Welcome Back

I don’t know what the rest of you did with your break, but I did three things, none of them pictured above. I played golf, I dealt with Ford over a busted transmission and I now know a lot about starters, bullpens and batting approaches this year. (Note there is no mention of the All Star Game.) On the assumption that you have no interest in the first two, I’ll move immediately to #3.

Unlike the stuff I did last time, these data are all from this year, current through the break. (This is one of my first efforts with my database that includes the current year, and I definitely needed a little more time to make it work.) The first chart breaks down teams sorted by the fraction of their runs they score against starters and the fraction they score against bullpens.

At this point, the amateur sabermetricians among you ought to eyeball this chart and say… “Boy, that regression line doesn’t look very robust.” And you’d be right. The second thing to note is that I’m not talking (yet) about the fraction of innings in which teams face starters and the bullpen. To answer AAR’s initial question, the Braves actually score slightly more runs against starters than relievers. But almost every team does… only those teams to the left of 0.5 score more against bullpens, and only Colorado does so a lot.

This shouldn’t be surprising. First, modern relief corps have lower runs per 9 innings pitched than starters (4.23 for starters, 3.76 for relievers). Second, starters pitch more innings than relievers (57% of all innings). So it’s perfectly natural that they give up more runs. But look again at the chart above. Although they pitch 57% of all innings, only a handful of teams score more than 57% of their runs against starters. Check out this graph:

In this graph, the red line is the 45-degree line where the two shares are equal. There’s a kind of interesting (at least to me) math point here. Starters have higher ERAs than bullpens. Starters work more innings than bullpens. Then why is it that almost nobody scores more efficiently against starters? The reason is that starters’ stints are determined by their performance. In those games in which starters go a long way, they are stopping runs. That is, they are only left in when they are efficient. While this is mostly true of individual bullpen pitchers as well (the three batter minimum being an obvious complicating factor), it is not true of bullpens in aggregate — they pitch as many innings as they need to to finish out the game, no matter how well or poorly they perform.

One last question: how important is pitch count? I tried to see if the number of pitches a team sees per batter manages to cut the number of innings a team sees from starters. Here are the results:

So, statistically, patience reduces the length of starter stints, but there are plenty of counterexamples. That said, you can’t score runs just by patience.

Individual teams may do better against individual pitchers by being patient, but patient teams do not score more (or less) runs than impatient ones. (For the statistically-minded, the R2 here is 0.005.)

One thing to note, besides the fact that these are simply a half-season’s data. None of this means, for example, that different approaches against different pitchers might not be very effective. It doesn’t mean that strategies against good starters might not be very different than strategies against bad ones. It doesn’t mean there’s a way to win games offensively that doesn’t involve walking, hitting, hitting with power and not striking out. It does mean that there may be strategies that, at the margins, generate a few runs, and maybe an extra win or two — and these may involve comparing starters with bullpens.

Francisco Lindor

New York Sportsworld has interrupted its focus on the World Cup to consider a statement from the Mets about players they are not willing to entertain offers on that did not include Francisco Lindor. Even ignoring this season, I think it’s easy to opine that Francisco Lindor would be a very helpful addition to the Braves. (With all due respect to Jim Jarvis, feel free to disagree.) Any deal with anyone other than the Dodgers would obviously require all kinds of financial shenanigans, but ignore that as well. In the comments, name a deal that you think that would interest both the Braves and the Mets.

The Washington Senators

Franchise relocations occupy odd places in fan’s heads. I have not surveyed this, but it seems even casual fans know that the Braves used to be in Milwaukee and Boston. The moves of the Giants and Dodgers, which happened almost 70 years ago, are still fighting words for some in New York. Montreal to Washington is still kind of fresh. The Seattle/Milwaukee transfer is memoryholed because the Pilots only lasted a year. But the move of the expansion Washington Senators (not the ones who became the Twins) to Texas in 1972 is one that I think people honestly are surprised to learn about.

The Game

Cal Quantrill returned to face his very brief (2 weeks) teammates from last year. In his eight innings of work in Atlanta, he earned his -0.5 WAR. I think he moved to Arlington just so he could wear number 44, which for some reason they wouldn’t let him wear in Atlanta. In 46 innings with the Rangers, he has managed 0.3 WAR.

The Braves pitched Chris Sale, who I would allow to wear 44a if he wanted to, which of course he doesn’t because he has class. He was returning from his rain-shortened outing last time out… well, that and a meaningless round-trip flight to Philadelphia.

Yaz has an elbow boo-boo, so the Braves called up Brewer Hicklen, which I thought was a lawfirm in Valdosta. He played on Sunday, hit 0.500 and slugged 0.750. I expect some regression.

After failing with two on in the 1st, Drake Baldwin got a two-out single to start the scoring in the second. Ozzie drove in Riley (who is batting 1.000 after one bat post-ASG) with another single and Quantrill was suddenly remembering what it was like to pitch in Atlanta. Olson walked to load the bases, but Harris grounded out to Quantrill, who after two innings had thrown 53 pitches, given up two runs and stranded five other runners.

The third inning saw only one hit, but in the fourth, a three-run Baldwin homer made it 5-0. An Olson supra-Chop shot made it 6-0 and Cal Quantrill, at one point a first-round draft pick (remember that, draft analyzers) was ready to leave town as he did a year ago.

He was replaced in the fifth by major league debut of Emiliano Teodo, the only major leaguer from Middle Earth (though there were rumors about Willie McGee). He gave up two more runs. Then Collyer gave up 4 runs in the seventh, and left a massive amount of trash around his locker when his brother visited. (Anyone who gets that reference gets Braves Journal free the rest of the year.)

12-0 after 7 was deemed to be room enough for the bullpen. Even Roger thought we’d scored enough. Sale’s final line: 0 runs, 2 hits, 0 walks, 6 Ks. Victor Mederos came in to mop up. He lost the shutout and his perfect 2026 ERA.

Austin Riley led off the 8th with a homer off Kyle Higashioka. The Riley problem is solved as long as we can convince the rest of MLB to pitch at 60 mph. Higashioka started to tire and cut his velocity in half, leading to the first RBIs by a pitcher in MLB since 2021 when Mederos knocked in two to make it 15-1. There have only been 15 plate appearances by pitchers since 2022. Mederos has not only the only RBI, he also has the only pitcher hit since the universal DH.

4:10 start tomorrow, MacKenzie Gore against Owen Murphy in his first major league start.