Notes Week Ending 5/31

5/25 N1: Now with an extra-base hit in five straight games and 10 hits in his last 23 AB, Kody Clemens is for the first time requiring attention beyond his last name. Up to this point, while profiling as something of a slugger, Clemens has really defined mediocrity.

His hitting spree since joining the Twins has been accompanied by a high rate of strikeouts: he’s had a strikeout in 8 straight games. While he’s not going to continue to BAbip .615 as he has over his last 6 games, maybe the increase in strikeouts is actually good, as it signifies he’s doing something different. A wider break from the mediocrity.

5/25 N2: Basically a career reliever, Sean Reynolds started and lost for the Padres on Saturday, yielding 6 hits and 3 runs over 2 2/3.

Did you know about this guy? First, he’s a 6’8”, 250 lb left-hander. He was drafted in the 4th round out of high school as a position player, and was far and away the top home run hitter in the New York-Penn League in 2018, hitting 17 home runs in 270 at-bats, but also striking out in 42% of his plate appearances, while his average was below the Mendoza line. When he tried the Midwest League the next year, his strikeouts clearly won out over his power, as he struck out 145 times in 266 plate appearances, with his home runs down to 9.

That’s why he’s a pitcher now, throwing about 96 MPH, according to FanGraphs. He only had 1 strikeout on Saturday, but his 2024 debut was intriguing, with 21 recorded over 11 innings.

5/25 N3: Luis Robert’s (and you know I’m not going with the Jr.!) MLB-leading base stealing total doesn’t quite boggle the mind given both his totals in his first seasons and his .192 BA/.278 OBP this year, but it’s up there. As I’ve said, I give him a ton of credit for trying to make an impact while he struggles at the plate. They say you can’t steal first, but you can steal second.

Baseball Reference’s Stolen Base Opportunities does confirm that these 19 steals are more impressive than they would normally be for a player with an average OBP. They don’t have the numbers updated for his latest steal and game, but they have Roberts with 53 opportunities, compared to 77 and 104 for his two main steal competitors so far, Oneil Cruz and Bobby Witt. Elly De La Cruz, Jose Caballero, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Chandler Simpson have a similar opportunity count as Roberts and are just a bit behind him in steals, but 80 opportunities clearly is a more typical number for a regular with a high number of steals at this time of year, not 50.

Roberts has yet to attempt a steal of 3rd this year. Cruz and Witt also have generally eschewed the third bag, with one SB and no CS of 3rd apiece. Then the guys with 5 steals of 3rd are Caballero and Trea Turner, while Jose Ramirez, Geraldo Perdomo, Maikel Garcia, and Fernando Tatis have 4 apiece.

5/25 N4: Junior Caminero has been the same player he was last year, and it’s an average player at best. The comparison lines up nicely right now because he has 192 plate appearances, while he had 177 last year. His home runs are up to 9 from 6 last year, but he has 9 walks and 39 strikeouts, verus 11 and 38 last year. His batting average is down 9 points to .239.

Defense has been a decided loss for him this year, as his DRS is -7, and his OAA, -6, the 2nd percentile. In Saturday’s game, it appears he was removed for what the Rays considered a defensive upgrade (Walls at short, Caballero at 3rd) in the 9th.

I do understand that when you’re 21 years old and you’re tied for the team lead in home runs, all is far from lost, particularly when you’re doing that with a league-average average.

5/25 N5: Would love to see Jose Ramirez get his first .300 average since 2017.

5/25 N6: Given the super-quick hook of Cal Quantrill Saturday (12 batters faced, 1 run), it appears Quantrill’s immaculate inning his last time out didn’t count for anything with Clayton McCullough. I mean, what does a man have to do to get respect?

Quantrill actually has been kept in the shallow end of the pool all season, seemingly regardless of results. None of his 10 starts have lasted 6 innings, or encompassed more than 90 pitches.

While with the Indians in 2022, Quantrill had 24 starts of 90+ pitches. He had a 112 ERA+ that season. But right now it would seem he’s stuck with a label.

5/25 N7: O.k., I’ve been out to lunch. But I just heard the Rockies have not won a series all year. What? At least it’s a level up from not having won a game all year.

5/25 N8: The old Yankee and Mariner pitcher Jeff Nelson is a good announcer by any standard and a vast improvement on several current and former Yankee color contributors, but when he says, “Will Warren has had a lot of whiff in recent starts,” it’s pure thoughtlessness, and exemplifies the fallacy that the two things are quite interchangeable. In fact, Warren has the second highest percentage of looking strikeouts in the major leagues, 41.7%, and Statcast tells us his strikeout percentage is at the 87th percentile, while his whiff is at the 69th.

5/25 N9: When Adael Amador singled against the Yankees today with 1 out in the 9th and the team down a run, he was promptly greeted by pinch runner Tyler Freeman. I had just read about Amador in my Baseball Prospect Handbook, and I thought, this is interesting. Amador stole 35 bases in Double-A in 100 games last year, and he also got a 55-grade for his running, so I had come away thinking he was fast. The 55 tied his “hit” tool for his highest, and Amador was rated the organization’s #6 prospect. It would seem a good prospect’s best tool should be very good, right?

The sad fact is that these ratings are hard and obviously often don’t stand logical scrutiny, but I think part of what is attractive about Amador is actually just that he’s young (birth date 4/11/03), not that he can be rates great grades. He also has something which escapes grades, which is that he’s walked in 14% of his minor league plate appearances, and it’s suggested this factored into his overall grade.

But my first reaction to this pinch running was that it was interesting because it seemed like a fast guy and good baserunner must have been replaced by someone with even better baserunning skills, and it just doesn’t seem like that’s done. The Rockies didn’t have much to lose by taking Amador out, as extra inning games end in the blink of an eye now, and Amador’s currently hitting .146. I think a comparable situation comes up routinely, but it seems to me fast runners are still rarely replaced for an incremental advantage.

I had my doubts about Tyler Freeman as a runner as well, but I needed to make sure I was right about that. I had a hunch Tyler Fitzgerald was the Tyler F. last year who appeared on the speed leaderboard, not Freeman, and I was right about that. Fitzgerald ran at 30.0 ft/sec, MLB’s 4th-fastest runner, while Freeman is 28.1 (75th percentile) in a small sample this year, and has been at 28.2, 28.6, and 28.1 in his previous years.

Freeman doesn’t appear to be uncanny taking the extra base, either, with 38% attempts in his career when 37% has been expected. He’s stolen 20 for 26 in 219 games. Solid but no better, as his sprint speed suggests.

But the more I looked into this choice, the more it seemed like a Home Run Derby hitting contest where the guys combine for 5 home runs and subject us all to a lot of cue balls. Amador’s sprint speed this year is showing 26.2! Even with the moderate sample he’s had, that would be hard to figure for a man with good speed. His 35 stolen bases last year also came in the context of 11 caught stealing, so his percentage was probably below league average. And before 2024. he was only successful on 71% of his attempts.

Here, as usual, the Rockies didn’t have a great option. And I was probably the only fan paying attention, so Amador will survive the embarrassment, and be able to come back tomorrow.

Although maybe there is a funny short story to be written about a player so burned by being removed for a pinch runner in a crucial situation that he went Scottie Pippen on everybody. It’s an ego blow in a way that being hit for isn’t for a young player, I think, because speed is obvious, and there generally isn’t deference to veterans in that situation.

5/26 N1: Picking up on the “being pinch run for” theme, even among great ballplayers, it must be a minority who never have to face out-in-the-open rejection at the major league level, and have to face it well before near the end of their career, where it hardly counts.

I wrote about Junior Caminero being replaced for defense.

The platoon dynamic almost creates a replacement level for pinch hitters the opposite of WAR, where you’d better be significantly better than your competition, or having you hit in a close-and-late situation doesn’t make sense for the team. I remember Darryl Strawberry, already at least at the level of a “fans choice” All-Star, being pinch hit for I think in 1985, and oddly raising not even a whimper about it (while ironically he went ballistic when taken out for a double switch in Game 6 of the World Series). (I don’t consider removal in a double switch as being much of a statement on one’s abilities).

Pitching rotations get tight in the postseason, and there are always good pitchers who don’t get a spot, and go to the bullpen.

In general, I would say, considerations of ego go out the window in the postseason, and you see more quasi stars sitting. Perhaps this is also because postseason teams are the most loaded, what with pre-deadline acquisitions that the team might not really need sometimes on the roster, somewhat of the luxury variety,

Most ballplayers never want to see the day of being removed for not hustling, a la Reggie Jackson, and thus “shown up.” If you play long enough, I guess it can happen, but it would tend to be with a younger player, and only if the manager really, truly thinks the young player made less than an honest mistake.

A contrast there between being taken out because of being slow or defensively weak, and being taken out because of moral failing, which is what the Jackson pull essentially alleges. And I guess different ballplayers would be shamed by one or the other to different degrees. Unfortunately, it is probably the players who dog it who are generally less personally upset by the punishment. We think of these ballplayers typically as being proud, of being egomaniacs, but really, it is just in how we mean that. They could afford to be a little more proud when it came to never letting the team down.

My inadvertent use of “punishment” to describe the hustle pulls is also interesting; we would hope adults are never punished. Punishments are personal, while being bypassed for another is just sometimes necessary. That is really sugarcoating, though. Whether the manager wants to hurt the player or not, the fact is he can, just in the process of trying to win games and do his job.

5/26 N2: I hope you have all done Cory Booker one better and have not sat down since Tarik Skubal completed his masterpiece against the Guardians. Are your hands raw from the clapping yet?

He got a 96 James game score, which ties the Domingo German perfect game, and has only been topped in the last five years by a couple of no-hitters in 2021, those tossed by John Means and Joe Musgrove, and by a 4/23/21 outing from Jacob deGrom, where he had the identical line as Skubal (a shutout with no walks and 2 hits), but struck out 15 versus Skubal’s 13. Skubal does get a pass from the game score system for his plunking of Nolan Jones, but with a double play, he faced the same 29 batters deGrom did. He also completed his game with 94 pitches, versus deGrom’s 109.

Skubal’s outing seemed to have all the ingredients for a record percentage of strikes, but his 76.6%, while superb, has been topped on quite a few occasions this year. Among 6+ inning starts, Kyle Freeland’s 3/28 effort versus Tampa Bay leads with 79.1%. Skubal himself was at 76.7% in a 6-inning May 2nd start versus the Angels. With Spencer Schwellenbach’s recording 78.2% strikes Sunday while he struck out 11 and walked none, Skubal didn’teven get the day’s best percentage of strikes.

While arguably less efficient (only arguably because he struck out 2 more than Skubal), deGrom actually had 77.1% strikes in the start I noted. And of game scores of 88 or greater over the last five years, only Shane Bieber (9 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 11 SO), in a start 10 days before deGrom’s, threw more strikes.

The most strikes in any start over the past five years was the 88 Sandy Alcantara threw while allowing the Cubs 2 runs over 8 1/3 on 5/7/23. Alcantara has three of the top nine “strike” games from 2021-2025.

Another note. To find the top strike percentage games this year, I started with those of 72.5%+. There have been only 41 (of 6 innings or more), but five pitchers are represented three times on the list: Bailey Ober, Bryan Woo, Hunter Greene, Spencer Schwellenbach, and Skubal.

I rather like older pitchers, as they’ve passed the injury test and are well represented in many leaders’ categories, but those guys are all under 30.

Justin Verlander is well past 40, but he has a couple of the 72.5% starts (4/25 and 5/12), which is encouraging. The only other repeat performer was Zack Littell.

5/26 N3: The Yankees lead the Cubs in OPS, .821 to .796, but the Cubs lead the Yankees and everyone else quite easily in runs, appearing a truly great offense at 6+ runs a game. They don’t give you a playoff berth for that, though, and at just 32-21, the Cubs have plenty of work to do.

I wondered if the Cubs run total had anything to do with the silliness of extra innings, but it’s the opposite. The Cubs have played just five extra-inning games this year, scoring 3 runs total in them.

5/26 N4: I am tempted to nominate Gavin Lux as the Reds best hitter, but since he’s 3 for 27 against lefties this year, with all 3 of the hits singles, and has struck out 14 times, you can understand why Terry Francona pinch hits for him.

5/26 N5: A .290 OBP for Yandy Diaz? That’s just sick and wrong. Had .400+ seasons in 2022 and 2023, and 2020, too, if you want to buttress the point.

5/26 N6: The Dodgers are giving up 4.43 runs a game, versus the 4.33 MLB average. We had good reasons for thinking this team was going to win 105, 115 games, didn’t we, and that other talented teams were just playing for 2nd, or for good luck in the postseason?

5/27 N1: Ryan O’Hearn now 5th in baseball in batting average (.340), 4th in OBP (.426), 5th in OPS (.969). Has started 22 games as the DH, 10 at 1B, 9 in RF, 2 in LF. His Defensive Runs Saved are even (0).

5/27 N2: Sad to see that Marcus Semien batted 9th on Monday. Certainly he wasn’t great last year, but it’s been a fast descent.

5/27 N3: No active player has 400 home runs. Mike Trout leads with 387. Just looking at the player’s current total and making a first reaction, however, I’d vote for 14 of the current top 20 to eventually get there.

It is pretty likely that this is an unusual time where the current home run leader only has 387. That said, it does seem there is what some might see as a paradox in the two things, as I’m guessing that the number of current players at any milestone is always far less than the number of active players who will eventually do it.

Maybe an analogy would be with age and population. Yes, a population total is by nature without bias, with changes always reflecting the ratio of births to deaths. But at the same time, if we were to compare the number of current 90-year-olds and older, versus the number of living people who will eventually get to 90, the first number is obviously always a fraction of the second.

My estimate, by the way, of the 14 current top 20 home run hitters making it to 400 counted Trout, Goldschmidt, Freeman, Machado, Arenado, Harper, Judge, Schwarber, Suarez, Betts, Olson, Jose Ramirez, Lindor, and Ohtani as “yeses,” and Carlos Santana, McCutchen, Marcel Ozuna, Salvador Perez, Springer, and Semien as “nos.” Wasn’t quite sure on Arenado, Suarez, Betts, and even Jose Ramirez and Lindor on the “yes” side.

5/27 N4: I like seeing a great player who is taking a different path and who is directing his talents a different way, but if I am allowed to be greedy, Bobby Witt’s mere 5 home runs this year are disappointing. He hasn’t hit one since May 7.

5/27 N5: Witt’s trend of hitting better at home than on the road has not surfaced so far this year.

2022: .288 at home, .223 on the road

2023: .298 at home, .254 on the road

2024: .382 at home, .284 on the road

2025: .295 at home, .291 on the road

I use batting average because that’s where you find the great majority of his disparity. For instance, he has 44 career home runs on the road, 43 at home.

If you’re wondering to what degree he has done better with home runs than other categories on the road because of Kauffman Stadium (given its history), the FanGraphs Park Factor shows its home run effect as 95, which is to say, that it cuts down home runs by 10%.

The three other hit types are up at least 10% in Kansas City, with singles elevated the 2nd-most in MLB, doubles elevated the 3rd-most, and triples tied for the 4th-most elevation.

5/27 N6: Non-strikeout outs made up about 46% of plate appearances last year. I would not have thought that was the minority occurrence. In other words, (baserunners + SO) > (all other PA).

So, if you like strikeouts, and I kind of do, total action is more common than non-action.

5/28 N1: Right now, I’m listening to the SABR Oral History given by Dale Murphy. In it, I learned that Murphy was the 5th-overall pick, and debuted at Kingsport, Tennessee, in the Rookie Appalachian league. Eight years later, as other Mets fans know, Dwight Gooden would also be the 5th-overall pick, and debut there.

Murphy, as a rookie in the rookie, wasn’t remarkable at all. He played pretty much a full schedule, 54 games, and put up percentages of .254/.349/.376. The league slash was .248/.350/.351. It would be a stretch to say from this .122 Isolated Power vs. the league’s .103 that you can see this is going to be Dale Murphy and his couple of NL home run championships.

As you probably know, Murphy was a catcher at this time. He didn’t play anywhere else. There weren’t many future big leaguers in this Appalachian League season, but a couple of prominent ones were also catchers: first-round pick Lance Parrish, who hit for good power but just a .213 average while leading the league in strikeouts, and Butch Wynegar, a second-round pick who hit brilliantly (.346/.464/.524).

Parrish was actually a third-baseman/outfielder at this tim, and would move to catcher the following year.

Wynegar continued precocious. Just two years later, he would be an All-Star (bWAR 3.4), getting a couple of odd Rookie of the Year votes from the people who perhaps didn’t like Mark Fidrych’s antics, or questioned the value of pitchers. That All-Star nod seems a bit surprising, but he had a .305 OBP in the second half, a .402 in the second half, perhaps wearing down.

Another 1974 Appalachian League catcher who made it the big leagues, albeit mostly as a backup for a few seasons, was Jerry Narron. You may also know Narron as a manager. He had stints with the Rangers (134-162) and Reds (157-179). After Johnny Oates was fired, he handled most of ARod’s first season in Texas (2001).

Narron was a 6th-round pick of the Yankees and played well in the Appalachian League, playing outfield in addition to catcher. With a .301/.415/.487 slash, he was between Murphy and Wynegar, but really closer to Wynegar.

Something interesting is that his brother John was also on this team, curiously making his professional debut at Johnson City, although 4 years older than Jerry. John rather feasted on the younger pitching, finishing 3rd in the league in home runs, and hitting .272 with a .382 OBP. But he was obviously no prospect, and retired after just one more year as a player.

BR Bullpen documents a full post-playing caeer in the game, including working as the Brewers’ hitting coach from 2012-2014. John appearently wasn’t drafted, but BR Bullpen doesn’t fill in what he was doing from 18-22, when we can guess he probably went to college.

Gooden made 9 starts for Kingsport, and unlike Murphy, he was certainly good by the numbers, if not great. But, thinking of the song, and changing the gender, he was only 17.

One wouldn’t want to make too much of 25 walks in 65.2 innings, but his next year’s 112 walks in 191 innings confirm that, contrary to a legend that formed quickly, he actually wasn’t without some rawness out of high school. The Mets got away with jumping him straight to the majors in 1984, though, and his walks-per-9 were down to 3.0 his rookie year. Special talents can do that, can overcome the better caliber of play in the big leagues and perform better in absolute terms. Superheroes throwing off their cape and shackles. One thinks of Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill.

The thing is, it didn’t really matter that Gooden walked his share in 1983 at Lynchburg. He struck out 300, helping him to a 19-4 record. Those blindly loyal would have said he was bored, I’m sure, or that his pitches were so nasty, the umpires couldn’t call them.

Gooden had a 2.47 E.R.A. in the Appalachian League versus the 4.29 league mark. Among those with 9 or more starts (30 pitchers), this placed him 4th in E.R.A.. Unearned runs are such a factor in Rookie ball, though (Gooden allowed 16 unearned, 18 earned), that using something like WHIP might be better for ranking pitchers. Gooden was 5th there.

Gooden made a couple of starts a half rung up at Little Falls later in the year, and pitchers made as many as 13 starts in the Applachian League, so using total strikeouts isn’t quite fair to him, but by that metric, he was tied for 6th.

We find a rival for him there in Jose Rijo, who you can link to Gooden in quite a few ways through their careers. Rijo was a poor man’s Gooden, I guess, but that’s not quite doing him justice, because he was really a different pitcher than Gooden. Also 17 at this time, Rijo had the same 66 strikeouts Gooden did, but he did it with better control, if a worse k/inning rate.

The league’s very strikeout leader (co-leader with Keith Turnbull actually) is also interesting: Randy Myers. Myers fanned 86 in 74.1 innings. But there was one problem — he walked 69!

The 24-year-old William Finnegan saved Myers from the league walk title. Finnegan walked 72, and only struck out 27.

Guess what: that guy didn’t make it to the big leagues.

If I went back and read the first ghost-written Gooden bio, I have a feeling there is something in there about a hitter taking Dwight deep at Kingsport and jumping around like it was the College World Series, and pissing the Doctor off. It that happened, he was the only one to take Gooden deep.

Myers also allowed only 1 home run. Among those with 9 starts or more, they were 2nd and 3rd in the league in home runs-per-9.

The slash lines in each Appalachian League, 1974 and 1982, were very close, with a .701 OPS in Murphy’s year, a .703 in Gooden’s. What is interesting is to note the disparity between those OPSes, though, and the high runs-per-game in each league, which rose a little over 5.0, likely on the strength of errors-per -team game (2.01 in Murphy’s year, 1.81 in Gooden’s), and BB/9 (5.2 in Murphy’s year, 4.7 in Gooden’s). Hearkening back to my recent piece about expansion, I noted that high walks should probably be associated with a lower quality of play, and you see that here. That both facets, walks and errors, improved from 1974 to 1982, is interesting and logical, but there certainly is a lot that goes into that, including just how plays are scored, which I don’t think we can have much faith in as being rigorous at the rookie league level.

5/28 N2: I did a quick check of the statistics of Gooden and Rijo, to make sure I wasn’t missing an obvious reality, as I sometimes do. Gooden beat him in bWAR, 48.1 to 35.0, but that’s only a 37% difference. Gooden had the advantage/accomplishment of 52% more starts.

This suggests that Rijo’s ERA+ is better than Gooden’s, which it is. Gooden’s career 111 ERA+ isn’t so disappointing to me, but that his whole Mets career doesn’t rate better than 116 does show that his special performance level was largely relegated to ‘84 and ‘85.

Gooden’s failure to continue his early performance, that feeling of always ever after being something of a disappointment, really dogged the child that I was. I know it sounds dramatic, but I think it is partly responsible for a certain fatalism that I developed. (Now I am just dumping more guilt on Gooden, not that I think he doesn’t partly deserves that, and not that I don’t think his life has largely been one of wasted opportunity and talent.)

Rijo’s Reds years (and they make up 80% of his career starts) do grade out by ERA+: that was a lofty 138.

5/28 N3: Over 3 1/3 Tuesday, J P Sears gave up 9 runs and 3 home runs, 2 of which were hit by Jose Altuve.

This game was in Houston, but Sears and this Sacramento ballpark are a bad combination. Over 2023 and 2024, he and Aaron Nola tied for the most home runs allowed. A .452 opposing slugging average went with that. This year, it’s up to .504. Sears has only made 4 of his 11 starts at home, but the slugging average against him in Sacramento is .646.

5/29 N1: Probably just a sample size issue, but I note that the Yankee Stadium Batting Park Factor is 93 so far this season, meaning playing toward pitching. The multi-year YS Batting Park Finder is 101.

5/29 N2: Surprisingly anonymous leaders in the big categories: Major league OPS was topped in 2014 by Victor Martinez, and OPS+ was topped by Jose Abreu. They did finish 2nd and 4th in MVP, so were recognized as top players by every estimate, seemingly. Trout led in AL bWAR, despite -11 Defensive Runs Saved, and was the unanimous MVP, the first time he won the award….The MVP 3rd-place finisher was another guy under the superstar level typically, Michael Brantley….

5/29 N3: Because of the adoption of the DH in the NL in 2022, I think it makes sense to just use the American League for these numbers….Conveniently, 2010 does work as a demarcation point, vis-a-vis the league OBP was .330+ every year from 1993-2009, and has been under .330 every year since.

But at least for slugging average, you do have to index each year to interpret a number. The fluctuation season to season in the league average is significant. Starting with 2014: .390, .412, .423, .429, .415, .439, .414, .415, .392, .412, .394, .391.

5/29 N4: We’ll see if he stays here, but Tommy Edman has come down to earth. Yes, you can feel my Dodger envy. Envy poduces schadenfreude, which stops only at injury’s door.

5/29 N5: The Padres are 16th in MLB in runs scored. If they can stay healthy, this should improve, but one particular sore spot has been left field, where they have a team .534 OPS. Although the two biggest culprits (Jason Heyward, .529 OPS in left, 81 PA; Oscar Gonzalez, .434 OPS in left, 42 PA) aren’t on the active roster right now, the blight underscores a general lack of depth among the position players, it seems to me.

5/29 N6: Even Witt’s 21 doubles in 57 2025 games, a 59-2B pace, don’t quite get him to 50 for 162 games over the last two seasons. He had 45 doubles last season. His 14 triples over the last two seasons, however, do translate to 10+ per 162, and he’s over that rate for his career as well.

5/29 N7: TJ Friedl has a .442 OBP in May. Rafael Devers has been on base 56 times in May, way out in front of everyone else, then 11 guys have been on base from 45-49 times. Starting with 49 times and going down, they are Freddie Freeman, Jacob Wilson, Aaron Judge, Ryan O’Hearn, Shohei Ohtani, Friedl, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Maikel Garcia, Manny Machado, Jose Ramirez, and Gleyber Torres.

5/29 N8: Orlando Arcia was 128th of 129 batting qualifiers in OPS last year. The Rockies pick him up, and in his first game for them, they start him at DH. Oh well, at least he got a couple of hits, even if they were singles.

5/30 N1: Quite interesting data all around from Chris Sale’s 6-inning, 2-hit outing against Philadelphia. Using ESPN data, he had as many strikeouts (8) as whiffs (8), which is very unusual (And FanGraphs has only 7 whiffs for Sale in the game).

We get a clue on how Sale got up to those strikeouts when we note that the Phillies fouled the ball off on 25 of their 45 swings. So this had them in position to strike out.

If we look in terms of percentage of strikes, which can be easily related back to one of Baseball Reference’s categories, Sale had 38.5% by foul ball in this game. Milwaukee’s Chad Patrick leads MLB at 34.9%. But on the season, Sale’s game of foul balls only got him up to 28.1%, just 0.1 over the MLB average.

If we think of foul balls as going with fly balls, though, Sale has been having a fly ball season (0.93 GB/FB), if it has not been extreme . This is in contrast to his stats last year (1.34 GB/FB). His career mark is 1.18, at MLB average, or a tick towards the ground ball side.

5/30 N2: Since he stole 104 minor league bags in 2024, and is now just 2 off the MLB lead in steals despite spending the first three weeks or so of the year in the minors, Chandler Simpson is the clear favorite to lead MLB in steals this year.

A rookie leading in steals seems like it fits with our sense of how things should be. There are some things rookies do do, and some things they don’t, and this seems under the columns of the things they do.

I don’t have a count for how many rookies have led the league in steals (Stathead doesn’t let you filter by league leadership), but I am surprised to see that only 14 rookies 1900+ have had as many as 55 steals. They are led by Vince Coleman, of course, who had 110 in 1985. That is way ahead of #2, the great Federal League player and villain, Benny Kauff, who had 75.

I had forgotten about Tim Raines’ special 1981 as a rookie, when he had 71 steals in Montreal’s 108-game season, and played in only 88 games himself. 71 per 88 is right on Rickey Henderson’s 130, and Raines did it with an 87% success rate, compared to Henderson’s 76%.

The cause of the missed 20 games (beyond the strike) appears to have been injury. He was in and out of the lineup over Montreal’s final 22 games, mostly out, then missed the NLDS.

He started at leadoff in all 5 games of the NLCS against the Dodgers but only reached base 5 times, and was thrown out the one time he attempted to steal. The Expos came up one game short of the World Series and had the tying run at 2nd in the 9th inning when Jerry White grounded out

Esteury Ruiz (whatever happened to him?)’s rather forgettable 67 steals in 2023 is the fifth-highest rookie total ever, underscoring that Simpson could really be on his way to something really worth noting.

One negative in Simpson’s record is that the walk isn’t a part of his game. He’s under 5% walks from PA this season, and he had just 44 in 2024.

He is a reason for Rays’ fans to come out and support their team, although by no means the only reason.

A postscript, or a means of satisfying my “must know, must know” ego: Ruiz has 25 steals in AAA for the Dodgers this season.

5/30 N3: I notice Josh Bell right now, yes, because of his 3-run home run yesterday, but when one looks at his 2025 record, it is not pretty. He has a .175 BAbip, which makes him the only qualifer with a BAbip under .200. He owns a .173 overall average, although since he walks and homers more than average, his .607 OPS is a bit better.

He’s a .284 career BAbiper, but he only has 1 double this year with 162 AB. My incidental findings, writing about “low doubles” cases, is that this may be a dire sign. For instance, take the just “officially retired” Jean Segura: 137 2B from 2016-2019, but just 14 over 183 games in 2022-2023, with 2023 a 49 OPS+.

5/31 N1: I am overly influenced by the way MLB Network’s Quick Pitch show chooses to cover things, but I don’t think there is nearly as much attention paid to hitting streaks as when I was a kid. Jose Ramirez just had his 21-game hitting streak snapped. That’s not such a long streak, but this is Jose Ramirez, which you would think would give it some extra attention. As a fan, notable hitting streaks just disappear into the air these days. You hear when they are going on, but no annoucement is made when they are over. If you don’t have the side as well, they are not really being covered.

I suppose this last bit could be MLB Network not liking to add to “negative” news, but my other theories for why hitting streaks have lost coverage are

(1) That they are a silly way of representing great performance, inasmuch as they make a big deal of every game, indirectly award players for not walking, not differentiating between types of hits, etc.

(2) The decline indicates our growing apathy towards baseball records. It is indicative of the loss in interest in baseball in general. Even when people are following baseball, they’re not doing it as passionately as they used to. The hitting streak requires daily devotion.

(3) Interest in records in baseball is also down because of the feeling that the records will not ultimately be broken. And, of course, with DiMaggio and 56 games, although it’s hardly like Jack Chesbro’s 41 wins, that is certainly relevant.

I’m pretty sure I had another. Maybe I’ll think about it, but I’m afraid my coffee has already gone cold.

5/31 N2: BAbip continues to plague Chris Bassitt: .335 last year, .342 this year. His E.R.A. stood at 0.77 after 4 starts, but 6 of his subsequent 8 efforts have ended with game scores under 50.

Setting BAbip aside, though, Bassitt pitched great in those first four starts but hasn’t pitched well since. He has 8.0 ks/9 in the second stretch, with 1.9 home runs allowed per 9. He opened with 12.0 ks/9 and no home runs allowed.

5/31 N3: The Rangers surprisingly turned to a Sam Haggerty as their center fielder in the middle of this month, and I spent five minutes about a week ago trying to figure out who this was, and to make absolutely certain he hadn’t played for the Rockies, an idea I couldn’t get out of my mind. Well, now that SAM HILLIARD emerged on Friday night for those very Rockies, hitting a pinch hit home run against the Mets, the mystery is solved.

Both Sam Hs are at least mostly outfielders. Both came up in 2019 and have seen action in every subsequent season, although with highs in plate appearances of just 201 (Haggerty) and 238 (Hilliard). Haggerty has stolen 36 bases in 40 attempts in 218 career games; Hilliard 24 in 27 attempts in 313 career games. Haggerty has a 93 OPS+, Hilliard a 90.

The big difference is that Hilliard has real power, while Haggerty does not, and Haggerty has a career 34.0% strikeout rate, while Hilliard is at 24.1%. Hilliard is also 6’5”, 235 lb., while Haggerty is 5’11”, 175, going along with their home run and k rates.

Anyway, I think I have been well within my rights for confusing them, and, choosing one of them as I did, to have folded Haggerty into Hilliard, and not the other way around.

5/31 N4: Giants get a shutout win against the Marlins, bridging the gap from Kyle Harrison to Camilo Doval with 2/3 innings of Tristan Beck, 1/3 inning of Ryan Walker, 2/3 innings of Erik Miller, 1/3 inning of Tyler Rogers, and 2/3 innings of Spencer Bivens. What a mockery. This is preemptive relief, not relief when you need it, and is bad for the fans and the viewing experience.

5/31 N5: Otto Lopez at cleanup? Huh. It seems Clayton McCullough isn’t afraid of any appearance. I don’t see the underlying intelligence in the moves, so am put off, not interested, to say nothing of converted.

5/31 N6: Framber Valdez’s 83-pitch complete game also included just 1 fly ball allowed, according to FanGraphs (a Jose Caballero home run), versus 15 ground balls. But on the season, Valdez isn’t at the top in GB/FB ratio, as I expected, and it is another Friday starter who is far outpacing everybody else. Jose Soriano’s 4.28-1 ratio is presumably the secret to the 3.41 E.R.A. he has despite just a 1.44-1 SO/BB ratio.

5/31 N7: We can now call these cases of Nick Pivetta striking out hitters with low whiffs officially a trait. 8 more ks on Friday on 9 whiffs, while the typical ratio is less than 1:2.

5/31 N8: Yesterday, I was tempted to note on Andres Munoz’s perfect earned runs season. But as I didn’t, you can’t blame me for last night’s implosion. But I guess I did not enough damage getting Chandler Simpson sent down to the minor leagues.