I didn’t catch too much of the Yankees/Red Sox game last night, but when I had an opportunity to check my phone, then later when I had the game on the radio in the car, there seemed to be a common theme around the commentary. Something along the lines of “Rodon has been very good this year, this has just been a tough outing.”
I’m here to tell you that anyone who believes that is factually wrong – unless you think opposing batters hitting the ball very hard against your pitcher is “good”.
I wrote about it two and a half weeks ago, but we can update it now. Prior to last night’s game – to be clear: NOT counting last night’s Red Sox batting practice session – out of 75 MLB pitchers with enough innings thrown, Rodon ranked 62nd in xFIP and allowed the 9th highest exit velocity and 18th highest barrel percentage. His results had been the beneficiary of very good team defense and some good fortune.
Rodon predominantly throws four seam fastballs and sliders, and the velocity and movement on both are well above average. Yet, as we all know (but we all could use reminders sometimes), if you throw a ball over the middle of the plate to MLB hitters, they will absolutely smash it, regardless of velocity and movement – and Rodon has been a fourth-degree black belt in the art of hitting middle- middle in the strike zone.
Whether or not he’ll improve is a discussion for another time. It’s been a long time since he’s been good, he’s on the wrong side of thirty and has been injury prone (one of the side effects of injuries is motor control is adversely affected – i.e., the ability to throw the ball exactly where one wants to may be compromised) so count me as skeptical.
Let’s talk about xwOBA or expected weighted on base average. Essentially, xwOBA believes hitting the ball hard is better than tapping it, walks are good, and strikeouts are not good. This is logic no baseball fan should disagree with.
As you would expect, on a macro level xwOBA correlates very strongly with runs scored. The Yankees, Orioles, Dodgers and Philles are all in the top five in MLB in both xwOBA and in runs per game. Chicago and Oakland have the two lowest team xwOBA and they’re 30th and 28th respectively in runs per game.
On a micro level, when xwOBA is compared to an individual hitter’s results, it might give us an indication that an individual player may be the beneficiary of luck, either good or bad, if there’s a big disparity between the two.
To wit…
2024 xwOBA:
Anthony Volpe .293
Gleyber Torres .292
Anthony Rizzo .291
Essentially, if we’re going by quality of at bats this season, there’s been no difference between the three. (Yet we know the results are different.)
The gap between Volpe’s expected wOBA and actual wOBA is the biggest on the Yankees by a light year, and in the top ten percent in MLB among 256 hitters with enough plate appearances. It may be hard to believe, but he hit the ball harder and more consistently last season than he is this season (both exit velocity and barrel rate are down) and is walking less this season than last season.
His batting average on balls in play is up 71 points from last season, however. (Plot thickens…)
Remember what Crash Davis said in Bull Durham: One ground ball with eyes or flare per week is the difference between a .250 hitter and a .300 hitter. But he didn’t say “BABIP” so that made him a sage, not a nerd.
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