 2016 he was .245 2 12 in 335 AB, and in 2018, .259 4 17 in 347 AB. The Padres lost 94 games in 2016, 96 in 2018, with Andy Green managing both teams. Jankowski started 82 games in 2016 and 78 in 2018 and hit leadoff in 71 and 70 games, respectively.

So that brings up perhaps the first interesting point — about possibly how bad hitting leadoff in the old NL was for RBI. Not only could one only get an RBI in his first at-bat with a home run, but other at-bats were compromised by following up the pitcher, who was almost never on base. I suppose for total RBI, batting 8th might have given batting leadoff a run for its money, what with the likely missed plate appearance, but when we figure on at-bat basis, batting leadoff is going to come out as a bad gig.

With a 72-90 Pythagorean mark, the 2016 Padres were actually a little better than their record, and they didn’t have a horrible offense, either. To give us an idea of the general opportunity they provided, they scored 686 runs, 10th of the 15 teams.

The 2018 Padres were a good deal worse offensively, scoring only 617 runs. Only the Giants (603 runs) and the Marlins (589 runs) were behind them. You will note that Jankowski drove in more runs for this team (17) than he did for the 2016 team (12), however.

Other other aspect to consider in Jankowski’s RBI total is infield hits. When it comes to RBI, they don’t go quite as far as even singles that leave the infield. Jankowski’s infield hit rate certainly indexed well over 100 in 2018, but 2016 was the sharper of the two years. Whether we figure by percentage of hits or at-bats, his infield hit percentage was about twice that of a normal National Leaguer. To use hits, 23.2% for Jankowski were of the infield variety, while the NL rate was 11.0%.

Where this matters for RBI, though, is an even smaller slice of at-bats than RISP at-bats, since an infield hit is as good for the RBI as a regular single if there is just a runner at 3rd, or if there are runners on first and third. And throwing out infield hits completely for their RBI value with runners on 2nd and 3rd, including with the bases loaded, is ignoring half the case. Nevertheless, to make my point convincing about the limited impact infield can really have, I will do that, and paint the case in the way least favorable to me.

The percentage of at-bats impacted by the lower RBI value of an infield single versus a regular single, using the 2016 National League numbers, is 18.7%. That is the percentage of at-bats that came with a runner at 2nd (the overall RISP at-bat percentage was 24.0%). Per 575 at-bats, 18.7% of at-bats is 107.5 at-bats.

Jankowski hit .245 in 2016. If he’d done that in 108 AB with the average 89% of his hits not infield hits, he’d have 23.5 regular hits in that situation. With his actual percentage of 76.8%, he’d figure to have 20.3 regular hits. So the cost seems to be about 3 RBI, assuming an average rate of at-bats with runners on 2nd.

For the 2023 champion Rangers, Jankowski showed he could drive in runs. He had 30 in 247 at-bats. His batting average and slugging average actually tracked very close to his 2018 numbers. In 2023, he hit .263 with a .332 slugging average; in 2018, those had been .259, .346.

So what was different? First, the Rangers didn’t score 617 runs like the Padres, but 881 (offense wasn’t up in 2023, aside from the DH, and 881 didn’t lead the AL, but the Padres were really bad offensively). Second, with Marcus Semien there for all 162 games, not only was Jankowski not hitting leadoff, , but he got a significant number of starts hitting 2nd, and only was put 9th for 7 of his 63 starts. Third, Jankowski had a good year with RISP, hitting .300 on the nose.

Revisiting that lineup element….it occurred to me one could check Jankowski’s actual RBI and hitting production in each slot, not just how many games he started. He started 20 games in the #2 slot, but he didn’t hit when he was there (.227, .280 SA), so he only drove in 5 runs. In contrast, when he was the #9 hitter, he hit .379 with four of his 12 doubles on the year, so drove in 6 runs. So, to the extent lineup slot played a role in augmenting his RBI total, it was probably mostly in keeping him out of the leadoff slot, particularly in its dead National League form.

Jankowski was on the bench at the beginning of the first three games of the World Series, but he was Adolis Garcia’s replacement in right field after Garcia got hurt in game 3. Jankowski had a 2-RBI double in the Rangers’ game-4 win. I guess that gets you to 100 RBI for him right there.

5/17 N1: After MacKenzie Gore recorded 9 of his 11 outs on Friday by strikeout but gave up 10 hits, his season BAbip stands at .379. He has still managed a 3.67 E.R.A. Fast becoming a favorite of mine. Leads MLB in strikeouts, and is 2nd in SO/9 behind Cole Ragans, a lefty having a similar season.

5/17 N2: Preternatural doubles rate for Agustin Ramirez so far, 10 in 80 AB. May prove to be “one who got away” for the Yankees, as they gave him up for Jazz Chisholm….In thinking of how to phrase that, it’s interesting that we always think of the team getting the major and (major league) name as initiating the trade. But surely, to use this example, sometimes a team says “if we talk about Jazz Chisholm, will you talk about Agustin Ramirez”? Or is that not a good negotiating tactic because it makes the strong interest in Agustin Ramirez too overt?

5/17 N3: Right now, in both the NL and the AL, the same guy (Ohtani and Judge) leads in both hits and home runs. (Corbin Carroll is actually tied with Ohtani in hits, in one sense lessening the elegance, but in another not, since CC is 3rd in the NL in home runs.) I’m not sure how often this happens; the natural candidate would be a low-walk player, such as Jim Rice, who had 213 hits and 46 home runs in 1978 and got black type in both. Judge might not be walking as much as he normally does, but with 12 more hits than anybody in MLB, he could be, and has plenty of padding. The normal rules don’t define when you’re hitting .414 in a .244 league (AL average is .242).

For his part, Ohtani is on a pace for 108 walks, 50 more than Rice had in ‘78. These numbers I gave you are right, but don’t seem to be, as Ohtani is “only” hitting .316, and is behind Carroll, Kyle Tucker, Nootbaar, and Lindor in National League plate appearances. So how can be leading in hits? You’d think he’d have to have an incredible number of plate appearances to be doing it with so many walks and not an amazing batting average.

I guess what it is is he’s only on pace for 194 hits. Are a bunch of guys chasing him.