10 Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful MLB Notes for 5-7-2016
Every day while doing MLB DFS research, I inevitably end up in a statistical wormhole, where I’ll stumble across some unexpected bits of information that are possibly helpful, but at the very least, are interesting in one way or another. Here are 10 notes for Saturday, May 7, 2016.
1. Saturday’s pitching dilemma seems to be this: Clayton Kershaw on the road against the Blue Jays, one of the most fearsome offenses in recent memory (and ranked #1 in MLB in wOBA, ISO, and wRC+ against LHP since 2015), or Chris Sale at home against the Twins, a team known for being significantly worse on the road (and ranking in the bottom 3 in MLB in road wOBA, wRC+, and K% since 2015). Seems pretty cut and dried, right? But consider this: apart from Troy Tulowitzki (63 at-bats) and Darwin Barney (9 at-bats), no Blue Jays hitter has more than three at-bats against Clayton Kershaw. This was the argument for using Kenta Maeda in tournaments last night, and it worked out reasonably well – Maeda didn’t shut the Jays down, but he was solid, allowing just two earned and fanning seven Jays over six innings. Kershaw could actually be an interesting contrarian play today given Chris Sale recent history against the Twins.
2. Sale’s recent history against the Twins is spotty, to say the least. DFS players who rostered him in this matchup last year are likely still harboring repressed memories of Sale giving up runs in bunches to the Twins last year. He allowed more than three earned runs on eight occasions in 2015, and four of those games were against the Twins. But if you’re not into being results oriented, here’s one more:
3. Sale is pitching to contact much more this season than he ever has. It’s downright bizarre to scroll the the strikeout leaderboards and see him ranked 33rd among qualified starters with a 24.3 K%, behind guys like Jeremy Hellickson (24.3%), Nathan Eovaldi (24.4%), and Chris Tillman (26.0%). You have to do even more scrolling to find Sale on the SwStr% leaderboards, where his 10.2% mark (a career low) is just a tick above this year’s 9.9% league average mark and is the same rate as Hector Santiago. His average fastball velocity is down 1.5 mph from last year, which partially explains the decline in strikeout upside. Clearly, the the change in approach is working, and it’s Sale, so he could always punch out 15 Twins today (meaning strikeouts, not literally punch out, although I wouldn’t rule out the former), raising his strikeout numbers closer to his career norms. But a pitch-to-contact approach from an elite strikeout pitcher is rarely a good thing for DFS players.
4. In his last start, Dallas Keuchel only lasted 4.1 IP, giving up five earned against Minnesota. That was just the second time in a career dating back to 2012 that Keuchel gave up 5+ earned and lasted fewer than 5 innings at home. He also uncharacteristically walked five batters in his previous outing, which, again, has only occurred once at home in his career. Keuchel certainly looks off this year, but given the number of players who were burned by Keuchel on Monday (including yours truly), he’s an interesting GPP flyer against a Mariners team that hits a ton of ground balls against lefties (51.1 GB% against LHP in 2016).
5. Since 2015, 208 right-handed batters have stepped up to the plate against Jesse Hahn. Only two of them have managed to go yard. Hahn generates a Keuchel-esque 60.6% ground ball rate and 25.3% soft contact rate against right-handed batters. Sure, his Koehler-esque 15.9 K% in that split leaves him squarely in “safe-but-no-upside-for-tournaments” territory (and maybe not even that against Baltimore, who owns a .788 OPS against ground ball pitchers in the past two season, third best in MLB). Still, he’s an underrated pitcher, who, in the right matchup, can be a valuable SP2 option for cash games.
6. Jose Altuve has 6 leadoff home runs this year, the same number that Charlie Blackmon and Brian Dozier had all last year, which led MLB. He’s chasing Alfonso Soriano, who set the all-time record for leadoff HRs for the Yankees in 2003 when he hit 13. It’s hard to believe in the diminutive Altuve’s current power numbers – his .814 slugging is a few ticks better than Chris Carter .810 mark, and Carter is 10 inches taller and 80 pounds heavier than Altuve. Still, there’s no reason to avoid him (or any other Astros righty, for that matter) against Nate Karns today, who, despite having faced more lefties than righties in his career, has surrendered 22 of his 32 career homers against RHB (2.08 HR/9 to righties, .86 to lefties).
7. While we’re here, here’s one more Altuve note: he’s got nine home runs this year, and last season, he didn’t hit his ninth homer until July 23rd. With 45 career homers, one out of every five of his home runs has been hit in the first five weeks of 2016.
8. Speaking of uncharacteristic bursts of power from the keystone position, Brandon Phillips and Ben Zobrist have each homered in three consecutive games. Phillips has only had such a streak once in his career, on June 13-15, 2012. Zobrist has had homered in three straight games two other times in his career, but the last time it happened was on August 19-21, 2009. Just to illustrate how long ago that was: on that same day, Brad Penny started a game for the Red Sox, Russell Branyan hit his 29th home run for the Mariners, and Chris Coghlan got a hit in the leadoff spot in what would be a Rookie of the Year campaign for the Marlins. So, it’s been a while.
9. Since the start of 2015, Mike Pelfrey has a 4.6% K-BB rate, which is the lowest in MLB by nearly two whole percentage points (Yovani Gallardo is next in line with a 6.3 K-BB%). If you narrow it to LHB, he’s walked the exact same number of batters he’s faced (47). This bodes well for the likes of Rougned Odor, Nomar Mazara, Prince Fielder, and Mitch Moreland.
10. Last night, Brandon Drury hit his fifth home run in the past nine games. He ranks fifth in MLB in ISO over the past two weeks, and the names ahead of him on the list should illustrate just how well he’s been swinging the bat – only Giancarlo Stanton (.571), Chris Carter (.489), Anthony Rizzo (.487), and Mike Trout (.417) have hit for more isolated power than Drury (.400).