Ben Bailey

@brendan_cubs Why not Brasier instead? Pressly has a 22.6% K rate and 4.8% BB rate since the blow up, and Brasier 18.8% and 9.4%. Pretty much the same fastball velo as well, and Brasier is making less money. I think it says something that they went to Flexen over him Sunday.

Did a quick thread on the other site about Yusei Kikuchi. You can find my baseball takes more frequently there for now.

It didn't quite work out, but good to see someone pinch hit for a lefty with a righty against Leiter. Always wondered why more teams didn't do that when he was with the Cubs.

The most whiffs the Guardians pitching staff got in a game all year was 31. They already have 27 through 5 innings today.

@SamMillerBB Boog Sciambi does this pretty regularly on Cubs broadcasts--it's definitely useful

I've literally never heard a broadcaster explain that "empty circle = statcast ball, filled circle = statcast strike." Consequently, I don't think most viewers know that, and few things could be more useful to know?

In 2023 (when Hosmer was on the Cubs), the Cubs hit .353/.389/.471 against Williams in four appearances

Shota Imanaga tied a career high in swinging strikes today with 22. Drew Smyly keeps the Cubs record since 2021 with 23 whiffs against the Giants on September 9, 2022 #results" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_searc…

The Cubs are lined up to face Skenes and Jones again this series which would be the 4th time this year for each. No other team has faced either 3 times.

Shōta Imanaga has six of the top ten Cubs starts by whiffs since 2022 and 8 of the top 20.

Mark Leiter Jr. has a better K-BB% over the last two seasons than Tanner Scott, and he’s under team control for two more seasons

Of course, this wouldn't be possible without Baseball Savant. All the data comes from there, and I continue to be thankful that we have this data publicly as a sport. Player and team pages also link to their Savant pages.

I don't think tiny-sample defensive metrics like this are necessarily useful, but I've been curious about daily changes in OAA for a while. One note, Baseball Savant doesn't seem to update for yesterday's games, so today's changes won't always correspond to to yesterday's game.

I've always wanted more granular tracking of Statcast's Outs Above Average metric, so I spent the last month or so working on a website that lets you see how each player's OAA has changed each day oaamonitor.benbailey.me

@TheBlogfines Not sure how recent this is, but he's had some of the worst defense played behind him

Mark Leiter Jr. since May 25... like, he's absolutely looked off (and hasn't had the usual feel for his splitter). But my goodness does that seem a bit unfortunate with the ERA.

The Cubs have hit two three-run home runs since.

The Cubs had five three-run home runs before May and one since.

The Cubs haven't hit a 3-run homer or grand slam since June 1st.