OHTANI: INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY AS THE 2ND HALF BEGINS

NO, we're not suggesting that anything sinister will be happening to Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers' $700 million man. We are just looking at his monthly numbers and getting the impression that his hottest months might well be behind him. Take a look at the following data breakout and see what you think:

FIRST, the yearly log for Ohtani in June since his arrival in MLB (recall that he missed the month of June in 2018, his rookie year). We were discussing 10+ homer months a bit earlier (before we got swamped with work on another project)--as it turns out, Ohtani has had three such months in his career--and you're looking at all of them in the June data. June of '23 was truly a monster month for him, but June of '21 was not far behind. This June just past wasn't too shabby, but note that his OPS for the month was actually lower than his collective lifetime OPS for June...

SECOND, the monthly summaries, showing just how elevated his June performance is relative to all the other months. The June totals really do look Ruthian in nature: when we prorate out to 162 games--which should be close to his actual June games played number this time next year--his HR total projects to 66. That's actually a bit more than Ruthian...

BUT now for the more sobering part. Though he's had two solid months of July in recent years ('21 and "23, both with OPS values above 1.000), overall it's been an off-month for him, as shown in the averaged numbers for each month (the data at the bottom of the graphic). 

All of Ohtani's numbers for July, August and September are still quite solid--they're just not superhuman the way those June numbers are. At the very bottom of the data set we show you the averaged sum of his his numbers for the de facto second half of the season--and you can see that in the past he's lost 80 points of SLG on average in those months as compared to his first half performance. 

NOW, as we all know as we watch the Federalist Society fraudeurs continue their goose-stepping antics, anything can happen, even the unthinkable. So it's certainly possible that Ohtani will buck the trends on display here. That said, a clear pattern has emerged showing that Shohei tends to wear down as the season plays out. We figure 15-18 homers from here to the end of the '24 season and a .270 BA, with an OPS under .900. 

STILL quite good, of course--but, as we said at the top, mortal. 

We'll circle back on this at season's end to see how it turns out--stay tuned...

WILLIE MAYS R.I.P.--HIS EIGHTEEN 10+ HOMER MONTHS...

ALL of us of a certain age will remember with awe and infinite pleasure the opportunities we had to see the incandescent Willie Mays in the flesh--there really was no one else quite like him. Among so many other singular things about his career, no one else ever had the distance in years between 50+ home run seasons (though if Mark McGwire had hit one more homer in 1987, he'd hold the record). 

Willie, who passed away earlier today just a month and a half after his 93rd birthday, remains the model for the ideal player--a slugging, superb-fielding center fielder who could hit for a high batting average and steal 25+ bases a year. That feat--hitting .300+, hitting 25+ homers, and stealing 25+ bases in a single season--has only been done 58 times in baseball history. While Barry Bonds now holds the record for achieving those numbers the most often--six times--Mr. Mays (his godfather...) did so four years in a row (from 1957 to 1960). 

A long time ago at this blog we feted Mays on his eightieth birthday with a list of his OPS performances by month: you are invited to revisit that post here (but not until you finish this article). What we focus on here is Mays the slugger, and the chart we present to you to commemorate him is one that shows us all eighteen times that he hit ten or more homers in a month:

It's a chart filled with wonders, including the symmetry of the three 10-HR months in 1954 (Willie's first great year) and 1965 (arguably his last truly transcendent season). 

Arguments can rage over which of Willie's months were the greatest: he had six months in which his O{S exceeded 1.200. We say throw a blanket over September 1955, May 1958, September 1959, and May/August in 1965. 

That August 1965 was clearly his top HR month (17), but he'd actually slugged higher in September 1955 and May 1958. 

These are all wondrous feats, worthy of more detailed study in the game logs at Forman et soeur. It ought to be required reading in middle school, even for the girls.

Did anyone have more 10+ homer months? We'll answer that question a bit later on...stay tuned. 

RIP Willie--life will never be as sweet again as when we could watch you do everything transcendent on a baseball field...except pitch and be a one-man ground crew. May flights of giant angels sing thee to thy rest...

TOP BOPS FROM THE PAST TEN YEARS (2015-24)

WHAT we said we'd have for you today isn't quite ready...it needs some more background data and some time to establish some additional context--but it will be here soon.

In the meantime, we've grabbed the best performances of the past ten years by batting order position (BOP). As you'll see, there are 31 such high-flying BOPs, each registering an OPS of .950 or higher.

We've also identified the hitters who populated those batting order positions--which will doubtless clue you in on who's going to show up on the list more often than anyone else. (Cue the primordial comedy line from the late 1960s, already: "Here come de Judge!")

Of the 31 BOP seasons listed, four of them are from the now close-to-halfway-complete 2024 season. It will be interesting to see which of these will remain on the list: we suspect the two Yankee sluggers have the best bet, followed by the Dodgers' Shoheo Ohtani, with the Orioles' Gunnar Henderson least likely in our minds (and yours) due to his dearth of a track record.

Here's the full list:

BREAKING that down by BOP, that's ten of the top 31 from the #3 slot, ten from the #2 slot, six from the #4 slot, and five from the #1 slot, Seven of the slots have a SLG of .600 or higher, while twelve have a batting average of under .300. 

Fifteen of the BOPs have totaled 40 or more homers in a season, as befitting the "launch angle age" in which we live...

Note that there is an on-again, off-again pattern to these "peaks of BOP performance (Mal Waldron, eat your heart out...) that focuses on the odd years, as the chart at right indicates. (Odd years account for 21 of the top 31 BOP performances since 2015, when HRs first started sucking the air out of the room.)

MORE soon, stay tuned...

A "1" & A '2" REDUX + A "1" & A "2" & A "3": TOP OF THE LINEUP CHANGES IN AL ('23-'24)

SO, yes, we've been busy again (with the French noir book--still a beast, but being tamed & it will (finally) be out in the fall ahead of a two-part, 33-film festival. (We'll direct you elsewhere for all of that when the time comes.)

But back to baseball. Remember at the end of May we were talking about the Forman et soeur breakout for the number 1/2 slots in the batting order? In that post we told you about how Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani were racing ahead of every other 1-2 batting order combination in baseball history with their combined 178 adjusted OPS. (In "real" numbers, that translated into a 1.025 OPS.)

And remember also that we told you that they were "just a slump away" from coming back to the pack? Well, it turned out that we were more prophetic than we expected to be...

The top line here shows what the current OPS+ value for Betts and Ohtani stands as of earlier today (not including their 7-2 loss to the Royals this evening). They have lost twenty-six points of OPS+ and a hundred points of raw OPS in the past three weeks--and the Dodgers have gone 11-12 in that time frame. The data in yellow shows us what the #1 and #2 slots have done during that time--the two superstars have been hitting just a bit over league average.

Obviously, we'll keep an eye on this and update you again soon...

BUT now here's a sample of a more global comparison of batting order performance, showing how the top three batting order slots (which are now arguably the most important ones, as more and more teams are stacking the top of their lineup with their best/most powerful hitters) have shifted from last year to this one.

For purposes of this demonstration, we're going to focus on the American League, and show you how these changes tend to affect the on-field results in 2024 (thus far). Again, we must remind you (and ourselves that these changes are just a slump away--or a hot streak away--from a significant change; but let's go with it and see what it might tell us.

At right we have the summary values that show us the change ("delta") in the OPS production for the first three batting order slots (1-2-3) in the American league. 

This change is rendered in percentages rather than in raw numbers, and it's sorted in descnding order, so that the "Avg" column, which gives us that aggregate change for each team across all three top (1-2-3) batting order positions from the team with the biggest overall gain (apparently some team from New York...) to the team with the biggest overall loss (the team from Tampa Bay). 

The two teams with the best overall performance change in their top three BOPs--the Yankees and the Guardians--are the teams leading the AL East and AL Central respectively. Note, though, that the pattern is not quite monolithic: the AL West leader, the Seattle Mariners, has shed 15% percent of their offensive production from the 1-2-3 slots thus far in '24.

Still, note that the Royals and the Orioles, both having strong seasons thus far, are also showing a net gain in offensive performance in the 1-2-3 slots. 

At left we show you the detailed breakouts of these changing BOP slots, which reveals what folks know already--the addition of Juan Soto to the Yankee lineup has given those Bronx Bombers a lot more firepower...

WE'll look at the NL soon.

And we'll have something related but entirely different for you tomorrow...stay tuned.

TWO MONTHS INTO 2024: BASIC STARTER/RELIEVER DATA

HERE is some data that you might not find collated in just this way anywhere else...

It's a month-by-month breakdown of the ERA performance of all 30 MLB teams, broken up between starters and relievers.

We've organized it by league (AL first) and division (East, Central, West).

Teams leading their division have their abbreviations rendered in white type.

Teams doing well but not leading their division have their abbreviations rendered in light blue type.

All others are in yellow type.

We can see that the teams doing well thus far in 2024 are all getting solid work from both components of their pitching staff.

And the Phillies, perhaps benefiting from the soft schedule they've had over the first couple months, have been lights out in a way that we don't figure anyone (even the Phillies themselves) would have predicted before the season began.

The Guardians have managed to thrive despite having mediocre starting pitching, but their bullpen has snapped back into excellent shape in May and they just keep continuing to cruise...

What division looks to have the best overall pitching? That would be the AL East... but lots of things can happen to change that. After all, no one was expecting the Red Sox to come out with such a strong display of starting pitching as what they achieved in April; and folks weren't surprised when they backslid significantly in May.

And the Yankees have done exceptionally well in terms of their starting pitching despite still having Gerrit Cole on the shelf.

Over in the NL, the Braves will need to keep that pitching in play to stay within striking distance of the high-flying Phillies, especially with Ronald Acuña Jr. on the shelf for the duration of the year.

And under our noises, the Nationals seem to be in process of some serious reinvention, with four starters (Jake Irvin, Mackenzie Gore, Trevor Williams and Mitchell Parker) all holding their own.

NOW let's look at starting pitcher/relief pitcher won-loss records, which have a few interesting wrinkles...

With the shift toward a higher percentage of innings for relievers continuing, we're seeing more decisions going to them as well--the average "decision percentage" for relievers is now up to 41%.

The MLB team that is having a sensational run with reliever won-loss record thus far in 2024 is none other than the Milwaukee Brewers, who are among just three teams where relievers have more decisions than the starters (the others are the Cubs and the Mets).

The Brewers are on a pace that would net them more than sixty wins from their bullpen in 2024, which would break the current record held by the Tampa Bay Rays (58, set in 2021). As you might expect, the top 25 teams in reliever wins over a season have all occurred since 2018...

The division with the best won-loss record from its relievers: that AL East again, followed closely by the AL Central (boosted by the Guardians' gaudy 18-5 record thus far.

The "left coast" seems to be getting the best won-loss serendipity from its relievers thus far: all the teams in cities adjacent to the Pacific Ocean have combined for a 57-42 record from the guys in the pen.

BUT those Brewers...just how far can they go with this? It's not just the wins, but the winning percentage: they are at .750 (currently seventh-best during the "divisional era"; the Guardians, at 18-5, are actually ahead of them at .783, second behind the current record holder (the 1976 Twins, 33-9, .786 WPCT). Of course it's a long shot, simply because there are so many more decisions that go to relievers these days...but we can dream, can't we? 

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.