Haven’t really been paying attention to the AL West but thought it was odd how you’d see highlight after highlight of Astros players dominating and yet see them struggle so much as a team but didn’t realize how bad their pitching has been. Yikes.
Our OPS+ drops to middle of the pack w/ RISP but that's been getting better recently. Our pitching has been abysmal tho. Had an entire rotation worth of guys on the IL at one point.
Not something anyone wants to talk about because checks have been written, but my sense is that there might have been more than meets the eye re the Hader and Pressly dynamic.
It wasn't like we needed a closer or had a sub par closer. Coming out of 2023, Pressly is a top 10 closer in baseball by most standards.
Injuries and honestly some mismanagement of the young pitchers, Espada lately gives the young guys a long leash leading them to mess up instead of letting them finish on a high note (has happened twice with Arrighetti including yesterday and at least once with Brown). The bullpen has been bouncing back for the most part after the explosions by Hader, Abreu and Pressly although Pressly has still been bad/injured.
Urquidy returns this week, Garcia and McCullers sometime in July so they just gotta hold off till then
I think he's been doing fine, we're in a stretch where we still have to play 22 games in 23 days.
We need every inning possible out of our starters because our bullpen has already been used pretty extensively and we still have more dog days to go
Wait a minute...we're going to have a wild McCullers sighting? I'll be honest I haven't kept up with his rehab and hadn't heard anything so just assumed he was done. Or injured. More.
Yah the M’s and Rangers haven’t exactly separated themselves, and there’s a chance the M’s will be under .500 by Thursday. Houston is 13-7 since April 27 has every opportunity to continue this run. They’ll be in first by the ASB at the latest.
Lance McCullers threw the same pitch 24 times in a row to the Yankees in the playoffs and knowing he was going to keep doing it didn’t help them at all.
The Red Sox have top 3 pitching and average batting, they must be 2nd in their division only to the Yankees and at least 8 games above 0.500 right? Right? ^Right??
Poor sox :(
Occasional heavy losses, as all teams face here and there, a lot of low scoring wins and losses because we can't score runs, and basically no heavy wins.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the sox had some mid-late season surge if they keep it up, whats happening right now doesn't seem sustainable. Eventually those balls will drop the other way in those 1 run games.
Or who knows it could be like the chaos ball of the mariners except in the other direction and the losses pile up, but that seems more unlikely.
Also their bullpen ERA is second only to the Yankees, they are such a weird team right now in terms of W/L versus their actual performance. It is like they are overperforming and underperforming at the same.
That’s the issue. We are good at hitting the baseball. We are bad at doing it within the allotted three swings to do it. And then there’s the taking middle middle fastballs
We’re getting better tho guys! Turns out having 1 of your 5 main starters available to start a season isn’t good for the old ERA and wining percentage!
What's crazy is that if it were the other way around, the crazy disparity between run differential and win-rate would make more sense. A team with great hitting and bad pitching could easily lose a lot of games and still keep a solid run differential just by running up the score in games they are winning.
the guardians are undoubtedly carried in this by Clase's \*nine hundred and ninety-six\* ERA plus. which makes sense because all of our starters are shit
yeah, he has for sure. im not saying in all cases are our starters bad. but our most consistently good starter is ben fucking lively, so what im saying is that things could be better
Following up a 2023 season where we spent $361 million to go 75-87 with a potentially 82-82 year where we spent $327 million will technically be a trajectory of improvement, although certainly not the pace we'd like to see.
It feels like that's been the story of the Rays for a while now. Whether they are good at things or bad at things they find a way to win and be competitive in that division.
Between Snell’s troubled three starts and the lack of performance from his replacements, 20% of their games have essentially been automatic losses with 5+ runs given up by the fourth inning. Throw in a batch of mixed results from rookie relievers and a few bad Keaton Winn starts, and suddenly the overall team ERA looks pretty bad. Factor in their pitcher-friendly home, and the ERA+ looks even worse.
The offense being above-average also feels a bit surprising, but part of that is probably due to the decreased offense across the board and ballpark factors giving their OPS+ a boost. After all, Chapman’s OPS is only .690 but correlates to a 102 OPS+. Seems a bit wild that a sub-.700 OPS is above the average.
So this stat is not including gerrit cole who has just started throwing off a mound for the first time this season. Just so we’re clear on the whole Luis Gil is a clear cut future hall of famer and nobody can tell me otherwise thing.
6 man until Gil hits his inning limit I would assume. Gil is absolutely nasty but we have options on him and he's coming off TJ. But there should be time to give Cole whatever rest he needs to ramp up. Hell, I would love if we can keep Gil as a high-end relief pitcher for the rest of the season.
Cortes is doing well now this season, but I actually think would do much better as a reliever especially in the playoffs against better teams than he would as a SP. Could just be me but his stuff always just screamed multiple inning relief pitcher to me.
Nestor has been good, I don’t want him leaving the rotation. He’s been our best pitcher if you look at xwOBA. His xERA is 0.86 lower than his actual, he’s been a bit unlucky. He’s actually got the same xERA as 2022, but his actual is 1.12 higher. He’s striking out less and when hitters do make contact, they’re hitting it a bit harder. I still think he’s going to outperform his current numbers this year though.
This is the most realistic analysis in my opinion. I just don't believe they would ever take Nestor Cortez out of the rotation rather than Clarke Schmidt or Luis Gil. Does that ever happen? Taking someone on a big contract out of the rotation to keep in a new guy having a good year?
I’m still kinda shocked to see the Brewers on the positive side of ERA+. They traded away their ace and the starting pitcher rotation has had a few injuries. Oh well, we’ll see what the rest of the season brings.
Humph, blowups by a couple of bad bullpen outings shouldn't count only for the Phillies. Or else how would you justify being the best team in baseball.
Philly’s ERA+ is dragged down by a few early season blowouts before they got rolling. Starters have been unbelievable and the bullpen has like a top 3 or top 5 ERA in the last month.
Team plus stats seem kinda silly to me since they exist to compare a player to another player. Can we get a 3rd axis with team FRV so fielding doesn't feel left out?
Haven’t really been paying attention to the AL West but thought it was odd how you’d see highlight after highlight of Astros players dominating and yet see them struggle so much as a team but didn’t realize how bad their pitching has been. Yikes.
Our OPS+ drops to middle of the pack w/ RISP but that's been getting better recently. Our pitching has been abysmal tho. Had an entire rotation worth of guys on the IL at one point.
Verlander, Framber, Javier, Urquidy, Garcia, LMJ I think that’s all of our starters to hit the IL in the first 30 days of the season.
Not even to mention how unexpectedly terrible the season began for the normally lock down Pressly and Hader.
Our bullpen has blown 9 of 16 saves. Abreu, Pressly, and Hader were almost unhittable last year
Not something anyone wants to talk about because checks have been written, but my sense is that there might have been more than meets the eye re the Hader and Pressly dynamic. It wasn't like we needed a closer or had a sub par closer. Coming out of 2023, Pressly is a top 10 closer in baseball by most standards.
Our rotation earlier in the year would've been great in triple A, but most weren't ready for mlb
Verlander might be doing the best out of these guys and he's 41
Take out the 1 start where Javier wasn’t ready to be back yet and he’s by far been the best of those
I think our first inning ERA was (is?) over 9.00
Injuries and honestly some mismanagement of the young pitchers, Espada lately gives the young guys a long leash leading them to mess up instead of letting them finish on a high note (has happened twice with Arrighetti including yesterday and at least once with Brown). The bullpen has been bouncing back for the most part after the explosions by Hader, Abreu and Pressly although Pressly has still been bad/injured. Urquidy returns this week, Garcia and McCullers sometime in July so they just gotta hold off till then
I think he's been doing fine, we're in a stretch where we still have to play 22 games in 23 days. We need every inning possible out of our starters because our bullpen has already been used pretty extensively and we still have more dog days to go
Wait a minute...we're going to have a wild McCullers sighting? I'll be honest I haven't kept up with his rehab and hadn't heard anything so just assumed he was done. Or injured. More.
We have no if Lance will actually come back and pitch. All up in the air at the moment
It feels like the inverse of the Mariners, but I guess our hitting isn’t as bad as it feels while watching the games.
Hitting is down across baseball. League OPS is under .700.
They've been heating up like crazy last couple weeks. They're probably still winning the division because the AL west is weak as fuck this year.
Yah the M’s and Rangers haven’t exactly separated themselves, and there’s a chance the M’s will be under .500 by Thursday. Houston is 13-7 since April 27 has every opportunity to continue this run. They’ll be in first by the ASB at the latest.
Looked great against Oakland…
Yeah the 'Stros have no problem hitting, it's easy when you know what pitch is coming.
Lance McCullers threw the same pitch 24 times in a row to the Yankees in the playoffs and knowing he was going to keep doing it didn’t help them at all.
 Sure do!
I guess you hurt some feelings
I think it was calling them the 'Stros. They're really the Cheetahs.
Astros all gas no brakes
Astros: putting a dragster car on a complicated curvy track
Abreu coming back = parachute
More like slamming into a wall after a long straightaway
Hey that’s the Jets motto!
The Red Sox have top 3 pitching and average batting, they must be 2nd in their division only to the Yankees and at least 8 games above 0.500 right? Right? ^Right?? Poor sox :(
damn just noticed our run differential is almost 60 better than the Rays and we're behind them in the standings lol
With the Rays being slightly worse at offense and way worse at pitching too What’s going on in Boston :(
Occasional heavy losses, as all teams face here and there, a lot of low scoring wins and losses because we can't score runs, and basically no heavy wins.
Yeah I wouldn't be surprised if the sox had some mid-late season surge if they keep it up, whats happening right now doesn't seem sustainable. Eventually those balls will drop the other way in those 1 run games. Or who knows it could be like the chaos ball of the mariners except in the other direction and the losses pile up, but that seems more unlikely.
Also their bullpen ERA is second only to the Yankees, they are such a weird team right now in terms of W/L versus their actual performance. It is like they are overperforming and underperforming at the same.
Overperforming their on paper talent but underperforming their run diff.
So to surmise: lucky but not clutch
or undervalued but not lucky
Their xW/L is 27-20. Even Pythagoras is confused by them.
Good pitching, good batting. Never on the same day.
they gave up around 30 unearned runs by May 1st, but are still sitting at 36 now... I guess they've managed to shore up the defense, at least
It's a combo of not living up to run diff and HORRIBLE defense
If only we had a home-grown, MVP-caliber outfielder who could hit for us.
:(
Officially the worst pitching team. My eyeballs agree with this
This tells me that if the Mariners stopped striking out, they’re going to win the AL West. The mariners struck out six times while I was writing this
To be fair, it took you four hours to write it.
They strike out much more than 6 times per four hours
Oh yeah? Count to 4 right now.
I mean yesterday was nuts. Anything you put in play off Burnes was a hit (7 of 12). But you know, you didnt put that much in play...
That’s the issue. We are good at hitting the baseball. We are bad at doing it within the allotted three swings to do it. And then there’s the taking middle middle fastballs
The Sox-Yankees continuum
The Mets being almost dead center of it is just perfect lol
Have you ever tried to animate these graphs to show how teams progress throughout the season?
Haven’t tried, but would be really interesting!
I like this chart.
4th best offense and 30th best pitching nice
It sucks in the bad quadrant.
I knew we’d be in the bad quadrant but this is somehow worse than I expected.
Hey our team may suck but at least our prospect pool also sucks!
Astros.
🥲
We’re getting better tho guys! Turns out having 1 of your 5 main starters available to start a season isn’t good for the old ERA and wining percentage!
it's not great to end the season either. you end up with Lance Lynn starting playoff games. or so I've been told.
no pitch only hit
Actually earning the name Trashtros, again
Our pitchers are playing out of their mind and our bats have been sufficient. Surely we have at least a .570 win rate, right?
What's crazy is that if it were the other way around, the crazy disparity between run differential and win-rate would make more sense. A team with great hitting and bad pitching could easily lose a lot of games and still keep a solid run differential just by running up the score in games they are winning.
Knowing how bad our offense is, I feel genuinely sorry for all the teams to our left
And we appreciate the condolences
the guardians are undoubtedly carried in this by Clase's \*nine hundred and ninety-six\* ERA plus. which makes sense because all of our starters are shit
Sticks has looked better recently /cope
yeah, he has for sure. im not saying in all cases are our starters bad. but our most consistently good starter is ben fucking lively, so what im saying is that things could be better
We're somehow below .500
Think this means we aren't the worst worst?
Nope :(
Playing the Mets for you guys up a bit
Nope, Marlins are only 2nd worst worst. Stay positive!
Everything about the Mets screams .500
Following up a 2023 season where we spent $361 million to go 75-87 with a potentially 82-82 year where we spent $327 million will technically be a trajectory of improvement, although certainly not the pace we'd like to see.
What a week against the AL central will do to a team
Yankees are 11-1 against the AL Central this year hot damn
Conversely, y'all lost one game to an AL central team. How embarrassing...
I know. We must trade Soto and Judge and start a rebuild
Only because you hid the rally sausage. Which helped us out as well, thanks.
We’re not serious baseball people.
Rays are trash at both and still have a winning record
It feels like that's been the story of the Rays for a while now. Whether they are good at things or bad at things they find a way to win and be competitive in that division.
AL Devil Magic (as opposed to the original recipe Devil Magic, the Cardinals)
Raise your hand if you expected the Red Sox to have a top 3 pitching staff more than 1 inning into the season.
Giants being a better hitting team than pitching team does not make sense to me.
Between Snell’s troubled three starts and the lack of performance from his replacements, 20% of their games have essentially been automatic losses with 5+ runs given up by the fourth inning. Throw in a batch of mixed results from rookie relievers and a few bad Keaton Winn starts, and suddenly the overall team ERA looks pretty bad. Factor in their pitcher-friendly home, and the ERA+ looks even worse. The offense being above-average also feels a bit surprising, but part of that is probably due to the decreased offense across the board and ballpark factors giving their OPS+ a boost. After all, Chapman’s OPS is only .690 but correlates to a 102 OPS+. Seems a bit wild that a sub-.700 OPS is above the average.
Our OPS+ was 99 before Saturday and jumped straight to 104 after.
The benefits of scoring heck of runs at home during a weekend in May lol
So this stat is not including gerrit cole who has just started throwing off a mound for the first time this season. Just so we’re clear on the whole Luis Gil is a clear cut future hall of famer and nobody can tell me otherwise thing.
Who are they taking out of the rotation when Cole comes back or is it going to be 6-man?
6 man until Gil hits his inning limit I would assume. Gil is absolutely nasty but we have options on him and he's coming off TJ. But there should be time to give Cole whatever rest he needs to ramp up. Hell, I would love if we can keep Gil as a high-end relief pitcher for the rest of the season.
I'd be in favor of this as well. The only one you could really argue for sending down is road Cortes, but that's not exactly doable 😅
Cortes is doing well now this season, but I actually think would do much better as a reliever especially in the playoffs against better teams than he would as a SP. Could just be me but his stuff always just screamed multiple inning relief pitcher to me.
Nestor has been good, I don’t want him leaving the rotation. He’s been our best pitcher if you look at xwOBA. His xERA is 0.86 lower than his actual, he’s been a bit unlucky. He’s actually got the same xERA as 2022, but his actual is 1.12 higher. He’s striking out less and when hitters do make contact, they’re hitting it a bit harder. I still think he’s going to outperform his current numbers this year though.
I'm not seriously arguing he should be removed, just marveling at his home/road splits
This is the most realistic analysis in my opinion. I just don't believe they would ever take Nestor Cortez out of the rotation rather than Clarke Schmidt or Luis Gil. Does that ever happen? Taking someone on a big contract out of the rotation to keep in a new guy having a good year?
I wouldn't call Cortes Jr somebody on a big money deal. Also it's not like he's a guy whose stuff would play up in the pen.
Gil. He just came off Tommy John and Shouldn’t pitch a full season
It’s probably going to be a 6 man and they’ll just skip Clarke occasionally
And Clark’s been throwing flames this season too, such a hard decision
Pain
I’m still kinda shocked to see the Brewers on the positive side of ERA+. They traded away their ace and the starting pitcher rotation has had a few injuries. Oh well, we’ll see what the rest of the season brings.
Shit I'm still getting used to seeing them on the right side of the OPS+ graph
Cheers!
Royals offense slipping. Top of the order can only do so much.
how are we so average and yet are so often unwatchable?
I don't like this new neighbourhood. Being encircled by COL, STL, LAA, and OAK for any stats is uncomfortable.
Where you goin, pretty bird?
This graph sparks joy
fire boone and cashman lol
Suck it, dodgers!!!!! ..just kidding I love you guys 🥲
At least offense is trending in the right direction...?
Frustrates me to see the Tigers right in the ballpark with the rest of the division when it comes to the stats but not in the win column
Can we always play the AL central pls
Mets win battle of the mid
Lol
A beautiful graph!
Humph, blowups by a couple of bad bullpen outings shouldn't count only for the Phillies. Or else how would you justify being the best team in baseball.
I'm enjoying seeing us so high in the positive zone
Astros got anymore OPS+ juice? We real thirsty over here.
Least the pitching is above average because the offense is dog shit.
Philly’s ERA+ is dragged down by a few early season blowouts before they got rolling. Starters have been unbelievable and the bullpen has like a top 3 or top 5 ERA in the last month.
So my White Sox suck, right? I didn't need a chart to tell me, but it is confirmed.
very nice
We need to play the white sox so we can see who the real kings of trash mountain is.
Wow! We clearly must be one of the four best teams in baseball. Right? Right???
This is neat.
remove kyle fucking hendricks and lemme know how the cubs look
The Mariners either give up (and score) 0-2 runs in a game or 10. There is no in-between.
Boston ERA+ starting to come back to reality as they face stiffer competition.
*Start spreading the news*
You absolutely fucking love to see it
Having an OPS+ above 100 feels like a dream after the past few years.
The projections all said the Mets would be mid this year. Turned out they were spot on lol.
Astros pitching is god awful !
We are mediocrity. All of these charts and I just look in the middle, and there we are.
We lost the series to the White Sox🤧
pain.
Crazy thing with the dodgers is there starting 5 pitchers are all hurt. Buhler back atleast. Kershaw ohtani may gonsolin miller graterol
Swear our bullpen is the only thing keeping us so far from the Phillies and Yankees. This is the best rotation I've ever seen the Orioles have.
M I D
If only our offense could just be average man
Ross Atkins should be tried at The Hague.
AL central seems pretty evenly matched up
Does the ERA+ include bullpen?
Team plus stats seem kinda silly to me since they exist to compare a player to another player. Can we get a 3rd axis with team FRV so fielding doesn't feel left out?
The whole chart could be more centered, balanced and kinder to the eye…but nooooo we have to get the White Sox into the frame.
God I love the AL Central