Win - Lose - Rain: Dinos, Singer, Swing Speed

Notes on some good things, bad things, and other things from the past week.

I have never really enjoyed the Royals’ West Coast road trips.

Because the Royals have not been particularly good at baseball for much of my life, and because I have historically been incapable of turning off a Royals game, I spent far too many nights shaking my head at 11:45 pm during a 7-2 loss in Oakland.

Now, I am incapable of staying awake after 10:30 and I’ve missed the end of the night games in the last week. I am, as the kids say, washed. Wait, do the kids say washed? Does the fact that I am asking that question mean that I am even more washed than I realized? Am I saying the word washed too much?

Anywho, this week on WLR I’ve got notes on a couple Royals pitchers, some cool creations, neat stat stuff, and more.

WIN

Seth Lugo, again

I know I mentioned Lugo last week, but when you do something in a Royals uniform only done by Zack Greinke, you get another mention, that’s the rule.

Lugo absolutely shoved against the Angels on Sunday, striking out 12 without a single walk over eight innings, duplicating Greinke’s effort in 2010. He’s now leading American League pitchers in ERA (1.66), wins (6), and innings (59.2), and he’s has the second-highest WAR (2.2). Oh, and his signature curve is back to being pure filth:

The fact that Lugo has eight(!) different pitches he can throw in just about any situation means hitters can never sit on any one offering. He can dial it up to 96 or snap off a slurve at 77, with excellent control and command. His starts are becoming must-watch events, which probably isn’t something you expected to agree with when he signed with the Royals this winter.

Lego Dinos

On Mother’s Day we took a trip to our local botanical garden, and they had these super cool displays of more than a dozen dinosaurs made entirely of Legos. Apparently this was an internationally traveling exhibit, and this was the first and only time these sculptures were in the United States. Behold:

The T-Rex took nine builders 868 hours to build a structure of more than 262,000 bricks, weighing more than 4,500 pounds. These things rocked, although my feet hurt just thinking about stepping on one of them.

Also, my favorite dino is an ankylosaurus, what’s yours?

LOSE

Singer’s strikes

I’m not sure if you stayed awake to watch Brady Singer’s start against the Mariners Monday night, (I tapped out after the 4th) but it was not exactly a masterpiece. While he only walked one and struck out six over five innings, Singer’s command was a mess, particularly once he got to two strikes:

Not all strikes are good strikes. Those are all 35 of the two-strike pitches Singer threw Monday night. Many of them looked quite juicy to Mariners hitters, and he allowed four hits in two-strike counts, which has been a season-long trend. Singer has done a fantastic job getting ahead of batters, getting to two strikes on 122 of the 208 batters he’s faced. He’s thrown the fifth-most pitches in two-strike counts, and the four guys above him are excellent pitchers: Luis Castillo, Zack Wheeler, Tanner Bibee, and George Kirby.

But those plate appearances aren’t finishing how Singer would like. He’s allowed a .596 OPS in two-strike counts this season, and while that looks good, it’s actually about 37 percent worse than the league average. He’s allowed 18 extra-base hits this season, and 10 of them have come in two-strike counts, tied for the second-most in baseball.

Since debuting in 2020, Singer has allowed 73 extra-base hits in two-strike counts, tied for the seventh-most in baseball. Among the 130 pitchers to have thrown 5,000 pitches or more in that time, Singer has allowed the 28th-highest batting average and the 20th-highest slugging percentage.

While Singer started the year throwing a few more four-seam fastballs and changeups, he’s reverted back to his two-pitch security blanket lately, and his predictability is hurting him when he needs to finish off batters.

Unwelcome critters

While inside the botanical garden’s greenhouse, there were a few people stopped and pointing to the base of a plant. We looked down and saw a snake. It was not a big snake, and I’m sure it was a harmless snake, but if you know me, you know that I do not like snakes.

I wanted to see pretty flowers and cool dinosaurs. I did not sign up for this.

RAIN

Swing speed stats

MLB just released their latest bit of Statcast data, and it is extremely fascinating. They can now tell you how fast players swing their bats, how often they have fast swings, how long their swings are, and a host of other data points. The visualization tools are fun, and it’s yet another way to look at how baseball players do what they do.

It’s just that, I don’t know how important any of it actually is.

Don’t get me wrong, obviously high bat speeds correlate with high exit velocities, but they also correlate with whiff rates and mishits. The “slowest” bat in baseball belongs to a guy whose lifetime batting average has basically never been below .320. We only have data for this year, so no historical context, and until we see more analysis done to provide more meaning, it’s just a fun little toy. And that’s okay!

Not every statistic has to instantly become The Most Important Statistic. Fun numbers can simply be Fun Numbers.

Allergy medicine

It’s a miracle of modern science that we have things like Claritin and Benadryl, and I am grateful for that. But I think it’s dumb that if I don’t take one of those pills every day I get the sniffles when I breathe air outdoors.