10 Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful MLB Notes for August 6th
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, August 6th.
1. If you’re rostering Jake Arrieta on Saturday, you’re doing it for the safety and high floor, not the strikeout upside. His opponent, the Oakland Athletics, have gone 52 consecutive games (dating back to June 5th) without reaching double digits in strikeouts. That’s 30 games more than the next-longest active streak, held by the Braves offense (22 straight games of under 10 strikeouts).
2. Stephen Strasburg has struck out double-digit batters in eight of his 20 starts this season (only Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw have more such games, with nine each). Unfortunately, like Arrieta, his matchup doesn’t lend itself to elite strikeout numbers – the San Francisco Giants, as a team, have reached double-digit strikeouts in exactly one game this season, when they struck out 13 times against Clayton Kershaw on June 10th.
3. Corey Kluber has lasted seven innings and struck out at least seven batters in four consecutive games. No other pitcher has an active streak of even two such consecutive games. As with Arrieta and Strasburg, Kluber faces a team in the Yankees that is stingy with the strikeouts, holding a 19.1 K% (sixth-lowest in MLB) against righties this season.
4. Aaron Sanchez leads the American League with 17 quality starts, and he’s allowed two or fewer earned runs in eight consecutive games – that’s the longest active streak in baseball. He also owns an insane 66.0% ground ball rate against right-handed hitters, which should play favorably against a Royals team that has a .646 OPS against ground ball pitchers this year, the second-worst mark in MLB (only the Brewers, at .638, are worse). If you need some context as to how bad a .646 OPS is…Billy Hamilton has a .645 OPS this season.
5. In his last start, Danny Duffy spun a gem, taking a no-hitter into the eighth and shutting out the Rays over eight innings, allowing just one hit and fanning 16 along the way. It was only the 22nd time in MLB history that any pitcher had an eight-inning, one-hit, one-walk shutout, and it was the type of signature start that will have DFS players gushing about his upside in even the worst of matchups (see: Vincent Velasquez). Unfortunately, his Saturday matchup is one of those “worst of” matchups, as he takes on a Blue Jays team with a .174 ISO (ranked seventh in MLB), and they earned that with a dinged-up Troy Tulowitzki and Jose Bautista for much of the year, and before adding Melvin Upton.
6. Patrick Corbin does not enjoy the unfriendly confines of Chase Field. Among qualified starters at home in 2016, he has the worst home wOBA (.403), the highest HR/9 (2.25), the third-highest WHIP (1.68), the highest ERA (6.91), and the highest hard hit rate (45.2%). Now, Patrick Corbin apologists (if such people exist) will point to his unsustainably high BABIP and HR/FB ratio and his unsustainably low strand rate and cry, “But…positive regression!” Still, Corbin’s ineptitude at home has been so extreme that he’s worth targeting indiscriminately at Chase Field until he shows he can get batters out in his home park. On Saturday, he faces a right-heavy Brewers team that, outside of Coors, should be one of the higher-owned stacks of the day.
7. One more thing about that hard hit rate. Corbin’s 45.2% is 6.3 percentage points higher that the second-highest pitcher (Matt Wisler, 38.9%). That’s roughly the same distance that separates Wisler from the 41st-ranked player on that list (Jose Fernandez, 32.5%). Corbin is in a tier all his own, and it’s why players like Hernan Perez (39.4 Hard%, 47.1% fly ball rate vs. LHP this year) and Chris Carter (42.9 Hard% versus LHP this year, ranked 14th in MLB) decent speculative plays if you’re home run hunting on Saturday.
8. Speaking of Chris Carter – he leads MLB with a 36.2% strikeout rate against righties. No surprise there. But did you know that 51 qualified hitters in MLB strike out at a higher rate against lefties than Carter (22.1%)? In a matchup against a lefty like Corbin, Carter’s floor is raised significantly, and he can even be considered for cash games.
9. Since the All-Star break, Christian Yelich is averaging a 95.3 mph exit velocity, second-best in MLB to Miguel Cabrera’s 95.6, and a few ticks better than that of his teammate, Giancarlo Stanton (94.1 mph). For the season, only Matt Carpenter (51.0%), Jake Lamb (45.2%), Joey Votto (44.7%), and David Ortiz (44.0%) have higher hard hit rates than Yelich’s 43.2%. He’ll face Chad Bettis (55.1% ground ball rate vs. LHP this year), and the matchup isn’t ideal, as Yelich has been historically much better against fly ball pitchers (career .918 OPS vs. FB pitchers, .741 vs. GB pitchers). Still, you know, Coors. Logic doesn’t always win out in that park (for example – how does Giancarlo Stanton make contact five times and only earn one hit), and Yelich is probably a solid play regardless
10. There are seven players in MLB (min. 70 PA) against left-handed pitchers with sub-10.0% strikeout rates. Of those players, Wilmer Flores has the highest .348 ISO. The next-highest ISO in that group? Jose Iglesias at .162. Sure, we’re dealing with a small sample of 74 plate appearances, but Flores’s combination of contact plus power against lefties is rare, and given that third base is always full of appealing options, he’s sure to go underowned on Saturday in his matchup against Matt Boyd.
Thanks for reading! Stats from this article were pulled from StatMuse, FanGraphs, and Baseball Reference.
Be sure to check back on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays this MLB season for more “10 Notes” articles!