News flash - MLB players are shrinking & 2026 season is already 5% over - Ep. 703 - 4.6.26

Episode 703 of almost Cooperstown. Today, we're going to talk about some baseball news, which we like to do in this week in baseball. The shrinking of Major League Baseball players, the greatest performers in March history. And we're going to talk about WRC Plus, which is a stat that we really like and we promise we're not going to make your eyes glazed over. It's this week in baseball. So the first thing I want to mention here is that 5 % of the 2026 season is now over.

Right, right. It's wild to think about that. It doesn't really seem that much, but it is five percent of your team season is now done. When we come back here next week, we'll be closing in on 10 percent of the season. Right, right. So if you were in September, October.

That last five percent seems a lot more important than the five percent right now. But this doesn't really feel real yet. It's like baseball doesn't really get started until May, it kind of feels like. But already after this many games, I don't know if you took a look at the divisions. Here we are on Sunday before games are played or recording a very rainy dismal Sunday. And sure glad I'm not at the ballpark like the Yankee fans down down the road that, the the first place teams are, you know, there's maybe I don't know, one surprise.

and maybe Atlanta, I would say, being in first place in the NL East at six and three. I think, for the most part, good, it's not like there's a team that we didn't expect to see in the playoff race at the top of the division. Yeah, well, I mean, the Cubs are in last place, but they're three and four, so you can't make too much of the, the only thing that I can make things of is the White Sox are in last, they don't look very good at all.

The athletics don't look very good at all. So that's so it's already the water story. particularly good waters kind of finding its level. The Nationals are last in the NLE. So that makes it the rest of it is just the Boston Red Sox are two insects. Oh, wait, that surprised me a little bit. Well, because I picked them, right. I think they're going to be good. And then they've gotten off to a terrible start. So, yeah, I, you know, I think that's the real, you know, the only real surprise. The Marlins got off to a good start, but they've cooled off.

⁓ And probably after the next eight games, right? So eight games is five percent ⁓ It'll look you know different enough that you'll say wow this team emerged or that team fell back, right? Right when we get to that when we get to ten percent of the season that's enough games played where divisions are actually starting to take shape because Realistically the Cubs could play a series in the NL Central looks completely different

The White Sox could play a series in the A.L. Central looks completely different. It's unlikely, but it is possible. I'm reminded, however, of I don't know, it two years ago, the Pirates went out like 20 and eight and we kept saying the whole time going, ⁓ yeah, it's good. So that took, you know, that was quite a bit of the season already. You're talking about something like, you know, almost 20 percent. We it about 15. I we've seen it with the Mets. It took them 40 percent of a season to get going and they were finally able to do that. But it is the kind of thing that.

The more you start off bad, the less error room you give yourself. You're going to have because because realistically, the Yankees aren't going to go. They're seven and one right now. They're not going to finish the season like one hundred and thirty and thirty two. But Yankee fans, they can drink and they can drink. It's not going to happen. But what going seven and one does afford you is now you've got your cushion. When ever you have a two and five stretch at some point this season, because no as weird as teams just don't play the way we've ever seen a team.

literally win two out of every three games. So well, no, that happens, right? You know, there are teams that have won. You got to win one hundred eight games. Right. they don't do it. Winning literally win to lose one win to lose one. Like that would honestly, I think, be boring, it'd be a frustrating fan experience. it, but I don't know how enjoyable you would be because I would say we're to lose tonight because this is the night we lose. Well, no, more so because like I would say for most fans, especially unless you're the fan of the team that wins the World Series, your favorite part of every season is going to be that.

two weeks stretch where they look like the team you think they could be. They would be right. Right. That's every fan's fate. We all there's always a bar for basically every team. Even the White Sox will have a you even the Rockies will have a period of play this year. We're all like, OK, yeah, this is what we're trying to build towards or they don't stink as bad as we think they do. So everybody will have that. that's what you generally hang your hat on if you don't win the World Series. But I think that, you know, if you the better you start off,

the more cushion you build in because the other part of that is there's inevitably the part where you don't play well. So here's one for you. I remember that series, the Dodgers got swept by the Pirates last year. Everybody forgets that. So if you're a player like Nick Kurtz of the athletics, who many have picked to vie for the AL MVP, has gotten off to a terrible start. He's two for 24. It's just gone terribly. So is it easier to come back individually from a bad start?

⁓ Compared to a team or how much more meaningful is it or not? I think it is much easier for a player to come back from a good start because the place from a bad start Sorry come back from a bad start because the player isn't relying on other like like the team coming back from a bad start You can come back from a bad start and it doesn't really matter because you might have dug yourself a big enough hole Whereas with a player it's really easy for us to go like well, okay Well, if we look at you know, if we take out his April and May he actually had a really good season

You don't get to do that with your record. You don't get to be like, oh, well, yeah, sure, they didn't make the playoffs. But if we subtract their April and May, they do make the playoffs. It's like, well, that doesn't work that way. You know, have we done this podcast a few days ago when we're looking into WRC plus, which we'll talk about later, Joey Weimar would have been the number one guy. And looking at that, you're looking at going, well, that's not going to last. And it already hasn't. So Mar Republic, my record. So besides Nick Kurtz, the guy that did have a good start was 19 year old rookie.

⁓ connor griffin of the pirates in the i think we question when they didn't bring him up for opening day and i think he would he last obviously not even ten games in minor leagues how like why why do they do that i don't really understand and you know he is the sort of the heir apparent to one so dole in that he's nineteen years old right right right in that he's a nineteen-year-old coming up so there have not been that many nineteen-year-olds and and let's be honest ⁓ he will turn twenty this month

on April 24th, Connor Griffin will. But if you look at the number of guys that have come up into the major leagues as a 19 year old, even the guys that aren't great players on this list are pretty good. I mean, you've got Soto, you've got Bryce Harper, right? You've got jerks and profile. You've got Mike Trout, even Justin and BJ Upton. Jose Reyes Wilson. Betamit is probably.

the least player on that list, but he was at least a capable major league player. So much was expected of him that he did not deliver. He didn't deliver on it. But all of those guys, at least at the very end, were long time major league players. That kind of suggests that at the worst for Connor Griffin, he's going to be a guy that sticks around for a long time. Well, he doubled in his first at bat, a two strike double to get that hit out of the way. And it doesn't happen too often that a guy doubles at his first at bat. But good on him. And he's he's 19 years old, as I said, and he's married.

And so mature, they feel behind beyond his years, which is probably another reason why they said we can bring this kid up right now. He's right. And Major League Baseball. And they even talked about how he played something. I hadn't even heard of this blitz ball. Right. It's like it's like a whiffle ball style. And so during the pandemic, when you couldn't get they were throwing these wicked curves. And he apparently, you know, like Kevin Mitchell did, I used to say back in the 80s, he learned to hit curveballs by having his brother throw ridiculous whiffle balls at him. And then he won the MVP in 1987. Clearly, it works. So maybe this will work for for Connor.

Griffin. Other things, we had a Maddox this week in the major leagues and a guy that I have sort of been... Sandy Allen-Contrass showing the guy we all thought he could You were looking at me going, you're gonna say Sandy Allen-Contrass, so I'm thinking all season long you're gonna go, it's not over yet.

He's got to get all, know. literally has to make it through the season. And I you would say that, right? Because, you know, is there anything else that would be then a determinant for him other than him making it through the entire season? Right. Right. Because it's like, OK, yeah, unfortunately, he's like a worse version of de Graub in that respect because he's Jacob de Graub in terms of getting injured minus the Jacob de Graub in terms of sustained greatness. But he looks fantastic so far. And through a Maddox, which is a complete game, less than 100 pitches.

And apparently they call them Maddox's in Japan too. Yeah, yeah, the Japanese are very into, I've been reading a lot of stuff about Japan baseball from my friend Thomas Lovesiko who writes about Japanese baseball. I'm learning a lot and so it's really worthwhile on Sudstack. But you know, just talking about how, the Japanese pitchers, you know, they're throwing lots of splitters and they still try to throw that Maddox, you know, be efficient with their pitches and keep it down as much as possible. They're not throwing blazing fastballs in the NPB the way they do here. I mean, it only just occurred to me, but I wonder about how

How much three true outcomes has it affected?

the ability to throw Maddox is because of the way the guys swing and try and hit the ball. Now you are much less incentivized to pitch to contact because every piece of contact, every batter is trying to make is trying to put wood in the stand. So like if you're pitching to contact, you're pitching to dudes trying to hit home runs. Right. Right. Right. So it makes it makes it much more speaking of home runs and and Japanese players to boot Murakami has four homers and he has gotten to four home runs faster than in any other start to

major league career than any Japanese player that came before him. love to see it. I think was one of the interesting things that they said was very important was that

One of the reasons he came to Chicago was there's direct flights to Japan from Chicago. And this was apparently something that's a big deal to the Japanese players and where they're looking to pick teams. If you can't offer a direct flight to Japan from your city, they're less inclined to come there because it's such a pain in the ass for them to then travel around. I think it's a Dodger advantage. Obviously, the same things can happen in L.A. that, you know, Japanese players sign there because it's a it's a quicker trip. It's never a quick trip to Tokyo. But it's significantly less than going to New York. And when the Mets are

trying

to sign Yamamoto and I think that in Sasaki those things factored into the players decision. Kodai Senga said I don't care but so far he's not been able to recruit any other Japanese players to come to the Mets. I think the flight is part of that. I think you're right and that's an interesting point. In Chicago you're right there are direct flights there. So ⁓ did you happen to see Saturday night ⁓ the Joe Adele show in Los Angeles? I he basically single-handedly won them the game. So the Angels win a game one to nothing. By the way saved by Jordan Romano.

where he ended up and he's got three saves for the Angels already, which, you know, blows my mind. Three more than I would have expected. Exactly. And it blows my mind, but not a save, apparently. And he made three catches in the game. each time the player hit the ball and he made this catch in the last one, so diving into the stands, being in the stands with the ball and him wondering, he said, I think, I don't know, was OK for me to leave the field if that they would disallow the catch because he caught the ball and then fell into the stands. Apparently caught it while he was still in the field of play. So.

than it counts as a catch. Exactly. So I mean, it was three unbelievable catches for the Angels to win that game. And that has to just be all like a backbreaking way to lose Seattle. Right. Yeah. Yeah. They're having a little bit of rough start and they didn't need that. And and Joe Adele was a guy with, I think, 37 home runs last year for the Angels. So I tended to think of him as, know, the the home run hitter and not necessarily, you know, great outfielder. But he certainly made me pay more attention to him as a defensive player. This is the kind of game that could get you on to a, you know, a gold glove.

track for this season, regardless of how good defensively you actually might be. Because now he's going to have the reputation for the rest of the year as this incredible defender. So every good play of his is going to get that much more credit. The guy who did that last year reminded me was Denzel Clark of the A's, who made some wild catches early in the season. And so the whole rest of the year, you're looking for him to make those same crazy. Exactly. So Ran Hesley blew a save on Saturday night. You're going to call him out like, well, you know, he's there in Baltimore. He got off to a pretty good start first couple of games. ⁓

having

a two one lead in the ninth inning and letting them walk it off against you. That's reminiscent of what was going on in New York. So hopefully he'll be able to bounce back from that because the Orioles are playing OK and they can't afford. You know, it's been bullpen problems there for years. And this is exactly they've got to be going, oh, I just think it's real interesting that what we've seen a lot is that the best teams are just absolutely crushing the worst teams. Because if you look across baseball, basically everybody that is in a first place team has a negative run differential.

Which is just really strange probably a little too early to start adding up runs because you know having a game where you get swamped You know you lose by eight or ten or runs is gonna have a much bigger impact than your overall standard that makes a team like the Mets weird because they're five and four but they've got a plus 14 run differential Which is the highest of any team not in first place? So the Mets went from 16th in the league before they started their series in San Francisco In run scored to sixth in the league after two games, so that just tells you how much

We've played eight games so far, this is not enough. There's some injury bugs going around, not the least of which is Alejandro Kirk of the Blue Jays, their catcher, who fractured his thumb and he's on the injury list for 10 days. And the first thing I thought was 10 days? Like with a broken thumb? How is he going to? Well, because they they put him on 10 days to see where he is and then they figure where they want to put him after that. And so I guess there's some when you do that, you're expecting there's some chance he could come back. Right. At that point, I know my thumb injuries for catchers. So as as fans, we

can tell you about Alvarez. down. It's just a really, really hard injury to get back in a really great player. Hopefully, hopefully he'll be back soon. Verlander went on the injured list with a hip problem. He's not got to be worrying. You know, you're just like, yeah. So his age. Yeah. At the same time, if you're a guy like Verlander and you're anybody who's getting injured now and Mookie Betts is the other guy who got injured today. He's going to be out for six less, four to six weeks. And there's a part of the things, particularly in Mookie's case, that, you know, Mookie Betts not paying playing for a month, month and a

and being a little fresher come August and September. Not the worst thing in the world for an older player. But it only works for a team like the Dodgers that can sustain losing a guy like Mookie Betts. The Mets are staring down with Juan Soto leaving the game on Friday with calf tightness, potentially losing him for, know, Kyle Tucker missed three weeks last year with this sort of thing. It doesn't look like it's going to happen with Soto. But the Mets are not a team that could sustain the loss of Juan Soto. The way the Dodgers can sustain losing Betts for four to six weeks. Excellent point.

Excellent point. So a couple of other quick notes that happened. Let's talk about ABS for a second. And I noticed that the players are challenging the first pitch the second most times out of any of the other pitches, which is really...

doesn't make any sense to me. Questioning the strike one pitch. I mean, it seems to be like not the most pivotal pitch. Yeah, you'd want to know. mean, I it makes sense, though, because the first pitch like it sets the tone of the bat and it's also the easiest one, I think, in some ways for the batter to challenge. You're not like you're not wrapped up in the at bat at that point. You're able to be media like that was a bad call challenge. Whereas I think when you're challenging the trying to count like a two one pitch, it's a lot harder. The two two pitch is the one that gets challenged the most.

at this point and the team that is using the challenger was the most with the twins which hasn't really helped their performance on the field but they had made nine challenges I think in the first you know six games of the season so they are they are using it to their full advantage. The other thing with ABS I was interesting is

that if you had full ABS, and this was an article written, I think, in the Athletic this week, I can't remember who penned it, ⁓ was ⁓ the 3-0 pitch auto-strike would go away in full ABS. Because the umpire wouldn't expand the zone the way the umpire But I would actually have to see how often they expanded the zone in order to. A lot, they showed it. They the hot zone and the umpire on all the other pitches in the 3-0 pitch. And it is so much bigger in wire in terms of

of

what becomes a strike. You know, that could be a big problem. So and you know, the people that say, let's not go to the human umpires if it's, know, if it's a big lead or the game is, you just want it to keep moving and you like you want the guy to swing the bat. And so the umpire going, look, you know, this 17 to three, you know, you're three. You know, don't look for a walk here, particularly if you're on the team with the lead. Right. Swing the bat. Right. Exactly. Right. The last thing we want to do is see a team that's already losing badly. Just start walking the world.

Exactly. ⁓ So we talked about, I mentioned in the...

that baseball players are shrinking. so what is this? So what that means is that when they did the ABS for this year, they measured all of the players in order to set up their actual individual strike zones. Each player has based on his height and so it's not your stance, it's your height in terms of what parameters are using. And I don't even know if it's, you know, armpits, knees or wherever it is, but there's some general parameter that everybody is falling to. And so guys that haven't been measured for their height since

school you know are getting measured going wait a second you know Travis Dernost and when I came out I was six foot two I just got measured at five foot eleven and and he says so what happened was a he probably was never six foot two in the first place and I think you commented on this but he's comparing himself to a guy in his roster who's six foot two when they measured in high school and he goes six foot we go long taller than that guy so I must be six two and he's who he just bought it and the whole time of course being taller is an advantage right players are always gonna want to portray themselves as being taller and bigger

across Major League Baseball, a lot of people got shorter through this. Right. So baseball players are shrinking more so because we've just inflated their height for years because you see what actually tall guys are at the plate. Those are the guys that should see the biggest benefit to like Aaron Judge is the guy that's going to see the biggest benefit to ABS because he has the highest percentage of things that are called strikes that aren't that aren't actually strikes. Exactly. And Aaron Judge goes six foot seven. So I don't know what what he came out to be when they actually measured him. And he's going to be like six five.

I'm not going to go through that. You can read in the athletic just look up that article and they'll tell you the specifics about the guys there. I mentioned also that, you know, since March is obviously over and we're here, we had a quick discussion on the side of who has the greatest March stats in Major League Baseball. I would never want to be known as Mr. March. Mr. May, as Dave Winfield was famously called by George Steinmetter, insultingly, when Reggie Jackson was Mr. October. Mr. May is bad. Mr. March is awful. And so the.

The thing is is that even with the more games in March that we have now it's just such a tiny sample size The career leaders in home runs for in March are Mookie Betts and Kyle Schwaber with eight right right and judge Otani and Harper all have ops plus over 170 Okay, ⁓

use 50 plate appearances as my barometer, pretty much there's nobody there. Right, so you're talking everybody's got like less than like... That will change obviously over the years. Eventually we'll have a greatest Mars player ever. 2030 there'll be enough data. But not now. So let's see what else did we take a look at.

You took a look at Levi and this is what you're talking about with ABS. love this. I love this. Yeah, I told you you finally went and looked at Levi Hernandez's 15 strikeout game against the Atlanta Braves and I believe the 1997 NLCS and you finally watch it you're like, my God. So he had 15 strikeouts and some of the pitches that he threw, know, were great pitches. Were great pitches. Some guys swung at some of those 15s, but I would say there were five, like a third of them that were like, that's a strike. Right. Well, you were visibly

watching it and you are stunned this pitch is called a strike like like because we think we always get on umpires are missing calls now it's like they're missing calls that are like three tenths of an inch off the plate these calls were like a good six plus inches off the plate and just still ringing guys up looking it's like yeah what are you supposed to do if he's getting that call and I guess it doesn't do the umpires any good to go well take a look at that stuff when you think I'm bad look at these guys they were way worse than we I do think that is something that we as fans don't appreciate that as this video and replay has gotten better we're just that much more

aware and able to see when the umpire makes a mistake. Whereas back in the day, you kind of just assumed they were right and he really had to make a bad call for you to get annoyed about it. And before the season, we were looking at this new ABS. I, I, I don't want to say I swear. I seem to recall that they said there wasn't going to be a box on TV. And because the box that you see on TV is not representative of the ABS, because remember the ABS marks the pitch halfway through the plate. And the box you're looking at is in front of the plate. So it's really hard to see.

from this standpoint that we get to see where the ball is being measured. And I do think it's I think they keep the box just because it's a helpful frame of reference for the fans. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because, know, and you're pretty good at it. Actually, I feel like I'm pretty good at getting it. You don't get it right every time. But you can see what all that pitch was definitely when something's definitely lower up or outside. You can see it and all that kind of stuff. it's, know, when it's in there like, you know, guys miss a miss a call the ump and the and the batter challenges it. I saw one yesterday and the ball was completely inside the box.

So it's one thing to get it on the right completely inside the box bad, and that's not good for umpire So yeah, there's there's still making their adjustments, and I'm no I'm a little less convinced that this is all with you know the window dress It's a slow march. Yeah, yeah towards the inevitable so all right well to the topic today And we haven't I went back and look because we've covered a lot of topics in our stat of the week when we were doing that You know we have not done weighted runs created plus our Rwc plus our WC know so what is it so?

Well,

you're really good at explaining those kinds of things But I just wanted to say that the one thing that I came up with is it comes out of fan graphs And it's not included I kept looking for it in baseball reference and it's not there So that's interesting to me that baseball reference doesn't do that and basically The overall score of a weighted and they did this for everybody at a vacation you score everybody a hundred is baseline Right if you're above a hundred you're better than average if you're below a hundred you're worse than average So a guy with an 85 wrc plus is

15 % below the average player. That's pretty easy. So what they do is they first calculate the weighted runs created. There's no plus for this. This is just a counting stat. So it basically estimates the total number of runs a hitter contributed to the team. And that's expressed as like just a singular number, a raw number. Now, this is really useful because it allows us to look at a player's production regardless of how they're accomplishing it. So a guy that is able to get on base hits really well, scores a bunch, gets a bunch of hits and then scores a bunch of runs.

is valued at a high rate, just like a guy that hits lots of home runs and drives runs in. So it's not saying that it's not like slugging where guys that hit lots of doubles and homers will always be better than a guy that hits lots of singles. Obviously. But the guy with a single that hits lots of singles could be a way better hitter, even if he has a less slugger. Weighted runs creators plus kind of works the same way, because the more played appearances you have, the more weighted runs created, you will accumulate just because you're in that respect as accounting staff. Right. So that's why we normalize it.

and create weighted runs created plus. So this normalizes that raw number produced by weighted runs created, creating a league average. And then we apply a park adjustment. So we look at the parks everybody's that's the key thing. Right. So this normalizes everything so that you can get a number, this weighted runs created plus. So for instance, when in 2021, Vlad Guerrero Jr. had a weighted runs created plus, I want to say of 196. So 196 means the league average is 100.

Vlad Jr. was 96 percent better than the league average. Tells you how good he was that year. and we ⁓ waited ⁓ on base average is accounting stat that factors into weighted runs created plus. But it is it is not ⁓ a scale like the same way that weighted runs created plus. So, you know, took a look at the current leaders in WRC plus and fan graphs. ⁓ And, you know, not surprisingly, the guys that have the best stats in Major League

baseball independent of WRC plus because you know have to be good in a lot of areas to be number one in that stat. So it's kind of like war and that it's hard for you to accidentally end up with a glada over the really high weighted runs created plus after eight games maybe. But over the course of a full season. Right. But you write in the at a lower end you might have a guy where you're looking at a set to go how did he get a 120 RWC plus the same way you might look at a player and go how did he get to three war this season. But you're never going

look at a guy and go, how did he get to six or this season? Or how did he get to one hundred and fifty RWC plus? That's a leaped territory. Well, the number one player major league baseball right now after nine games is the Astros Jordan Alvarez, who is off to the start that Astro fans hoped he would would get to because if this guy plays a full season healthy, he's an MVP candidate. He's got a way. Everybody knows that plus a two eighty six right now. So he's one hundred eighty six percent better than the average player. Right. That's because he points better. That's because he's hitting four twenty three with.

base of five ninety in a slugging of eight eighty five like Andy Piaz is hitting five. There's a shocker, right? We all know Andy Piaz is not finishing this season. He did twenty seven home runs last year. So he's going to keep that up. But the average is what's going to fall. And that's the way it runs created. Plus will fall. So some other surprises you might find in the top 30 of way to run created plus right now at this early stage of the season. Chandler Simpson of the Rays is fifth. Xavier Edwards, not known as a power hitter, the Miami infielder.

That's what's nice about weighted runs created is still values guys because that's how a guy like Andres Jimenez off his, you know, hot star from the WBC in Venezuela. He's playing great for the race. is Nico Horner. And you certainly don't, you know, look at him as that kind of a, you know, productive offensive player. Even Brandon Nemo here is hitting, you know, he's got a 180, you know, RWC plus he's hitting three forty four as a met fan. And this is not sour grapes. He will not finish the season with a three forty four average. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, speaking for met fans, I happen to notice that

Brandon's bro to was traded to the Brewers in the Freddie Peralta dear has not gotten off to the start that the Brewers hoped he would get. So it just made me think for a second. I'm to jump out for moment and think that, know, we always remember the guys that do well when they go to other teams. Right. Oh, I don't want that. I don't want Pete Crowe Armstrong as a med fan. He's going to torture us for years. He got a big contract. We forget about Jared Kelley. Every terrible about all the other guys. I forgot about Jared Kelley. That was a crash and burn. can't really forget. Right. But at the time, you know, it seemed like he went to Seattle. You thought I

He was going to be a really good player and all that he got off to an OK start and then and so we forget about the guys right right him out and you traded maybe the one bad the one name you regret sticks out way more than the ten guys you don't so Sprout is one of those guys I think including we'll be watching him going ⁓ but hopefully by halfway through the season we're not watching him anymore so some of the other guys are JJ Weatherhole of the Cardinals who my pick for rookie of the year in the National League off to a great start off to a great start Adley Rutchman you said he had to show up this year for the Orioles

to have a chance. He's there. So it's nice to see these guys who some of these guys who really needed to get off to a good start. Even Kevin McGonigal, the rookie I also picked for Rookie of the Year in the in the American League. He got off to a good start. So there's you know, just check track this stat. You got to go to fan graphs to get it. And I think if you fool around with it you put, you know, weighted on base average and all that, you'll see the same players sort of mix differently within that because you have to have these components in order to be exactly that high in a way to. weighted runs created plus.

yeah, ⁓ it's early in the season. I think the teams are starting to have their first long road trips and how are they going to handle playing on the road. But I think we've got a lot to look forward to in the next 152 games.