Mining for … Hell, Anything

Playing Time Leaders

Mookie Betts leads the league with 21 plate appearances, but here are some available hitters who have been racking up the playing time.

• David Fletcher (18 PA): He leads the league in hits (8) and is hitting (.533/.556/.667), so he’s not moving off the top spot for a while. Also, it helps that he’s qualified at four positions (SS/OF/2B/3B)
• Niko Goodrum (18 PA): He’s leading off, hitting OK (.250/.333/.563), and qualified at three positions (2B/SS/OF). He should at least be a bench bat in all formats.
• Shed Long Jr. (18 PA), Evan White (18 PA), J.P. Crawford (17 PA), and Kyle Lewis (18): The Mariners offense has been turning itself over and all the hitters have benefited. There are some interesting extreme small samples happening with 13 of 18 Kyle Lewis’s plate appearances ending with a strikeout, walk, or home run. Also, Crawford leads the league in walks (5) and triples.
• Freddy Galvis (17 PA): The Reds middle-infield options are drying up. Galvis is being forced into everyday at-bats with a .929 OPS to start the season.

Max Exit Velocity

Giancarlo Stanton’s 121.2 mph 483 ft home run from this past weekend was hit harder than any ball last season. The deal is that players with elite max exit velocities are potential breakouts as noted by The Athletic’s Rob Arthur.

For every mile per hour above 108, a hitter is projected to gain about 6 points of OPS relative to their predicted number. Hitters like Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, who regularly smoke the baseball at exit velocities most players will never achieve in their careers, tend to inhabit the top right part of this graph.

They also tend to outperform what the projection systems say.

Here are some potential hitters available on the waiver who have hit a ball 109 mph in 2020.

• C.J. Cron (112.0): When healthy, Cron crushes the ball.
• Franchy Cordero (111.3): If he could just not hit the ball (career 38% K%), he could be productive.
• Victor Caratini (111.0): He’s becoming a must-own catcher.
• Maikel Franco (110.2): After struggling against Cleveland’s three aces, he’s starting to show some potential hitting (.313/.294/.750)
• J.P. Crawford (110.1): His season max, set after just four games, it is 1.5 mph higher than last season’s max. He’s becoming more of a complete player.
• Ji-Man Choi (109.9): A lack of full-time plate appearances limited Choi’s fantasy value. The lefty has now started to hit from the right side. In three plate appearances, he has a home run and a walk.
• Derek Fisher (109.8): He’s always had a little pop in his bat, but in the majors, he strikes out too much (36%) and hits too many groundballs (51%).
• Edward Olivares (109.7): The Padres have too many OK bats so Olivares playing time is limited (7 PA). He’s been forcing the Padres hand in summer camp and continues to do so (.333/.429/.500) during the regular season. This upcoming week might be the last time to get him on the cheap if he can get full-time at-bats. Last season in AAA, he had 18 homers and 35 steals.

American League

Rays

• Blake Snell hasn’t felt fine for a while

Snell walked four in two innings during Tuesday’s intrasquad game and it mostly had to do with a lack of control on the fastball. Snell, however, threw a short bullpen session on Friday and said he felt “amazing” after it, making him confident that he can provide the Rays with quality innings on Sunday.

Because of his workload, Cash said it was fair to expect two to three innings from Snell and then they’ll continue to build him up over the course of the season.

“I feel great,” Snell said. “It’s the best I’ve felt in a long time.”

How long is a “long time”?

Red Sox

• The Red Sox will be rotating position players for a day off once every 10 days.

Roenicke said he would take turns resting his position players over the first 10 days of the season, and it was Andrew Benintendi’s turn on Sunday afternoon.

National League

Cubs

• Tyler Chatwood is mixing up his arsenal.

Chatwood said on Sunday. “Going back looking at it, I never did any real pitching inside or mixing it up as much. So that was one of the points of emphasis this year.”
…
Chatwood noted that he altered the grip on his cutter some, reverting back to a hand position similar to throwing a slider.
…
Chatwood also noted that he has started featuring his curveball in different counts than in the past, following conversations with pitching coach Tommy Hottovy and the Cubs’ analytics team. He cited a 2-0 curve to Justin Smoak in the first inning that was called for a strike.

If he could only throw strikes (career 4.7 BB/9)

Nationals

• The fans find out right before Stephen Strasburg’s start about his hand that has bothered him for weeks.

Strasburg’s right hand has been numb for weeks, first waking him up at night and now enough to warrant at least one cortisone injection in a process known as hydrodissection. It has led to a delayed start to an already-late shortened season and he missed his scheduled first start Saturday against the Yankees.

Great.

Pirates

• Chad Kuhl has some extra value as the second starter with Steven Brault

Brault will make the start and likely work three innings in his season debut, squaring off opposite Brewers starter Adrian Houser. After that, manager Derek Shelton will turn to another pitcher — unofficially, but almost certainly right-hander Chad Kuhl — to work the next three or four innings before handing the game over to Pittsburgh’s bullpen. The Pirates first teased their piggyback plan early in Summer Camp, with Brault and Kuhl the top two candidates to fill a rotation spot in that way.

I like Kuhl’s chances of grabbing some Wins as the backend of the piggyback.