FIRST-QUARTER SCORE
Initial conclusions now that it is getting too late to be early
I T’S EARLY.
There is no official date when that is no longer said. But, at some point, the term annually just peters out of the daily give-and-take of a major league season.
Spring training is departed. You blink and one-quarter of the schedule is gone. Every team has or will reach that mark in the next few days.
What does it mean? It is too late to keep saying it is early and, yet, it remains too early to be definitive on the season. Nevertheless, one-quarter of the season is enough to make me at least start to believe: 1The
Dodgers are in trouble. Now, s easons t urn around fast. The Yankees were 9-9, 7 ¹/₂ games behind the Red Sox, then essentially stopped losing for three weeks.
The Dodgers, in many ways, are the Yankees’ West Coast doppelganger. Both had their seasons end in last year’s playoffs by the Astros. Both then prioritized an end to their serial residence above the luxury-tax threshold. Thus, both emphasized depth, their young core and their farm systems to problem solve.
But the Yankees have handled a spree of injuries better than the Dodgers, who have been particularly walloped by the absence to date of Justin Turner, the loss for the season of Corey Seager and yet another disabled-list stint for Clayton Kershaw. They entered the weekend with the majors’ ninth-worst record (16-22).
Los Angeles would be surviving better if not for an atrocious bullpen. From his time with the Rays to being the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman has had a reputation for finding bullpen gold on the margins. In Friedman’s first three years (2015-17), the Dodgers were third in relief Wins Above Replacement (Fangraphs version). They were 27th this year heading into Saturday.
Both the first-place Diamondbacks and Dodgers decided to attack the pen on the cheap. Arizona notably traded for Brad Boxberger (2.12 ERA) and signed Yoshihisa Hirano (2.65) and are second in the NL in relief WAR. The Dodgers traded for Scott Alexander (who was so bad he was briefly sent to the minors) and signed Tom Koehler (out all year to date with a shoulder ailment).
No Dodger had more than five
homers, and the best hitter has been Matt Kemp, who was only acquired to dump other salaries to get under the threshold. The Dodgers should get Turner back soon and have lots of talent/ resources. But they also have way more problems than anticipated. 2Aaron
Judge is a better hitter this year than last. His slugging percentage was down from last year (but still .590), but so was his strikeout percentage to 28.9 while his batting average, on-base percentage, line-drive percentage and discipline not to chase balls out of the zone were all improved.
Two stats accentuate (albeit with the small sample size of a quarter season) Judge’s growth, for with the Yankees so much of reputation revolves around performance against the Red Sox and in the clutch.
Last year against Boston, Judge hit .151 (11-for-73) with two homers, five RBIs, 30 strikeouts and a .556 OPS. This season he also has 11 hits vs. the Red Sox, but in just 21 at-bats (. 524 average) to go along with two homers, six RBIs and just four strikeouts against six walks and a 1.487 OPS.
Baseball Reference keeps a stat called “late and clutch,” and last year in 100 plate appearances in that situation, Judge slashed .215/.380/.380 with three homers and eight RBIs. In 26 plate appearances this year, he was . 3 8 1 / . 5 00/. 7 1 4 with two homers and nine RBIs
before Saturday.
Judge’s growing imperviousness to pressure and ability to adapt as pitchers adapt to him has underscored that he is more than just a freakish power hitter. 3This
might be the most extreme year in major league history. In the seven seasons from 2011-17, six teams in total won 100 games and six lost 100 games. This weekend began with five teams on pace to win 100 and seven on pace to lose 100.
The good news within the disparity is that the largest division lead going into the weekend was Arizona 3 ¹/₂ games over Colorado. In the other five divisions, first place and second were separated by 1¹/₂ games or fewer and 20 teams were in a playoff spot or within 3¹/₂ games. I think this will have two impacts. 1) The need to obliterate the also-rans to win titles is as valuable as ever because, 2) the difference between a one-game wild card and winning the division is, as always, so disparate.
Just look at the AL East with the Yankees and Red Sox, in which the runner-up very possibly could have 95-plus wins and be at the mercy of, say, hosting Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in a one-game sudden death wild card. 4The conversation about the need to get the ball into the field of play will only grow stronger. Saturday began with the lowest batting average (. 246) since 1972 (the next year, the AL adopted the DH). The death of manufactured runs continued with t he lowest stolen-base percentage since ’72, the lowest sacrifice-bunt percentage ever and the most infrequent use of pinch runners since World War II (short benches have repercussions). What is up, of course, are strikeouts, as they have been every year since 2005. That season, each team whiffed an average of 6.3 times a game. It was 8.7 this season. Walks are up for the fourth straight year to 3.4 per team per game, and this is the greatest percentage batters have ever been hit (since 1900). Homers were down 9 percent from last year’s record, but would still be the fourth-most ever. The game is at a point in which 35.5 percent of plays end in a strikeout, walk, hit by pitch or homer. And also consider that hitters have never seen more pitches per plate appearance (3.9) nor have there ever been more pitchers used by teams on average per game (4.3). That the average game time was down f ive minutes (but still three hours) symbolizes some of the speed-up rules are working (such as limited mound visits). But average attendance was down more than 3,000 per game from last year’s final average. That could reflect cold weather early and those many teams on the way to 100 losses and not worth your hard-earned money. But somewhere in the formula is inaction, and so the subject is not going away.