Out of Left Field

For the new kids around here, “Out of Left Field” is an occasional post of random matters, none of which require 800 words of analysis, but should be touched on briefly anyway. Here goes:

Garret Crochet, one of the best pitchers in MLB this season, who pitches for arguably its worst owner, is an obvious trade deadline target for several teams – the Yankees being one of them. Turns out Garret has some personal ground rules about the conditions of any possible moves.

I know the folks around MBP are generally more “with it” than the followers of most larger accounts, so I probably shouldn’t need to say this but I will, just for clarity’s sake. Garret Crochet’s production thus far in 2024 makes him worth tens of millions to his insufferable boss, and for that, he makes $800K in 2024. So, if he has some demands to protect his long-term health (physical and financial), “good for him” is the only appropriate response.

The AL MVP is going to go to Gunnar Henderson, Bobby Witt Jr., Aaron Judge, or Juan Soto. That means three players will end up in the neighborhood of double-digit WAR this season, and not win the MVP, which is crazy to consider. It also means there is no wrong choice before you start getting too mad about it.

The Yanks play the Sawx again this weekend, and admittedly, I don’t know too much about Boston so I looked a little closer, under the assumption many of you may not know them too well. Here’s what I found:

Overall, they’re about an average team.

Offensively they rank 9^th in MLB in runs per game, which is based on lineup depth (six players north of 100 OPS+) and pretty good contact – 6^th in hard hit percentage, 8^th in barrel rate and 8^th in exit velocity. That said, their expected wOBA is just about average and they do lead baseball in BABIP, so they’ve received a pretty big boost from the Gods of Baseball Randomness in ’24.

On the run prevention side, they’re the opposite of your favorite team in pinstripes. Boston’s pitching is pretty good. They have three starters with sub four xFIP, and Slaten, Weissert and Jansen have all been good out of the pen. But defensively, they are pretty damn bad as they rank 22^nd in turning batted balls into outs and 26^th in defensive runs above average.

Specifically, to this weekend’s series, Sunday night’s matchup will feature Boston’s Tanner Houck (84^th percentile xFIP) against the Yanks’ Carlos Rodon (24^th percentile xFIP). Nestor and Stroman better have good games tonight and tomorrow respectively, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.

PS: Speaking of the Yankees and Red Sox, “Summer of ‘49” by David Halberstam is one of my favorite baseball books, check it out if you haven’t. So much information about the Joe D Yankees and Ted Williams Red Sox that I wasn’t aware of – great stuff.

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