A "1" AND A "2"--DODGERS CHASE BEST TOP-OF-LINEUP PERFORMANCE...

AS many of you know already, batting order dynamics have undergone a shift in recent years, in large part due to the launch angle revolution and the institution of the universal DH. The philosophy of the #3 hitter being the best hitter in a team's lineup has in large part migrated up to the #2 slot in the batting order.

That's a big change from the "old days" when teams put singles hitters who might draw more walks than average into the #2 slot, in hopes of having an extra man on the basepaths when (the more occasional) long ball was hit (later codified into what some folks still call "the Earl Weaver strategy." 

AND no one has embraced that strategy with more gusto than the Los Angeles Dodgers, who put the first piece of such a "1-2" punch into place when they acquired Mookie Betts in 2020. Last year they moved Freddie Freeman into the #2 slot behind him, and pushed themselves high up the list of such "1 + 2" offensive clusters (as we'll see in a moment).

This year, with the signing of Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers have a 1-2-3 punch that might be the best in baseball history. (We won't know, however, until our friends at Forman et soeur return the "1-3" batting order split to accessibility in their data. Along with all the others who've made a mid-air leap onto the "1-2" bandwagon, the "Refsters" have set aside the classic "top three, middle three, bottom three" configuration that we've seen ever since we were sucking our thumbs. 

BUT that's OK, because Betts and Ohtani are ripping up the "1-2" modality at such a blazing clip that folks will likely want to focus on the "awesome twosome." And so now we give you the top 25 "1-2" performance since the beginning of divisional play, sorted in descending order of OPS+. After that buildup, we don't think you'll be surprised to see what team currently ranks #1...

THAT is right: the Betts-Ohtani Express is currently sporting a combined 178 OPS+, which is blowing away the current full season record, amassed primarily by Pete Rose and Joe Morgan for the 1976 Reds.

As we mentioned, the 2023 Dodgers (Betts/Freeman) rolled up a 148 OPS+ in the "1-2" slots, just behind the '76 and '69 Reds. (The '72 and '73 and '75 Reds are here as well, placing #7, #11 and #21 respectively.

IT's hard to imagine that Betts and Freeman will keep up an aggregate .343 BA, but barring an injury or a major slump, these guys are going to make some noise this year in terms of their mutual performance.

All in all, seven World Series teams (four winners, three losers) are represented here.

MORE on this shortly...stay tuned!

IS WHAT NORMALLY HAPPENS TO OFFENSE IN MAY HAPPENING THIS YEAR?

WE are one-thirds through the second month of baseball in 2024, and the uptick we tend to see in offensive production relative to "the cruelest month" (T.S. Eliot fans, prick up your ears...) has yet to materialize...

Now, as we said, we're only a third of the way through May, so things can still change quite a bit, but here's what we are looking at in terms of the major monthly performance indicators from 2021 until now:

Normally in May the warming weather warms offenses, as the bottom row of data--the percentage differential as measured for all the offensive categories displayed--indicates. It's not a consistent level of change from year to year, of course--we see a big spike in 2022 for R/G, but note that May 2023 actually went slightly negative...

...and thus far in 2024, run scoring for May is down by more than five percent. In fact, all the salient measures are down, and many by rather significant amounts.

We've been telling you for some years now that some kind of reckoning was coming due to the "launch angle" intervention into baseball's "theory of offense" (such as it is...), and despite the handwringing about pitcher injuries that dominated various flavors of media attention last month, pitchers still seem to have retained the upper hand.

Do note, though, that odd swings in the April data are more likely due to the very unpredictable differences in weather conditions that can occur during this month. Take note that the highest monthly R/G average out of this four-year sample occurred in last year's warmer-than-usual month of April, and that the slight May decline was actually the second highest monthly R/G value of those shown above.

But the pattern this May, with some lingering cooler conditions in the upper Midwest and in the Northeast still in play, shows us that the pitchers are, for now at least, retaining their control over things, and they are managing to curtail the early-season HR/G rates that were particularly high in 2021 and  2023.

Some pundits suggest that pitching is now so good that it must be reined in somehow, but it's telling that they pay only fleeting lip service to the notion that the game should more actively look for ways to add more dimensionality to offense, as opposed to merely treating the symptoms. This, of course, is what happens when the world is in a phase of its existence where it's besieged by quackery, and experimentation is not permitted to play out in real time in front of the audience. While the pace of the game has been improved, its underlying dimensionality is still suboptimal: it's actually possible that we are moving toward a new variant of a "crisis in offense" that continues to cast a forboding shadow over the game. Just like a virus, it's hard to predict whether it will turn into a pandemic, but the warning signs do seem to be gathering momentum.

As always, we'll check back on this when we move closer to the summer, with a look at how the next three weeks go as we continue to cast a cold eye on baseball's offensive topography. (W.B. Yeats fans, take note!)

WILLIE MAYS' 93RD RBIs...

IT's Willie Mays' 93rd birthday today, and since we are still bogged down with work on other projects, our look at April 2024 performance will need another day or two to appear; thus we have a little birthday tribute bon-bon featuring the immortal Say Hey Kid...

And, yes, it's whimsical (you were expecting something about the situation in Gaza, maybe?). 

WHAT we did is comb quickly through the records at Forman et soeur to locate all the seasons where Mays drove in at least 93 runs, and we isolated the date, the inning, the event, the location, the opponent and the outcome of the game in which Mays knocked in his 93rd run of the season.

Trivial? To be sure...but fun, (And, let's face it: with things like Gaza hanging over our heads, we need all the fun we can get right now.)

IT turns out Willie had 93+ RBIs in twelve seasons...those would be 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965 and 1966. Of course, in most of those years he also had more than 100 RBI for the season...but we wanted to pinpoint the exact game and plate appearance in which that 93rd RBI occurred. And you can see all that in the table at left.

What leaps out of the data? First, it's not surprising that Willie's 93rd RBI came during a later month in the season--it happened eight times in September and four times in August. Next, we see that Willie tended to get RBI #93 when the Giants were on the road--nine times out of twelve. And note that Willie's 93rd RBI occurred in games that the Giants won a vast majority of the time--ten wins and two losses, to be exact. 

What about hit types? Willie had at least one of each of the four hit types (no hit-by-pitches to drive in #93: he's just not exotic that way). His 93rd RBI for each of these seasons occurred on four singles, one double, two triples, and five home runs. 

There are two teams in the pre-expansion era that Willie never victimized with his 93rd RBI--the Dodgers and the Braves. He also didn't knock in his 93rd run against the Colts/Astros, and after 1966 he was in a sufficient age-related tailspin that he never had 93+ RBI seasons in or right after the second expansion year (1969), which leaves out the Padres and the Expos. 

SO there you have it: an off-beat look into a magnificent career, built around a celebration of the ongoing survival of a true immortal. Happiest of birthdays to you, Mr. Mays--we are so glad that you are still with us...

RISING FROM THE BASEMENT? 2023 AL DOORMATS AVOID THE LONG BALL IN APRIL 24...

IT's safe to say that most were skeptical that the 2023 AL bottom-dwellers (OAK and KCR, best identified via abbreviations after their combined 105-218 record) would amount to much in 2024; this despite the fact that both teams acquired pitching in the off-season (KCR picking up two starters--Michael Wacha, Seth Lugo--from the Padres, OAK acquiring two castoffs--Alex Wood, Ross Stripling--from the Giants). 

Most felt that these moves were more-or-less flimsy bandaids for a problem that was much deeper and more intractable in nature--but baseball abounds in surprises, and as we enter May 2024, these two teams, who combined for a 13-45 record in April 2023, found themselves collectively over .500 at the end of April 2024 (32-29), a net gain of eighteen games in the standing in just one month. 

Most of this rising from the basement stems from an unexpected improvement in pitching, as we'll see when we slam together comparisons of the two teams' April performances from this year and last. Let's start with the A's:

WE haven't gone back in time to see what the worst pitching line for April might be, but the A's collective performance last year has got to be in the running: a 7.72 overall ERA, "powered" by starting pitchers posting a "perfect" record (0-15, 8.51 ERA, serving up 2.2 HR/9). 

What happened this April? As our headline suggests, A's pitchers got massively better at not giving up the home run (something that, thus far in 2024, has been the case generally in MLB, despite the wave of arm injuries that dominated the media headlines, producing much handwringing from the likes of Ben Lindbergh). A's pitchers cut their HR/9 in half, and while the starters still struggled (5.00 ERA for the month), the relievers, led by the emergence of Mason Miller as a potent, unhittable closer, posted a 8-3 record with a 2.51 ERA, ranking sixth in MLB for the month. 

Wood has been a weak link in the starting rotation, but Stripling is at least pitching well in the soon-to-be-abandoned Coliseum, with a quite respectable 3.04 ERA there thus far. A's pitchers in general have been especially good at avoiding the long ball at home, allowing just 5 HRs there so far this year (as opposed to 21 on the road).

So there is guarded optimism for something like respectable mediocrity for the long trodden-upon A's, who might want to rename themselves the AAAA's next year when they are callously "relegated" to a minor-league ballpark in Sacramento by an ownership that needs a one-way ticket on a rocket ship headed out of the solar system.

FOR the Royals, the rosiest of all possible scenarios has emerged in the first month, as both their starters and relievers have improved at comparable rates:

KC's bullpen has not been as good as the A's--they still have some residual wildness in their reliever mix, but the coaching staff seems to have developed an effective closer in James (General) McArthur, a former starting pitcher whom the Royals converted after acquiring him in June 2023 after the Phillies released him. 

The key thing for the Royals' pen is--again--the disappearance of the long ball from their "repertoire." They have cut their HR/9 rate in half, and their starters thus far have pretty much done the same, led by strong early work from Lugo (who won his fifth game yesterday). Wacha has struggled a bit, and their putative ace, lefty Cole Ragans has been inconsistent, so the jury is out on whether KC can sustain its early-year success, but they've been extremely tough to beat at home (12-5 thus far) and one figures that they could legitimately project to 75-80 wins over the season if they sustain a reasonable portion of their pitching staff improvement. 

WE'll be back with a more comprehensive look at April 2024 shortly, along with some historical data about the correlation of first-month performance with teams making it into the post-season. In the meantime, root for your favorite doormat.