Notes Week Ending 6/21

6/15 N1: If I put together the numbers correctly, the “strike” percentage (consisting of called, swinging, foul, and in-play) on the first pitch is just under 62%, while it’s just under 64% overall. Since batters are apt to take on the first pitch, I would have thought the strike percentage was higher on the first pitch, with pitchers pouring one in there, but it’s lower. You also don’t have the shameless throws out of the strike zone that you do when a pitcher is up 0-2 or 1-2 that could accumulate balls, although I suppose the strike percentage is restored somewhat there by batters fearing to striking out and increasing their chase rate along with the “out of the zone” rate that they see.

In any event, I am intrigued that, on the first pitch, that hitters by and large don’t chase actually leads to their getting ahead in the count more than they otherwise would. I am intrigued that the lower chase rate may more than offset pitchers’ knowledge of this, and pitchers’ additional possible tendency to throw more fastballs on the first pitch.

But I guess the percentage really needs to be figured for every count because each one has its own dynamic. It may be the case not so much that hitters win the ball/strike battle on the first pitch, as that they don’t lose by as lopsided a margin as they do when they have 2 strikes. First pitch versus 0-1, 1-0, and 2-1, in other words, could be the instructive comparisons. It also seems likely that 3-0 is a major count for strikes on the next pitch, what with batters unlikely to swing and pitchers not wanting to issue a walk, although it comes up infrequently, and so might not skew things overly.

How I figured this first-pitch strike percentage, since it isn’t given to one straight away in Baseball Reference…..In “League Splits”, I took the “After 0-1” plate appearance total as a reflection of the total number of first-pitch strikes, and then added to that the “First Pitch” PA total itself, minus HBP. First-pitch balls equaled the “After 1-0” total PA count, + HBP on the first pitch.

I could be missing something, and my conclusion that first pitches result in strikes less often than other pitches could be wrong, but that’s my best attempt.

6/15 N2: Today is Father’s Day, but it was the brother theme that stood out to me in baseball yesterday. The headline, certainly, was made by Willson and William both homering in 9th inning.of their matchup.

I also thought it was funny watching the Mets game when Gary Cohen was talking about the series that Nathaniel Lowe had just had against the Mets while the Rays’ Josh Lowe was hitting. Pitching to Josh, at the time, was Tylor Megill, whose brother Trevor has 14 saves for the Brewers.

You can go through hundreds of miles in some sections of the country, and hundreds of thousands of people in other segments, without finding a big-league family, and here these families have two representatives.

6/15 N3: Really special to see a vintage Clayton Kershaw outing (7 IP, 3 H, 0 R,1 BB) even while we know he’s at just about the lowest percentage of what he once was physically of any pitcher going. Chalk it up to competitiveness, stubbornness, determination, or what you will. His average fastball velocity was 88.5.

6/16 N1: Jeremy Pena gives much for a statistician to ponder. His batting average, which rose to .333 after he got 4 hits on Friday, is now certainly hard to miss, but his MLB-second-best 4.2 bWAR makes it clear that his contributions have been far from narrow. However, this latest hitting spree he’s been on has just been weird, with some negative elements thrown in, and the components make it clear he’s not really a .400 hitter (but, Judge included, who is?)

Since June 3, Pena has the following stats in 12 games.

The good: 20 hits in 51 AB, including 6 doubles. 11 runs scored. 5 steals in 5 AB.

The bad: 0 home runs; 1 BB; 13 SO.

The weird: 9 infield hits.

If anyone is going to get infield hits, it’s going to be Pena; with 42 last year, he distanced hits next closest competiton, Witt, by 11. The normal rate of infield hits is 1 per 11 games. Since the start of 2024, he has 1 per every 3.6 games he’s played, and that’s been an absurd 1 per 1.3 games in his streak.

6/16 N2: Since Tommy Pham has just a .222 slugging average in 153 AB this season, it’s hard to say he’s lucked into much positive, or is fooling people. But if he’d had the normal 2.8% infield hits per at-bat, instead of the 6.5% he does have, he’d be hitting .159 instead of .196.

None of his 10 infield hits are bunts, so one can’t claim method to the madness on that score. Hitting excessive ground balls has been a big part of his problem (1.94 ratio to fly balls), though, so let’s at least allow him to reap the benefits of that, and his 83rd percentile sprint speed is astonishing in light of his age (37). His strikeout rate is high, though, 27.3%, reducing the number of balls he’s put in play.

He’s been really putrid at the plate, and I think the infield hits are part of the picture — even his singles grade out as lacking in power.

6/16 N3: RE24 includes the value of situational hitting, while BREF “runs batting” does not….But hard to make sense of Elly De La Cruz ranking 13th in MLB in RE24, and in a 9-way tie for 43rd in “runs batting.” At .854, his OPS with men in scoring position is the same as his .850 overall. His OPS with 2 out in men in scoring position is down to .758, with 3 home runs and 5 walks saving a .143 average. He has been good with the bases loaded, with 9 total bases in 11 AB, although I’d bet we could find quite a few players with more total bases than that with the bases loaded.

If I remember right, RE24 does include base running. ELDC is only stealing at a 77% clip this year, so isn’t contributing much there. His GIDP of only 3 represent a helpful rate, however….

6/16 N4: Another note about ELDC. I can only be pleased with him as an average hitter: a respectable .259 last year, and .273 this year. That will ultimately mean big OBP and SA, which will mean big OPS. But he doesn’t do it as you might think, with infield hits. You know he bats a lot, and 42 players had more infield hits last year, and 33 have more this year. He manages hits because he hits the ball hard, not because he gets infield hits. And his strikeout percentage is down over 5 points from what it was last year.

6/16 N5: Actually, only Geno Suarez, with his 3 grand slams in 8 at-bats, has more than EDLC’s 9 bases loaded total bases this year. Rafael Devers, Brandon Nimmo, and Julio Rodriguez are tied with EDLC.

Looking at bases loaded hits, Seiya Suzuki and Dansby Swanson are on top with 6, while no one else has more than 4.

Jose Iglesias is only hitting (or should I say producing) with the bases loaded; 4 for 5 there. (That I almost misstated the preceding made me contemplate the humor of a bases loaded specialist, only called upon to pinch hit with the bases loaded.)

6/16 N6: Despite a 3.05 E.R.A. (23rd of 75 qualifiers), it’s my impression that Yusei Kikuchi has been spotty. Maybe part of the reason I feel this way is that he’s only thrown more than 6 innings once this year, part of the overall truth that his box scores have not been easy on the eyes.

The Angels are trying; Kikuchi has thrown 90 or more pitches in nine straight starts, and in 12 of 15 overall. Where he gets hung up is not so much that he throws a lot of pitchers per batter faced (his rate is the 35th highest among a group 123 on pace for 502 batters faced), as that he just gives up a lot of base runners, and his pitches accumulate that way. His WHIP is 4th worst of the 75.

Senzatela doesn’t qualify in that 75, and he has not surprisingly allowed the most base runners. When we go by that, total base runners instead of WHIP, Kikuchi shows is having allowed the third most.

Maybe like the Angelss in general, he’s succeeding with mirrors, but the 10 ks he had Sunday are more like the 2024 Kikuchi and a good sign.

6/16 N7: You’d have a tough time convincing me that this Sunday’s Rockies-Braves game, where the Rockies ultimately won a laugher but Grant Holmes struck out 15 batters with a 75.3% strike rate, doesn’t rate a spot among the 15 strangest games of the year (I pick 15 because it would be fun to come up with the ultimate box score day). Holmes recorded strikes on 22 of his 24 first pitches.

6/16 N8: A couple of looks that make one thing this Twins product is not one of the best to watch.

First, their five players with the most plate appearances (Larnach, France, Correa, Buxton, and Jeffers) are all in their age-28 season or later, which is to say, theoretically on the downhill.

Second, their team leader in walks is Jeffers, who has 25. That doesn’t place him in the top 75 in MLB. Somehow, however, the Twins are ahead of eight teams in walks.

I just see a lot of mediocrity here.

6/16 N9: Good news for the Rockies is Charlie Condon has a .997 OPS in 108 plate appearances in the Northwest League. It’s been drive by his OBP (.509) not his SA (.488). With Georgia, he hit 62 home runs in 441 at-bats.

6/16 N10: Just taking a look at some of Nick Pivetta’s under-the-hood numbers….Like many pitchers, he has one repertoire versus right-handers, and one versus left-handers. In his case, he throws 88% of his sweepers to right-handers, and the same 88% of his curves to lefties. We see his whiff rate on the sweeper is 38%, while it’s 19% on the curve. This begs the question of whether the sweeper is really a better pitch, or if the whiff rate on it is just higher because there is an opportunity there against right-handers that wouldn’t be there against left-handers?

I have written a lot about how Pivetta is getting a lot of his results threw “taking” strikes, not swinging. Perhaps along the same lines, despite the sweeper/curve whiff difference, Pivetta has almost as many strikeouts against left-handers (43) as he has against right-handers (45), with the plate appearances against each within 1%. He’s also allowed a batting average 20 points lower against lefties, and only 2 of his 9 home runs to them.

6/16 N11: I had forgotten the fiasco that was Raffy Devers grand slam against position player Emmanuel Rivera when the Red Sox beat Baltimore 19-5 on May 23. So let’s get Devers off the list of the most total bases with the bases loaded this season. Position player pitching is immaterial to statistics at season’s end, but I think has complicated (and frankly fucked up) record run totals. It can have an effect on other game records, too, and the Devers case is an argument that splits should be looked at closely, although this one was so small, I was basically drawing upon individual events in the first place.

I came to the bases loaded question because I started with RE24. There’s one thing you can say for Win Probability Added that you can’t say for RE24: it’s not beset wit the position-player-pitching statistical problem.

6/16 N12: There’s that expression “stop when you’re ahead.” Well, I definitely don’t think I’m ahead, and that’s all the more reason I should stop. But isn’t it kind of odd that the term and utility of “difference indifference” has been taken up by the stolen base in blowouts, when position player pitching, particularly as it’s usually done now, consists of the same thing?

6/17 N1: Starting with Dickey Kerr’s historic 182 runs allowed for the 1921 White Sox, which was the first post-scandal White Sox team, last week I noted that the low ebb for the franchise in the standings really occurred from 1929-1934. I was therefore interested this morning to read that a precedent for this year’s Rockies is the 1932 Red Sox, who had the same 14-57 record through 71 games that the Rockies had this year. The Red Sox would rally a bit, winning more than one out three games for the rest of their season, but would still finish with 111 losses in 154 games.

This made me wonder if, when I generally cited 1929-1934 as a period of futility for the White Sox, if they had been a bit better in 1932 itself. Could a league accomodate two such terrible teams? In fact, the White Sox lost 102 games that year, a franchise record that would stay in place until they dropped 106 in a schedule of 11 more games in 1970.

Probably exacerbating the difficulties of these teams, the Yankees won 107 games in 1932. Then, while a distant 2nd, the A’s were coming off their 1929-1931 run of 313 wins and three pennants. Jimmie Foxx had the best season of his career for them by just about any measure in 1932, with his 58 home runs 21 more than he’d ever hit up to that point.

I think only so much can be learned from head-to-head records, as even if the performance of the Sox teams against New York and Philadelphia were found to surpass our expectations, this would not mean that the challenge wasn’t formidable, and that their overall records didn’t still suffer as a result. But the overall pattern of the Sox teams is just of losing against everybody.

The Red Sox took the season series of the two teams, 12 games to 10. Against everybody else, however, the Red Sox lost more than two out of every three games. Going 4-18 against Philadelphia, the A’s were indeed one of their two toughest opponents, but they had the same record against 87-65 Cleveland.

Playing the role of Cleveland for the White Sox was 93-win Washington, who likewise beat them 18 times. Against the Yankees, the White Sox were 5-17, and against Philadelphia, they were 7-15.

Uniting the Red Sox with the White Sox, and with the 1919 White Sox in particular, the manager who led them during their periof of awful play that opened the same was none other than Shano Collins. Although Collins had only a 90 career OPS+, the mostly outfielder finished his career with 1687 hits and was one of the clean 1919 White Sox, going 4 for 16 in the World Series. His record as manager of the 1932 Red Sox was 11-44. As the Red Sox would go to 13-57 after he was replaced, one can see that the team’s turnaround, such as it was, did not begin right after he was replaced.

6/17 N2: Thinking about teams with historic numbers of losses got me thinking about really great teams by regular season record, and how the record of the 2001 Mariners hasn’t been approached since, and how that team probably wasn’t appreciated at the time, and isn’t now.

So, they didn’t even make the World Series, but of course depending on how strict we made the criteria, would you cite them as a Hall of Fame team? Over many World Series winners? And what would you think about that as an idea, to make a Hall of Fame of individual teams? Picking out individual teams from dynasties might be impractical, and recognizing both the 1975 and 1976 Reds, for example, might come across as redundant. But it would still be a source of fun.

6/17 N3: Shohei Ohtani had an RBI single and double in yesterday’s game, but the lack of distance between his RBI and his home runs gives me the sensation of watching two base runners charging home right behind each other. Even with those hits yesterday, he still has just 43 RBI on 25 home runs.

Two explanations for this tight squeeze seem possible. The first is that he’s majored in solo shots this year. On that score, the data reveal that he has 19 solo home runs, four two-runs shots, and two three-runs shots, for a total of 33 RBI, which comes out to 1.32 RBI per home run. Last year, the major league average was 1.60 RBI per home run, so we’d expect 40 RBI from 25 home runs, not 33.

That leaves us with the information that Ohtani has just 10 non-home run RBI. I’m not sure how to put that into context quickly and easily, but it seems extremely low.

By no means has he been uncannily bad with runners in scoring position (hitting .238) or with men on (hitting .273), so we can finger a lack of opportunity, which is of course par for the course for a leadoff hitter. Ohtani’s opportunities have been additionally reduced by a 20.2% walk rate with men on. Nine of his 23 walks with men on have been intentional, so his unintentional walk rate with men on is 13.3%.

6/18 N1: I had forgotten about that Dale Murphy SABR Oral History and resumed it. Whether it is a product of the relaxed format, the sheer length of the interview, or Murphy’s conscious effort, the level of specificity contained is refreshing.

I know Murphy is in need of no additional character references, but here are a couple of answers I have appreciated. First, when asked, “What was it like to play in Atlanta?” the first thing he did was mention what a good-hitting ballpark Fulton County was. He didn’t flinch from the possibility that fans would think him less brilliant if they were reminded of that.

Second, of course interviewers are usually terribly guilty of repetition, in part because they have pre-determined their questions and stick to the script when earlier answers may departures more sensible. Murphy had already gone on about the Braves’ 13-game win streak to begin 1982, but John McMurray subsequently asked him anyway about the highlight of 1982. The truth-caring person that he is, instead of trying to be interesting and saying something else, Murphy just asserted that the 13-0 record was indeed the highlight.

6/18 N2: Brian Barrett of the “Off the Pike” podcast reported that Rafael Devers committed more errors than any other player from 2019-2024, with Javier Baez in second place. While of course we know to differentiate between errors and value, not to mention the need to adjust for chances in assessing total errors, having checked Baez’s “value” defensive stats, I don’t want any suggestion that Baez has been a poor defender to take hold. Statcast credits him as +66 runs over his career with 86 Outs Above Average, and Defensive Runs Saved has him +67. As Baez still hasn’t played 7 1458-inning seasons (he’s at just over 10,000 defensive innings), those numbers make for quite the per-season rate.

Amazing was his 2019, when he was +32 OAA. Maybe it was easier to put up a crazy number when there were extreme shifts, I don’t know, but while Dansby Swanson has led shortstops in each of the last two years, he’s done it with OAA totals of +18 and +20.

6/18 N3: Andrew McCutchen is 12 for his last 36 and is slugging .490 this month, but his 17 June strikeouts are as many as he had in both March/April and May. At the same time, he’s walked just one time this month, after drawing 27 over the first 2+ months.

6/18 N4: The extra improbability of the Rockies not just hitting 7 home runs in a game, but in a road game, turns out to be less than I would have guessed. Since 2016, they have 934 home dingers, 703 road dingers. Batting average (.284 at home, .229 on the road) shows a more impressive split.

As an aside, looking at the whole split, they don’t seem to have benefited from home scoring: they have 226 Reached on Error at home, versus 174 Reached in Error on the road. Any bias their scorer injects towards his familiars is more than offset by the Rockies putting more balls in play at home, and thus increasing chances for ROE.

6/18 N5: With their win total stuck at 30, the Nationals are now tied with the Marlins in the standings. The Pirates (1 behind) and the Athletics (1 ½ behind) lurk.

6/18 N6: 90 strikeouts for Will Warren in 69 innings gets my attention….Don’t know how you pitch as well as he did Tuesday and give up 3 runs, particularly when you don’t give up a home run….The effect of four straight singles in the 3rd, I guess, two of them of the infield variety….Warren only has 93.3 average velocity, but the hitters tell a different story.

6/18 N7: The “happy recap” (late longtime Mets’ announcer Bob Murphy’s patented phrase) for the Cardinals 12-2 win over the White Sox includes all in the lineup except Ivan Herrera scoring. And Herrera drove in 4 runs, in the process only improving upon his sensational RBI rate for the season.

6/18 N8: In Miguel Vargas, do the White Sox not only have a player who is good by White Sox standards, but just plain good? His 30 extra-base hits of course lead the White Sox, but they would also lead 10 other teams, and would tie for the lead on three others.

Leading the team in bWAR, I would assume he is a prime candidate to be their All-Star. The balance went a little more Vargas’s way with Shane Smith having a rough outing Wednesday.

I’m sure it will come down to where spots on the AL can be spared. I don’t see many candidates among the team’s bullpen. Mediocre and bad WHIPs abound there, even for Steven Wilson, who has a 1.99 E.R.A.

“All-Star” would look a little better for Vargas with either a better batting average (.242) or more home runs (10). He dug a hole for himself by starting the season 10 for 72, but it is disappointing to me that neither his May nor his June average has exceeded .263. He may just be a low BAbip player. That’s at .263 this year, and is .224 over a 765 AB career.

6/18 N9: I mentioned last week the extremely low number of starts Cleveland has had from left-handers since 2016 (the count now stands at 115). I retrieved the names, and if you started and ended with Logan Allen, you wouldn’t be succumbing to recency bias. He has started 56 of the games. Your defense would be even stronger because one of the three other left-handers to start double-digit games for the Indians over the time period was also Logan Allen — Logan Shane Allen. Sam Hentges and Konnor Pilkington are the other two Cleveland left-handers to start 10 games or more since 2016.

From 2016-2020, Cleveland only had 5 starts from left-handers, all made by Ryan Merritt. But it is his ALCS start in the clinching game 5 in 2016 that the team’s fans will remember. Merritt pitched shutout ball into the 5th and retired the first 10 Blue Jays he faced. I was struck not only that this soft tosser had pitched so well, but that he’d been pulled from the fame so early. Now, one wouldn’t bat an eye if that happened with any starter in the postseason (Blake Snell), but then, even with Merritt, I was surprised.

Although Merritt was just 24 when he made the start, his major league career did not extend past 2017. It was the true cup of coffee, although a very fine brand, getting to star in the ALCS clinching game as he did. He saw action with Durham in the International League in 2019, allowing 115 hits in 78 innings, then started a couple of games in the Dominican Winter League. I’m not sure he was just a “right place, right time” guy — 1.5 walks-per-9-innings over his professional career tell a bit of a different story.

6/18 N10: As Andy Pages hit 19 home runs in 235 AB in rookie ball in 2019, then followed with seasons of 31 and 26 home runs. he probably profiled for all of the power he’s shown this season and more. Looking at his .264 minor league batting average, though, his .293 this season is a shocker. At the same time, no longer apparent is the walk and hit-by-pitch ability he showed in the minors. He was possessed of a .381 OBP. Even this season, with his fine hitting, his OBP is only .332. Maybe the lesson is that a good player is likely to continue to produce, but not in just the same way he did in the minor leagues.

6/19 N1: You’d have to say Bailey Ober’s 4 runs allowed over 5 2/3 in the Twins rain-shortened loss to the Reds made for the ultimate cheap complete game. I hadn’t thought of that as a confound. I think I would be in favor of its not being recorded that way. When complete games were a dime a dozen, a single one didn’t signify anything, but now that has changed.

It’s interesting to think about what exactly the statistic is supposed to represent, and whether 9-inning starts might work better than CGs. I suppose at one time it made sense to count the 8-inning complete games in losses as complete games, as you wouldn’t want that confound of pitchers who lost more necessarily having fewer of them.

I guess I favor a liberal definition of a complete game when they are common, a strict definition when they are not. When a game doesn’t fall in the normative category, that is when it stands out, and I think there shouldn’t be special circumstances behind the exceptions. I think they should reflect performance instead.

I also think also think when complete games actually started being recorded (I don’t know) could tell us something about when the admiration for pitchers who went the distance came into play. I believe it’ss an easy thing to track retroactively, so that we have it back to the 1871 National Association doesn’t mean it was always recognized.

6/19 N2: Chris Sale didn’t quite complete the Braves blanking of the Mets Wednesday, but of his 116 pitches, 85 were strikes. That’s the most strikes a pitcher has thrown in a game since Sandy Alcantara threw 88 of 113 on 5/7/2023, for what would be a 5-4 Marlins wins over the Cubs in one of the six games that has lasted at least 14 innings since the new extra-inning rules were instituted in 2020.

Starting with an arbitrary point, 2013, I found 86 starts where the pitcher threw at least 85 strikes, but only 9 starts of 90 strikes or more. Obviously, those 86 starts are backloaded (or frontloaded) towards 2013, however you want to describe that.

Three starts have led the way with 96 or more strikes. One was Clayton Kershaw against Washington on 5/14/13, a game not obviously worth remembering, but the other two were historical games.

Awe is the only emotion appropriate for Max Scherzer’s 20-strikeout game against his ex-Tiger mates on 5/11/16, as he threw only 119 pitches (over 80% strikes) to get those 20 strikeouts. He did give up 6 hits and 2 runs, with Jose Iglesias and J.D. Martinez hitting home runs.

The other 96-strike game came not from a high strike percentage but from a gargantuan number of pitches. Tim Lincecum threw 148 in all in the first of his two no-hitters, which came on 7/13/13. Linecum walked 4 and struck out 13.

Indicating the general descent in pitches thrown, 85 strikes was not new territory for Sale personally. His high came on 8/26/16 against the Mariners, when he threw 88 in a complete game, but lost 3-1. Over the first 189 starts of his career, he had six outings with 85-88 strikes. Those six games featured strikeout totals of 15, 14, 14, 13, 12, and 7.

The Scherzer game is just one additional example of an apparent correspondence between a very high strike percentage and strikeouts. I wouldn’t say it’s something I have trouble believing, but neither is the relation intuitive to me.

Sale’s last game of 85 or more strikes thrown had come on 5/11/18 in the Red Sox championship season. He’s missed a lot of potential starts since with injury, but he had still gone 117 starts without an 85-strike game before Wednesday.

In his 85-strike games, he’s thrown between 115 and 124 pitches, and has had an excellent strike percentage of 70% or more in all but the 124-pitch game.

6/19 N3: It’s not on the par of a home run record chase, but I am nevertheless grateful for the pleasure of tracking Ronald Acuna’s transcendent start. With a 1.214 total OPS which is now higher than Judge’s 1.192, all three segments of his slash (.390/.495/.720) are in that range where they’re difficult to comprehend. But Acuna actually only flatters Judge, because for one guy to defy the percentages to the same extent as the other with over three times as many plate appearances leaves no doubt as to the better hitter. Judge casts a shadow over every other contemporary hitter no less than Tom Brady did with his want-to-be successors. There is no comparing to Judge, and it does his competitors an injustice.

6/19 N4: The Astros had five players (Pena, Altuve, Smith, Caratini, and Meyers) have 3 hits in their 11-4 win against the Athletics on Wednesday. They had 20 hits in all.

6/19 N5: Skubal pitching in game 1 of the doubleheader, Skenes in game 2. Can’t complain, but of course a direct matchup would have been cooler. No forced pairings like they do in the PGA.

6/19 N6: I might have been faster to see this, but it occurs to me that the relationship between strikes and strikeouts is explained by every strikeout requiring at least 3 strikes. So a high strikeout game is going to have a high baseline of strikes. I do not think, upon reflection, that strike percentage per ser and strikeouts are as strongly correlated, probably not even per inning pitched. This would really be because strike percentage does not guarantee the total number of pitches that strikes do, and you can’t compile a lot of strikes without throwing a lot of pitches.

Lincecum’s no-hitter aside (and even he walked 4), results in some of these high-strike games were less than brilliant (or pitchers were less than spotless in them, anyway). That trend is probably a byproduct of more batters faced leading to more pitches and then more strikes. Of course, the deeper a pitcher works the more batters he will face, but separating complete games in terms of batters faced is the number of baserunners. Hence, the spots apparent in these outings.

Most of this seems a rather damning critique. The temptation is to think that whatever commonly-cited stat which is meant to flatter you in fact find ambiguous, this one is worse.

I might come back at you with Kershaw, Scherzer, and Lincecum in one of his no-hitters as being the 96-strike games, But a full listing of the pitchers to have the most 85+ strike games since 2013 does suggest this is more the mark of a very good pitcher and not necessarily a great one, and does have a great deal of pure tendency to it, not outright skill. The list, of course, does necessarily have a “greatest hits of the 2015-2019 period” feel to it, which doesn’t help the quality of the names. Anyway

(1) David Price 9

(2) Chris Sale 7

(2) Max Scherzer 7

(4) Adam Wainwright 4

(4) Clayton Kershaw 4

(6) Cliff Lee 3

(6) Cole Hamels 3

(6) Jeff Samardzija 3

(6) Johnny Cueto 3

If we drop to 78 strikes and look at 2020-2025, we get

(1) Sandy Alcantara 6

(2) Gerrit Cole 5

(3) Max Scherzer 4

(3) Zack Wheeler 4

(5) Shohei Ohtani 3

(5) Aaron Nola 3

(5) Nathan Eovaldi 3

(5) Spencer Strider 3

(5) Justin Steele 3

(5) Mile Mikolas 3

A bit conspicuous is that five of the 10 above have also had UCL-repair surgey in this time period. Whether there’s even an indirect connection, or the fact is the reflection of the going rate for Tommy John surgery, I don’t know.

6/20 N1: Enyel De Los Santos, Mr. Jekyll and Hyde of the home runs-allowed ranks, has rewarded the Braves confidence this season, allowing Isolated Power of .099. This comes on the heels of 17 home runs allowed in 64 innings last year, or one per every 3.8 innings — the second worst rate ever for a pitching throwing 60 innings. De Los Santos gave up 2 home runs within his first 10 innings pitched this year, but now has a homerless streak going of over 20 innings.

My case for Enyel as Jekyll and Hyde, reprising my note that was included in “Week Ending 5/10,” is that 2018-2021 saw him also as bad as in 2024, giving up 14 homers in 65.1 innings. But then, with Cleveland in 2022-2023, he made a complete turnaround, allowing just 1 home run every 17 innings over 119 frames.

De Los Santos was having an overall good if not great season before he faced four Rockies on Sunday, and all of them reached base and eventually scored. His E.R.A. jumped from 2.76 to 3.99, although his FIP of 3.27 changed not at all. Outside of the home runs he is prone to, I would say he is a capable pitcher, but not talented enough he’ll be able to keep a job if the syndrome pops up again.

6/20 N2: Two two-run home runs for James Wood in a 4-3 Nationals victory? We really should ban the phrase “carrying the team,” stirring as it is, but could there be a better example? I suppose he could have pitched the game. Nevertheless, the game’s MVP wouldn’t have required a second’s debate.

I suppose, in this vein, determining who leads a team, in the style of determining the MVP, is constructive, as opposed to if and who carried the team.

I know the argument by some is that a bad team means there is nothing to carry and nothing to celebrate, but issuing an award for the player the most superior to his team would be fun and could be called the Carlton, thinking of 1972.

It is tempting to say that it would be the Trout on the position player side, but I don’t know that the Angels in his glory years were really marked as much by the absence of other good players as by overall futility. But I am quite sure that Trout still would have won multiple Trouts.

6/20 N3: That’s a pretty fair SO/BB ratio Steven Matz has this year, 38 strikeouts and 4 walks in 40.2 innings. Looking at his Statcast pitch type data, Matz seems to keep it simple, throwing 60 percent sinkers. From my (less than extensive) exploration of the data, I believe sinkerballers have the biggest reliable platoon splits. Indeed, over his four-year Cardinals career, Matz has a GB/FB ratio of 2.64 versus left-handers, and a below-average 1.02 versus right-handers. This year, the difference has been less stark: 1.75 vs. LH, 1.14 vs. RH. The sample size against left-handers, even over the four years, is not large — 246 batters faced. But what the data show in his case is that you put a left-hander in the bullpen, you can get him a higher percentage of lefty-lefty matchups. He’s faced 36% lefties that year, after facing 22% from 2022-2024.

6/20 N4: Recent call-up and Crochet dividend Kyle Teel potentially has potential. His OPS in the International League was a decent .886 this year, and he threw out just less than a third of opposing base stealers. He registered the same number of caught stealing this year (23) as he did versus almost double the number of steals allowed all last year in the minor leagues. So his rate reflected improvement.

6/20 N5: Partly because of a slow June, I’m not sure the truth of this “Spencer Torkelson comeback story” is resounding. He doesn’t have the excuse of limited playing time, as he’s on pace for almost 650 plate appearances, but he ranks just 9th among primary MLB first basemen in runs created. He is the same 9th among them in plate appearances.

Vladimir Guerreo Jr. has 50 runs created, Torkelson has 42.

A standout is certainly Jonathan Aranda: tied for 3rd with Guerrero Jr. in runs created, while 19th in plate appearances. Eighth in runs created while 21st in PA, let’s also give some love to Michael Busch.

A question for the stat sophisticates out there — I suppose rating by RC/PA is a complete waste of time, and trumped by rating by RC/Out? With the theory that outs will certainly increase with plate appearances? But if analyzing runs created relative to plate appearances is a waste of time, then how flawed is just looking at runs created by itself? But since we will rate by runs scored and RBI, rating by just runs created doesn’t necessarily seem without a place.

6/21 N1: Funny that I should use the instance of one runner running up another’s back as my analogy for Ohtani’s RBI and home runs this season, as we had that play in the Phillies/Mets game last night (a 7th-inning bases-clearing Bryson Stott double) where the two baserunners were about as close to one other as you’ll see (although an out-and-out passing of baserunners does happen occasionally). A happy ending there, with no harm except to egos. as both Castellanos and Realmuto scored.

That wasn’t the case in 1985, when Carlton Fisk tagged out both Bobby Meacham and Dale Berra as they ran up on each other. You’ve porbably seen that clip, and I of course remember it because 1985 was my debut season as a fan. The hazard of the trail runner passing the lead runner was avoided, but a double play nonetheless ensued.

6/21 N2: On Quick Pitch, host Abby Labar set up the Mets-Phillies highlights by asking whether the Mets could counteract the emotional lift the Phillies would get from Kyle Schwarber realizing the milestone of being a 10-year veteran. That could have been really funny, but there wasn’t a trace of humor in her voice, which paradoxically ended up making it funnier. The writer wanted to work in Schwarber’s achievement, which was totally fine, but written just as it was, it totally bombed. Massaged with just a word here and there, the tone might have been right. I think it was meant to be lighthearted, not ridiculous, but I’ll take ridiculous.

6/21 N3: A pitcher opening his career with 11 hitless innings across two starts, now that’s a story, that’s a phenom. And I know Misiorowski struggles with control, but he only gave up 5.3 hits per 9 innings in 233.2 minor league innings, so it’s not like this came out of nowhere. With only 14 home runs allowed over those 233.2 innings, I can only guess what the opposing slugging average against him was.

6/21 N4: A very unlikely 3 walks for Jackson Chourio yesterday, given the season he’s been having. Two of them came against Joe Ryan, too, who has very good control and has only walked 18 other men in his 15 games pitched.

6/21 N5: He pitched a complete game against the Athletics in Sacramento, but Tannee Bibee lost 5-1, and what a weird start it was. Consider

-He threw only 3 (exactly 3) pitches per batter faced.

-He struck out 10 of the 35 batters he faced, 28.6%, but allowed a .417 BAbip.

-He got those 10 strikeouts with just 14 whiffs on the game, while over 2 whiffs (my estimate is 2.1) are normally required to get 1 strikeout.

Bibee faced 35 batters, meaning he was 1 shy of going through the order four times. In his other 14 starts, he’d been between 20 and 28 batters faced each game.

6/21 N6: If you’ve ever tried to write out Isiah Kiner-Falefa, you quickly understand why IKF took hold. This is not a case of sliding doors. I firmly believe that every society which confronted the name would have come to the same solution.