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.

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

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.

On team pages, you can view a graph of each player's OAA over time...or you can scroll down for a table with sparklines for each player.

You can download the database the site uses from the home page, and you can view the source code on GitHub

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

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

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

They had the Seiya grand slam against the White Sox, but unless I'm missing something the Cubs haven't hit a 3 run home run since May 2nd

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

I wonder if the Cubs take a chance on Nido here. He's heated up a little with the bat (though expectations there should be low) but he's been a good defensive catcher his whole career.

Luke Little’s two most recent appearances were his first two consecutive outings without walks of his major league career. https://t.co/ULmvt9M6zJ

Nico Hoerner has only struck out three times in a game three times in his career: 7/17/23, 4/30/23, and tonight.