Pwned
Earlier this week, Marcell Ozuna faced Eric Fedde for the first time in three years. Before that game, Ozuna had had a lot of success against Fedde: 7 for 12 with two homers and a double and 5 walks in addition, But Eric Fedde had become, by all accounts a completely different and better pitcher since his sojourn in Korea when apparently something clicked. So one might expect the next matchup to be not quite as lopsided: But Ozuna was 2 for 3 in the rematch; I guess you could argue that the two hits were just singles, but I think it’s safe to say that whoever the new Eric Fedde is, he hasn’t figured out the big bear yet.
But that got me thinking: what’s the worst any major league player has done against another major league player? The problem with asking this question is that the number of confrontations is critical for two reasons: fewer meetings lead to much higher variances. It is unsurprising to note that there are 11,709 batter-pitcher interactions that only happened once with a home run in that only appearance, but that certainly doesn’t mean that they would necessarily even be good against that pitcher if they faced each other more regularly. The pitching record here belongs to Josh Osich, who in his 7 year career gave up 14 homers to guys the first and only time he faced them.
On the other hand, if you require a large number of meetings, you will squeeze out a lot of the luck, but you will find yourself limited to players who faced each other a lot, which means they both must have been pretty good players.
So here’s what I did. At various levels of plate appearances, I calculated the best OPS that a given batter had against that pitcher.
So when we set the criterion at 100 Plate Appearances, Babe Ruth is in both first and second place, against Tommy Thomas (OPS: 1.5650) and Willis Hudlin (OPS1.464). Third and fourth place are Lou Gehrig against Sam Gray (1.473) and Rogers Hornsby against Jack Scott (1.433). But I was pleased to see Dale Murphy in 5th place, who OPSed 1.409 against Rob Knepper in 118 plate appearances with 8 homers.
Dropping to 50 plate appearance, the Bambino is again in first and second place, against Bob Hasty and Mike Cvengros.
We start to get a lot more modern players when we drop to 20 or more plate appearances, although the leader is still Lou Gehrig’s 2.293 against Les Tietje. But the next three places belong to Albert Pujols against Odalis Perez (2.229), Ryan Howard against Chris Volstad (2.169) and Barry Bonds against Jose Lima (2.067).
I think the sweet spot is 20 plate appearances. If you can completely dominate a pitcher even after facing each other 20 times, there’s plenty of luck, but there’s some real pwnage going on as well. The alltime leader is Sammy Sosa against David Williams. Consider this stat line in 22 plate appearances:
13 AB, 1 Single, 1, Double, 6 Homers, 9 Walks and 3 more intentional walks. OPS? 2.986. This is the only time in baseball history that, with at least 20 plate appearances, one human being had an SLG over 2 against another human being.
The Game
Let’s start with the fact that Eli White earned a start over Jarred Kelenic. This is an odd definition of earned, sort of like saying Chester Arthur earned his Presidency. If it sounds like I’m down on Jarred Kelenic, I ask him to take it as a challenge: I am the easiest fan in the world to win over. All you have to do is generate WAR at a reasonable rate. So far this year, Jarred has generated -.5 WAR and -0.9 WPA in 23 games, while White, with much less play, has generated 0.1 WAR and 0.3 WPA. That in and of itself is not a reason to bench Jarred Kelenic, but it ic certainly plenty enough reason to give Eli White a chance.
Zac Gallen, like Chris Sale, is a great pitcher off to a slow start. In the first inning, they combined for five men left on base with no runs scored. But Gallen was roughed up in the second with two doubles and two singles plating three. Sale was highly inefficient, but gave up only one run in 104 pitches through 5. He seems to be coming around, but he certainly isn’t last year’s Chris Sale yet.
At this point the Braves had 2 add on runs in the 6th and another 3 in the eighth inning to make it 8-1 and give us Uncle Jesse room.. Jesse ceded one, but I cede nothing in my admiration of Eli White — two doubles, two RBIs and two runs scored. Excellent start to a road series in a tough place to play.
Name Stuff
When Nick Allen faced Zac Gallen tonight, it marked the 21st time a pitcher and a batter had the same last name once you lopped off a letter from one or the other. Gallen had previously faced Austin Allen. Here’s the full list:
| Pitcher | Batter |
|---|---|
| Bill James | Red Ames |
| Red Ames | Bill James |
| Ray Washburn | Richie Ashburn |
| Phil Regan | Tom Egan |
| Jack Aker | Frank Baker |
| Ron Reed | Roger Freed |
| Howie Reed | Roger Freed |
| Jack Aker | Dusty Baker |
| Ed Glynn | Fred Lynn |
| Gary Ross | Wayne Gross |
| Scott Sanderson | Mike Anderson |
| Scott Sanderson | Dave Anderson |
| Freddie Toliver | Joe Oliver |
| Scott Sanderson | Brady Anderson |
| Dave Otto | Henry Cotto |
| Ryan Bowen | Spike Owen |
| Steve Watkins | Garrett Atkins |
| Esteban Yan | Mike Ryan |
| Josh Spence | Hunter Pence |
| Robbie Ray | Jon Gray |
| Jon Gray | Robbie Ray |
| Zac Gallen | Austin Allen |
| Bryan Garcia | Orlando Arcia |
| Brooks Raley | Jake Fraley |
| Robert Garcia | Orlando Arcia |
| Zac Gallen | Nick Allen |
Didn’t know anything about David McCabe, but a switch hitter with a .477 OBP at AA deserves a look. I watched this video of his 2023 AFL at bats. Nice approach. He loads quickly and keeps his hands back, varying the timing of his short stride well to be on time for off-speed pitches. The most impressive thing is around 1:55 where he challenges as borderline a strike as you will see and on review it had barely scraped the edge. A young hitter who can be that confident in his strike zone recognition to challenge a pitch that close is pretty amazing. Yeah, so he lost the challenge, but process over results.
A 25 yo at AA is not going to be on any top prospect lists, but he was drafted in the 4th after a monster age-22 college season for Charlotte and lost last year to TJ. Otherwise, he likely would’ve at least made AAA in 2024 and likely gotten a cup of coffee with as bad as our OF was. He has possible 20 HR pop but he’s primarily a line drive hitter with top shelf approach.
He’s a corner infielder who reportedly has good arm at 3rd. Interesting guy and I will be following this year.
Supposed to be about as good a hitter for OBP as you can get out of college.
I love it when Mr. F thinks.
Yes. And while it’s not that uncommon to see Bill James mentioned here, it’s hardly ever THAT Bill James.
Sale’s start was a real tightrope walk. He was struggling to command his slider all night; frequently he was failing to land it in the zone and it was staying roughly a foot outside on his arm side. He only nailed it a handful of times and got the location he wanted to be able to use it as his out pitch.
Most of his outs came via induced contact on his four-seamer, which frankly was pretty nervousmaking for me. He has given up some awfully loud contact this year and especially as he’s typically sitting 93-94, he’s not getting much swing and miss.
He battled, stranded a lot of runners, and did some impressive work in particular to strand Corbin Carroll on third after a triple. But he simply doesn’t have all his weapons right now. CJ was speculating that part of the reason he’s struggling with feel is his arm slot is significantly lower this year, and we don’t know why that is. I hope he can work through this and I am really hoping the arm slot change is not pain-related.
Again, if we are at or close to .500 at the end of April then all bets are off and the season starts again. We were always hoping to tread water without Acuna and Strider (now Profar, too).
All you have to do is split with Arizona and sweep the worst team in baseball and you’re .500.
For me, the best part of last night’s game was that the hitters up and down the lineup were taking good at-bats and putting together clusters of hits. Harris, White, and Allen were working counts, and so were the boppers. We really need that.
But it’s also great to hear Sale’s self-diagnosis that he’s close.
Cannot walk guys and expect to get away with it. Holmes is kinda like Elder with a better fastball. We literally have 3 starting pitchers if Strider is healthy and 2 if he isn’t. Just bad…
Murphy is on pace for 60 home runs. Tell you what—if he hits 60 I will take back what I said about him.
If Holmes could continue to pitch to Suarez he would be on pace for a lot more…smh
I know it’s hard to believe given what they’ve looked like over the last 160 games, but this really an offense with substantially the same personnel as two years ago.
Jesus F…are you kidding me?
Predictable that the inning ending double play killed us.
And it seems like Iggy lost his mojo
Iglesias has to be removed as closer.
Don’t know who fills in. Just know that it can’t be him. He’s lost it.
What an improbable win. Our luck seems to be changing.
Maybe I’m too high on him, but I think Daysbel could thrive in that role. I really don’t think he’d be any worse than Iggy has been so far.
I will give any cap tipping comments a pass tonight.
Win, win, win.
Break up the Braves!
Happily Recapped
.631 since that first west coast trip. 97 win pace.