10 Definitely Interesting, Possibly Helpful MLB Notes for July 18th
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 Monday, July 18th, 2016.
1. Jose Fernandez has a 10.00 K/BB ratio against righties this year…and a 2.91 K/BB ratio against lefties. No matter how many lefties the Phillies roll out on Monday, Fernandez is the chalkiest of chalk plays for cash games, and given that each of the other top arms on Monday’s slate are in less-than-ideal matchups, he’s a top tournament play, as well.
2. Speaking of top arms in troublesome spots…Jon Lester faces a Mets team that, on July 3rd, smacked him around to the tune of eight earned runs. That was one more earned run than Lester had allowed in the entire month of June. In fact, Lester has had 10 months in his career (dating back to 2006) with at least four starts and eight or fewer earned runs allowed. If Lester can scrape by with a quality start (six innings, three earned runs) on Monday, his season-long ERA against the Mets would drop from 54.00 to 13.50.
3. Chris Sale has allowed 36 home runs to righties since the start of 2015 – only Wei-Yin Chen and Hector Santiago have allowed more during that stretch. Of course, that’s probably because Sale only has the platoon advantage 14 percent of the time, which is less than any other qualified starter in MLB – he’s so good against lefties that he faces only righties, which causes his HR totals to be a little out of whack.
4. From April 6th to to June 5th, Aaron Nola was one of the surprises of the 2016 season with a 2.65 ERA. In his five starts since then (from June 11th to July 2nd), he’s posted a 13.50 ERA – that’s the worst mark in MLB over that stretch among starters.
5. In his last start, Mike Leake struck out 10 Brewers, which marks just the fourth time in 190 career starts that Leake has fanned double-digit batters. In other words, don’t be fooled – three new iPhones will be released before the next time Leake Ks 10 or more in a game. One other reason to fade Leake is that the Padres are elite against ground ball pitchers this year – they rank in the top four in MLB in average, on-base percentage, slugging, OPS, ISO, and even total home runs.
6. Since 2015, the MLB leader among second basemen in wRC+ against lefties is not Jose Altuve, as you might expect – it’s Logan Forsythe, with a 169 wRC+. He’s also the only second baseman with a hard hit rate above 40.0% against lefties (he’s at 40.1%), and his .298 ISO also paces MLB second basemen by a wide margin (Brian Dozier comes in a distant second with a .254 mark). Against Rockies lefty Tyler Anderson, Forsythe has to be considered on of the top hitting options on Monday’s slate.
7. In 104 plate appearances against lefties this year, Carlos Gonzalez has seven home runs. In 258 combined plate appearances in his 2014 and 2015 seasons, Carlos Gonzalez had…7 home runs. Six of CarGo’s seven 2016 homers against lefties have come at Coors Field. On Monday, he takes on Rays lefty Drew Smyly, a pitcher whose HR/9 against lefties and righties this year is basically the same (1.77 against LHP, 1.80 against RHP) and who allows a higher fly ball rate to lefties (51.9% against LHP, 45.9% against RHP). Gonzalez is an elite tournament play given his likely lower-than-usual ownership due to the lefty-lefty matchup.
8. In 2015, thirty players stole at least 20 bases, including Manny Machado, who barely made the cutoff with 20 steals. Those thirty players have stolen, on average, 11.73 bases in 2016. How many steals does Machado have in 2016. Zero. Apart from Anthony Gose (who couldn’t stay on the field in Detroit and was recently demoted from AAA to AA after a suspension for fighting with his AAA manager – true story), Machado is the only player from that list without any stolen bases in 2016.
9. When you roster Chris Davis with the platoon advantage against a ground ball pitcher, you’re really mitigating a lot of the risk that makes him typically a tournament-only play. In his career, he’s hit .304 against ground ball pitchers with a 26.5% strikeout rate. Not exactly a Tony Gwynn-esque strikeout rate, but when you compare it to his career 31.2% overall strikeout rate, it’s much more palatable. When you combine that with a matchup against a pitcher (Ivan Nova) who only strikes out 12.8% of lefties this year (which ranks 103rd of 109 qualified pitchers) and who allows 2.14 HR/9 to lefties (fifth-highest rate among 109 qualified pitchers), Davis appears to have shed the “tournament-only” stigma that follows him around, and he’s a worthy cash game option, at least for today.
10. Stephen Piscotty has a .590 wOBA at home against lefties this season. That’s higher than the season-long slugging percentages of all but three players in MLB (David Ortiz, Jake Lamb, and Daniel Murphy). Sure, there’s some “fun with small sample sizes” tomfoolery going on there (it’s 50 plate appearances we’re talking about). Still, Piscotty has proven himself elite against lefties, and Christian Friedrich represents a fine matchup for the Cardinals outfielder.
Thanks for reading! Stats from this article were pulled from FanGraphs and Baseball Reference.
Shoutout to @blabla for correctly identifying Chris Davis as the answer to Sunday’s trivia question! I can’t offer you any real prize, so the slight boost to your ego that comes from a shoutout in a DFS article will have to do. Well done, sir!
Be sure to check back on Sundays, Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays during the MLB season for more “10 Notes” articles!