Doctors diagnosed Rafael Devers with a bone bruise on his knee. It’s not clear he’ll go in the illjured list. Meanwhile, slugger Tyler O’Neill was placed on IL as he covers from his head laceration after colliding with Devers earlier in the week.
The Guardians beat the Red Sox 5-4 Thursday afternoon.
Today’s schedule is light, but the best pitching matchup takes place in Boston, as Carlos Carrasco faces opener Brennan Bernardino. Carrasco owns a 3.55 ERA despite allowing a ton of base runners, having given up 12 hits and nine walks in 12 2/3 innings. Three double plays have helped, as well as six of his strikeouts coming with me on base. Red Sox starters own the highest average game score in the majors. That comes mostly from few negatives against them. Coming into the season I expected the offense to be good and the pitching to be iffy, but so far the opposite is true.
The Marlins play the Cubs in Chicago, and the thing I wanted to bring up here is Cody Bellinger. Eighty one PA into the season his slash line is looking a lot more like 2020-2022. than 2023. Anything can happen in 100 PA, so take that with a grain of salt, but everyone who passed on Bellinger as a free agent is a little more comfortable with the decision.
For the past few years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit.
Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.
The Log5 Method yields these top picks:
In 2024, Rosario puts the ball in play a ton with just one walk and seven strikeouts in 55 plate appearance. On top of that, his BABIP stands at .348. It’s always been high, with a career mark of .326.
Arraez and Rosario swap places here, with Ramirez remaining in the middle. All three tie for the consensus top choice. Arraez is two for eight against Taillon, but put the ball in play in every PA against him.
You can follow the NN results on this spreadsheet. I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!
Juan Soto of the Yankees solidifies his spot at the top of the Baseball Musings Batter Rankings with a perfect day at the plate in a 6-4 comeback win over the Blue Jays. Soto collects two walks and three hits, including home run for a game score of 82, the best of the day.
Soto ranks high in RBI Percentage, the percent of runners on when he bats that get driven in. Number one on that list is number two in the Rankings, Mookie Betts of the Dodgers. Betts posted a rare bad game on Wednesday as he took an 0 for 4 in a 2-0 Washington win.
Yordan Alvarez of the Astros collected two hits, including a home run in a 5-4 Braves win. His teammate, Jose Altuve, went two for four with a walk to move into the fifth slot. In between them was an opponent of the day, Marcell Ozuna. He went one four five, but the one hit was his 8th home run of the season. That’s ties him with Mike Trout for the MLB lead in homers. Ozuna ranks fourth, while Trout is up to 77th.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
Tanner Houck pitches the first complete game of his career and the first for the Red Sox in almost two years as he shuts out the Guardians 2-0. Houck threw just 94 pitches, 69 for strikes, and did not issue a walk as the game took just 1:49. Houck got the ball, threw the ball, and kept finding the strike zone. It was a very impressive performance.
Houck’s ERA drops to 1.35 as the Red Sox continue to get outstanding starting pitching.
The Brewers pitchers issued just two walks and three strikeouts as they defeated the Padres 1-0. The Padres managed five hits, so the Padres went five for 27 on balls in play. FanGraphs showed the Brewers defense ranked high to start the day, and they certainly did a good job of preventing hits today.
Gunnar Henderson of the Orioles finishes a very good three-game series against Minnesota, going two for four today with a home run. He wound up seven for thirteen in the series, homering in each game. That helped Baltimore to a sweep. Henderson collected multiple hits in five of his last nine games to raise his OBP to .346.
It’s an unusual Wednesday as the latest start comes at 7 PM EDT. If you’re a baseball aficionado, you can spend from noon on watching games and still get to bed at a decent hour on the east coast.
Steven Matz leads the Cardinals against Paul Blackburn and the Athletics. Matz eschewed the three true outcomes so far this season, with eight strikeouts, three walks, and one home run allowed in 15 innings. While his ERA stands at 1.06, three of the six runs he allowed were unearned. Blackburn allowed no runs of any kind in his first 19 innings this season. He too comes in with low K, BB, and HR rates, so look for the defenses to get a lot of action this afternoon.
Andrew Abbott and the Reds face Bryce Miller and the Mariners. Abbott continues today’s trend of good results on higher ball in play rates, as he and the defense held batters to a .250 BABIP in 2024. Miller finally breaks the mold with 17 K in 18 1/3 innings, six walks and two home runs allowed. He allowed just 12 hits for a 1.96 ERA.
Finally, Reid Detmers and Zack Littell square off in St. Petersburg as the Angels battle the Rays. Detmers reduced his percentage of fly balls this season, leading to no home runs allowed. Most of the damage against Littell this year came with the bases empty, which is why the hits against him haven’t hurt his ERA much.
Enjoy!
In looking at MLB batter splits for this season, two things stand out to me. The first is that the composite batting order is rather well constructed. The major put a lot of on-base percentage at the top, and given the stats so far, the fourth hitter is better than the third hitter in both OBP and slugging percentage. That makes sense, as the fourth hitter serves a dual role of cleaning the table, and setting the table for the rest of the order. After the fourth hitter, there is a steady decline in OBP and slugging. The worst hitters still bat ninth, and they are pretty awful this season.
The other thing that stands out is that designated hitters are the best hitters by position. That really hasn’t been true during the history of the DH, even though the defensive spectrum would predict that. It’s possible that with the universal DH, teams and players finally adopted the idea that it’s a real position, rather than a place holder for someone injured, or someone who needs a day off from the field.
For the past few years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit.
Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.
The Log5 Method yields these top picks:
Altuve leads the AL with a .382 BA, and ranks second in OBP and slugging percentage. He and Kwan are tied for the league lead in hits with 29.
Perez is injured but not on the illjured list.
Here are the NN picks:
Both systems like the Braves against France. His hit average parameters for the NN are in the .240s, while the league hit average right now stands at .215. Altuve stands as the unanimous first choice, with Harris the consensus second pick.
You can follow the NN results on this spreadsheet. I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!
Mookie Betts of the Dodgers returns to the top five of the Baseball Musings Batter Rankings with a vengeance. He went five for five with two doubles in a 6-2 win over the Nationals. His 81 came in as the best game score of the day and puts him in second place.
Juan Soto of the Yankees remains in first place as he singles in four trips in a 5-4 Toronto victory. He leads Betts by four points. William Contreras of the Brewers ranks third after a 1 for 5 in a 6-3 Padres win. Yordan Alvarez of the Astros drops to fourth with an 0 for 4 in 6-2 Braves win. Marcell Ozuna of the Braves singled and walked to move into fifth place. Ozuna owns a .364/.417/.727 slash line early in the season. He leads the NL in home runs, RBI, and slugging percentage.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
One of the women who accused Trevor Bauer of sexual misconduct gets indicted on fraud charges.
For the second time this week, a pitcher who threw two no-hitters died. Carl Erskine died today, Tuesday, at the age of 97. He spent his career with the Dodgers:
Erskine had his best season in 1953, when he went 20-6 to lead the National League. He won Game 3 of the World Series, beating the Yankees 3-2 at Ebbets Field. He struck out 14, retiring the side in the ninth, for a World Series record that stood until Dodgers ace Sandy Koufax got 15 in 1963. The Dodgers went on to lose the 1953 series in six games as the Yankees won their fifth consecutive championship.
Erskine’s death leaves Koufax as the lone surviving Dodgers player from that World Series team.
ESPN.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Erskine pitched well in his prime, from his age 25 season in 1952 through his age 28 season in 1955. He won 63 and lost 35, a .643 winning percentage. By today’s standards, his strikeout rate was low, but he still managed to prevent hits. Erskine allowed just 804 hits 908 1/3 innings during those years. They accounted for 13.2 of his 16.4 rWAR.
After he retired, Erskine did much to help people with disabilities, especially through the Special Olympics.
Former manager, GM, and Hall of Famer Whitey Herzog died:
A crew-cut, pot-bellied tobacco chewer who had no patience for the “buddy-buddy” school of management, Herzog joined the Cardinals in 1980 and helped end the team’s decade-plus pennant drought by adapting it to the artificial surface and distant fences of Busch Memorial Stadium. A typical Cardinals victory under Herzog was a low-scoring, one-run game, sealed in the final innings by a “bullpen by committee,” relievers who might be replaced after a single pitch, or temporarily shifted to the outfield, then brought back to the mound.
ESPN.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
The obituary talks about “Whitey Ball” as if that was the only game Herzog could play. Herzog understood what the part would give and take, and molded his team to fit the park. Had he been managing in a homer friendly stadium, I suspect his teams would have been loaded with power hitters, with a very good OBP batter ahead of them.
I suspect Herzog was the last person to combine the manager and GM roles, which he did for the Cardinals from 1980-1982.
While much of the attention Herzog gets comes from his time in St. Louis, the Royals went 410-304 under him, a .574 winning percentage. Overall Herzog finished with a .532 winning percentage, a great average for modern times.
The Giants continue their series at the Marlins with Jordan Hicks against Ryan Weathers. So far, the conversion of Hicks from a reliever to a starter worked well. He pitched eighteen innings in three starts with 1.00 ERA. His strikeout rate is way down, but so is his walk rate. Weathers allowed a .369 OBP so far this season, but the opposition is slugging just .352 against him, so those base runners don’t move very far.
Carlos Rodon faces Yusei Kikuchi as the Yankees and Blue Jays meet under Skydome. Rodon returned to form with a 2.87 ERA through three starts, making it a bit easier for the Yankees to absorb the Gerrit Cole injury. Kikuchi is blowing batters away with twenty strikeouts in his first 15 2/3 innings.
The Cubs play at the Diamondbacks, with rookie Michael Busch on a five-game home run streak. At high altitude in Phoenix, it’s a good day to extend the streak to six.
Dylan Cease leads the Padres against Wade Miley and the Brewers in Milwaukee. Cease comes into the game with a 2.16 ERA as he maintained his high strikeout rate while lowering his walk and home run rates to well below his career averages. Miley did not strike out a batter in his first four innings of work, but used the Milwaukee defense to allow just one hit.
Enjoy!
For the past few years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit.
Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.
The Log5 Method Yields these top picks:
Since the start of the 2020 season, Corbin allowed 724 hits, 89 more than any other pitcher. This is why when he pitches, Log5 will show whole teams expecting to bat great against him. The top of the Dodgers order looks to have a field day on Tuesday night, and in this time frame the Los Angeles rocked him in every start.
Here are the NN picks:
Arraez manages to bring Hicks into the mix, but a good hitter against Corbin or Brown appears to be a good bet today. Ozuna currently sports the longest active hit streak in the majors, 14 games.
Freeman is the unanimous top pick with Ohtani and Betts tied for the consensus double down choice.
You can follow the NN results on this spreadsheet. I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!
Monday’s games shook up the Baseball Musings Batter Rankings a bit. Jose Altuve of the Astros continued his hot hitting to move into fourth place on the list. He went three for four in a 6-1 Braves win, Altuve now batting .403 on the season. His teammate, Yordan Alvarez, took a rare 0 for 4 and remains second.
Juan Soto still tops the list as he drew a walk in four trips in a 3-1 Blue Jays victory. William Contreras of the Brewers sits third after collecting two single and two walks in a 7-3 Padres win. Josh Naylor of the Guardians rounds out the top five as he singled in four trips in a 6-0 win over the Red Sox.
Mitch Haniger of the Mariners posted the highest game score of the day, a 73. He doubled, homered, and walked in a 9-3 win over the Reds, driving in three runs. In his return to the Mariners after a one-year stint in San Francisco, Haniger is posting his best numbers since 2018 with a .375 OBP and a .500 slugging percentage. He now ranks 142.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
John Sterling, radio voice of the Yankees since 1989, retired today due to health reasons. I’m sorry his health is not good.
I first heard Sterling when I was an Islanders fan in the 1970s. When the Islanders scored a goal, he would yell, “ISLANDERS GOAL! ISLANDERS GOAL! ISLANDERS GOAL!” When the opposition scored, his call was, “goal.”
Most times when I’m listening to Yankees games in the car, he doesn’t bother me much. Sometimes, I have to turn to the opponents broadcast. I particularly don’t like the way he ignored Suzyn Waldman. Waldman would make a point, and seldom did Sterling take the point any further. It was usually on to the next pitch with the point forgotten.
I will admit I do like the nicknames for home runs by particular hitters.
Update: Michael Kay, during the Yankees broadcast, said that Sterling told him it’s not a health issue. He just doesn’t like getting to and from the park anymore. From Kay’s description, it sounds like he’s tired, not sick.
Former pitcher Ken Holtzman, author of two no-hitters, died Sunday:
Ken Holtzman, a former left-handed pitcher who threw two no-hitters with the Cubs and won three straight World Series championships with the Athletics from 1972-74, died Sunday at the age of 78. Holtzman was battling heart issues and was hospitalized for three weeks before his death, his brother, Bob, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
MLB.com
My thoughts go out to his family and friends.
Holtzman pitched his early years for the Cubs, but the Athletics acquired him in his prime. I suspect he was also helped by the big ball park in Oakland as his HR per 9 IP dropped from 0.9 to 0.6 and his ERA fell to 2.92 from 3.76. He won between 18 and 21 games in each of his four seasons with the Athletics.
The 1970 season looks like his best however, as he posted a 6.4 rWAR. He pitched 287 2/3 innings, the second highest of his career, with a relatively high K rate for the ERA. Note that none of the ERA qualifier topped 9.0 that season, and only four qualifies were above 8.0.
His K per 9 took a nose dive in 1976, then his walk rate started climbing, and he was out of baseball after his age 33 season in 1979.
It struck me that the six runs the Padres scored on fourteen walks Sunday night against the Dodgers seemed low. Looking at all games from 2021 on, the linear regression provides the formula runs = (0.55 * Walks) + 2.73. So normally we would expect 10 runs scored in such a game. For the most part, that has not been the case. In that time there were four games with 13 or 14 walks, and the runs scored in those games were 4. 5, 6, and 7. There was also a 17 walk game that led to 17 runs. This makes me wonder if sometimes high walk games are more about the defensive use of the outcome, walking tough hitters to reach one who are easier to put out.
The Yankees visit the Blue Jays in an early AL East battle. As expected, the division is a good one, with the Toronto in last place with a .500 record, four games behind New York. Luis Gil takes on Chris Bassitt. Gil is off to a good start in many ways, allowing just three hits in nine innings of work. He walked seven batters however, but his fourteen K means that there’s little chance of them advancing. Bassitt has yet to find his groove, as he allowed 20 hits and nine walks in his 16 innings, both well above his career norms.
The Braves meet the Astros in Houston with Darius Vines making his 2024 debut against Spencer Arrighetti. Vines posted good three-true outcomes in his minor league career, although his K rate dropped as he rose through the levels. The Astros are known for putting the ball in play. Arrighetti’s minor league career was marked by wildness, with 4.4 BB per nine. There could be a ton of base runners and a lot of runs in this game.
Enjoy!
Every Monday Baseball Musings compares scoring in the current season to the same number of full weeks from the previous year. Offense is down slightly from two weeks into 2023, with the 2024 season producing 9.19 runs per game versus 9.32 runs per game. Almost everything is down across the board. Home runs per game dropped to 2.11 from 2.27. Walks dropped from 7.05 per game to 6.89. Despite a drop in strikeouts from 17.32 per game to 17.22 per game, other hits (not home runs) are down from 14.55 per game to 14.40 per game. The only thing slightly up is Hit by Pitches, up to 0.89 per game from 0.82 per game.
Overall, 24.29 batters earn their way on per game this season versus 24.69 last season. Fewer three-true outcomes should mean more balls in play, but that’s not translating into other hits. Part of it might be teams learning to optimize the shift rules. Teams are still able to take away the middle of the field my moving shortstops and second basemen as close to second base as possible.
For the past few years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit.
Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.
The Log5 Method yields these top picks:
Arenado puts the ball in play in 2024. In 69 PA he walked once, was hit once, and struck out just ten times. His batting average of .273 is good, while his OBP of .290 is bad. His hit average of .261is well above the league average of .217, so he does well in Log5. Contreras sports a ten game hit streak.
Here are the NN picks:
Once again, Log5 picks up on Arraez’s slow start faster than the NN. I suspect this is a feature, not a bug, as it keeps Arraez from being a consensus choice (he ranks 11th in the Log5 Method). Arenado and Contreras tie for the consensus top pick.
A reminder, the Angels Guardians and Red Sox play at 11 AM today, so if you are going to choose from that game, get your picks in early.
You can follow the NN results on this spreadsheet. I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have about a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!
Juan Soto of the Yankees remains atop the Baseball Musings Batter Rankings after going two for four with a walk in an 8-7, 10 inning win by the Guardians. Josh Naylor of Cleveland posted a two for five with a double in the game to move into third place.
Yordan Alvarez of the Astros holds second place as he draws two walks in the 8-5 win over Texas as Houston starts to come to life. His teammate, Jose Altuve, collected the best game score of the day, a 77 as he goes three for five with two home runs. Altuve moves up to seventh on the list with a 2024 slash line of .382/.462/.721.
Mookie Betts ranks fourth after a one for four night in a 6-3 Padres win, while William Contreras of the Brewers moves into fifth place with a two for four with a home run in a 6-4 Orioles win. Contreras was in the lead-off slot for the game, but as the designated hitter, not the catcher.
The Day by Day Database is up to date.
Kenley Jansen complains about baseballs not properly rubbed with mud:
“I don’t hit guys, I don’t walk people this much. And I start to get frustrated.” Jansen said. “Any balls that came, I just throw it back till when I find a good ball. And it’s just brutal.”
Jansen said bullpen balls were better rubbed than game balls.
“It’s embarrassing. It’s been a while I’ve been playing in this league and, from the beginning of my career until now, it’s getting worse,” he said.
ESPN.com
Two years ago, MLB issued a directive on the proper rubbing of balls. It puts this on a team staff member, and a compliance monitor checks them before they go out the field.
Now, if Jansen is complaining at Fenway Park, it should be an easy issue to fix, since Red Sox personnel should be using the mud. It sounds like the enforcement of that memo has been lax.
Obviously, MLB did not take my suggestion of writing a ball rubbing song seriously.
Jose Berrios of the Blue Jays continues to be a monster on the mound in 2024 as he pitches seven shutout innings against the Rockies on Sunday. It was no contest as Berrios allowed just two hits and two walks while striking out seven. That lowers his ERA to 1.05 in four starts. On the season, he’s not really blowing away batters, but despite a below career average K rate, opponents are hitting just .202/.276/.303 against him.