Let’s Give Rodon, Stroman, and Volpe Some Slack!

We need to clear up a few things, Yankee fans:

• Carlos Rodon is a very good pitcher – frankly he’s in discussion for the AL Cy Young award.
• Marcus Stroman is also a very good pitcher.
• Ignore what the “analytics” say – Anthony Volpe is a good hitter.

Let’s start with Rodon:

The “Our Lady of Perpetual Scowling Petulance” high school alum is currently second in MLB in wins with 13, trailing only Chris Sale and Tarik Skubal who both have 14. (I’m told both Sale and Skubal are elite pitchers.) Furthermore, Rodon was this close to being at the top of the “wins” leaderboard yesterday as he only allowed four runs to Detroit in a 4-0 Yankees loss – key point being the “0” as it’s not Rodon’s fault his team can’t score.

As of right now, I’d say he’s just on the outside looking in on the AL Cy Young voting. But with Sale in the NL, if Rodon gets some help from his offense, and continues his good work he’s got a shot at joining Gerrit Cole and Roger Clemens as 21^st Century Yankees to win the award.

Stroman may not be in the Cy Young discussion, but guess what? He’s having a great season.

Stro’ has a better than league average ERA*, a better than .500 W/L record and is on pace for double digit wins. Do you know how many MLB pitchers can say that? 43. Of course, that doesn’t make him “elite” but since there are only 30 MLB teams, being among the best 43 makes that pitcher a good number two starter.

(*Heck, Stroman’s ERA is better than reigning Cy Young king Gerrit Cole and even when the nerds jump in with their fancy ERA “plus”, Stroman is still better than average!)

He’s not Luis Arraez, but Anthony Volpe can hit.

A hitter’s job when he comes to the plate is simply to get a hit. Well Anthony Volpe is in the top half of all MLB hitters when it comes to getting hits per at bat, as his batting average is above MLB average. Heck, we’re always hearing what a great hitter Pete Alonso is, well guess what? Volpe’s batting average is higher than Polar Bear’s!

Don’t let the nerds talk to you about alphabet soup stats – batting average measures a player’s ability to get a hit, and Volpe, by definition, is good at it.

Of course, I’m being sarcastic.

Any measurement that excludes team defense, team offense and randomness, will tell you that Rodon is a bad pitcher and Stroman is worse. And if Anthony Volpe fell off a boat, whether or not he could hit the water would be a 50/50 prop bet on Draft Kings, because going one for four with a single and four groundouts every day (which Volpe seems to do) makes one a garbage hitter, not a good one.

Thanks for coming to my rant. But before I go, here’s a statistic I like:

Games played/fWAR in 2024

Oswald Peraza 1 G, 0.1 fWAR
DJ LeMahieu 60 G, -0.4 fWAR

And another reminder that “The Numbers Game: Baseball’s Lifelong Fascination with Statistics” is the best book on the subject I’ve ever read. (Particularly regarding today’s topic – we’ve known forever that BA, ERA, Wins, etc. are useless stats – these are not new conversations.)

Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments or yell at me @mybaseballpage1 on Twitter and/or the “My Baseball Page” on Facebook.

Want to support MBP? If you’re an Amazon shopper, use any of the links on this page to take you there. Amazon may make a tiny donation to MBP with a purchase, even if it’s not the item on the link. Or…