Every season, baseball moves from its most magical time -- Opening Day -- to its most awkward. Sure, we're all thrilled to have ballgames to watch every day. On getaway days, like Wednesday, there was real, live game action for nearly 13 straight hours. That is the very definition of bliss.
Once those early games are in the books, we then run into the confounding problem of post-Opening Day results. Things have happened. Of that much we can be sure. Numbers have been recorded. The newspapers that still bother to print the daily standings print the daily standings. (Rays in first; Red Sox in last.) Sadly, we don't really know what to do with all of that information. What does it mean?
The answer, of course, is that a week's worth of data doesn't mean much of anything. It's too early. The samples are too small. Give it time -- a month, through Memorial Day, whenever -- and then we can start to assign meaning to all that we've witnessed. Unfortunately, that rational response doesn't play well as it bounds around our lizard brains.
Compounding the innate awkwardness of the small-sample bazaar is the explosion of data in the game, and our exposure to it. (Oh. My. God. The spin rate on Kenley Jansen's cutter is down by 37 RPMs. Quick! Dash to the 7-Eleven and clear the shelves of bottled water!) It's all got to mean something. If it didn't, why would they keep track of it?
Please bear all of this in mind as we progress through a few issues that have arisen during the opening stretch of the 2019 season. The numbers referenced below are through Wednesday's games, taking into account the first full week of the season. Insofar as meaning can be assigned to any of these examples, it can be assigned only after the fact, through the daily repetitions of a long and glorious baseball season.
Alarms are sounding everywhere. Ring! I hear them too. Let's dispatch with a few of them today. Some of them only require us to hit snooze. We'll check in later and figure out if they actually mean anything. Others clearly don't mean anything. We'll just shut those alarms off and go back to sleep. But in at least one case -- mostly where our minuscule set of early results intersects with objective-based expectation -- we might have to bound out of bed, ready to take action.
Alarm bell No. 1: The genius of Adalberto Mondesi
Not all of these alarms are going to be bad. Sometimes good news drops right at our feet and we have to take a moment to rejoice and appreciate what we've discovered. So if you did not take note of Mondesi during his second-half breakout last season, do yourself a favor and tune him in now.
Mondesi rang out nine hits over the Royals' first five games. Six went for extra bases: two doubles, three triples and an inside-the-park homer. Mike Trout is perhaps the only player in baseball who possesses a more dynamic combination of power and speed than Mondesi. He has ranked in the top 1 percent of Statcast's sprint speed rating since the beginning of last season. His exit velocity is more good than elite, but his pop plays perfectly in the generous environs of Kauffman Stadium.
But Mondesi's hacktastic ways seem to be unchanged, and that's going to mean some rough patches here and there. Last season he struck out 77 times and walked 11; this season he has five whiffs and zero walks. However, Mondesi doesn't have to morph into Joey Votto to be special. In the early going, his six barrels are the most in the majors, per Statcast.
Ring! Wake up and pay attention. Mondesi has a great shot at becoming the first player to reach 20 triples since Curtis Granderson and Jimmy Rollins did it in 2007. A historic run at 25 triples is not out of the question, which would mean that Mondesi would race past Willie Wilson's Royals record of 21 set in 1985.
Alarm bell No. 2: The missing velocity of Chris Sale
It has been only two weeks since the Red Sox announced their five-year, $145 million extension with Chris Sale, the all-time leader in strikeouts per nine innings. Since then, Sale has taken the ball twice in regular-season play. He's 0-2 with a 8.00 ERA and a 1.44 WHIP.
Yet these are exactly the kind of results that we don't pay attention to this early in the season. Once upon a time, we'd chalk it up to a slow start. Really just one bad outing, since Sale held the Athletics to one run over six innings in his second start (though he struck out only one batter.) Alas, the alarm is sounding for Sale not because of his results but because of how they've been compiled.
This comes back to the explosion of data in the game, all of those digits that give us so much more to freak out about. Once upon a time, a grizzled sportswriter might have watched Sale throw, decide something was amiss with his fastball and then quiz an advance scout on hand for his outings. "Doesn't seem like he's got the same zip on his fastball," the scout might say.
Somehow, it's more frightening when we can paint that same picture with cold, hard data. So far, the average velocity of Sale's four-seam fastball has dropped from 95.4 mph last season to 90.7. In fact, his fastest pitch this season clocked in at 94.5 -- nearly a full tick below his 2018 average. Early as it is, should we really worry about any of that?
Are you kidding me? This is fodder for a horror novel by Red Sox fan Stephen King.
The Red Sox say that the approach with Sale this season is to build up slowly in an effort to avoid the late-season fades that have marked much of his career. And that's fair enough. Last season, Sale's average four-seamer was 92.9 at this point, with a top-end velo of 97.3. He was able to build up from that, and while he's starting with a lower baseline this time around, if Sale is healthy, there is every reason to believe he'll add speed to his fastball as the season progresses.
But if you're not worried about a Chris Sale throwing sub-90 four-seamers, you're not human.
Ring! Hit snooze. Let's check back later and see how this plays out.
Alarm bell No. 3: Strikeouts are up. Again.
Teams are striking out an average of 8.95 times per game so far, up nearly a half-whiff from last season. This would be the 14th straight season that strikeouts have risen, and the 12th straight campaign in which the big league record was set. Remember how closely we followed the race between hits and strikeouts last season, one that hits eventually lost? This season, it's a rout.
There have been 1.15 more strikeouts per game thus far than hits, and the big league batting average is a woeful .233. If that holds up, it would be four points worse than the lowest league-wide average of all time, set during the Year of the Pitcher in 1968. Think of it like this: Did you see that Manny Machado is hitting .240 so far for the Padres? In terms of the current league standard, that is well above average.
I spent much of my time during spring training searching for reasons why the strikeout trend might ebb or even begin to reverse. I'm not sure I found it, and clearly, for the moment, it is not. The collective batting average might creep up as the weather warms, but don't expect the strikeouts to go anywhere.
Ring! It's early, to be sure. But this nightmare is not going to end, so you might as well get up and put on the coffee. As Eno Sarris of The Athletic has informed us, even in a sample this small, league-level strikeout rates are real.
Alarm bell No. 4: Can I get some relief?
Doesn't it seem like teams are having a more-than-usual amount of trouble holding on to late leads? Well, it's probably not a thing. So far, teams have converted 70 percent of their save chances. That number last season was 66 percent. Last season, the collective bullpen ERA was 4.07. This season, it's 4.19 -- a little higher -- but given the small sample size, it's not a difference that means anything.
That's what the top-level numbers are telling us. But there has been some pretty shoddy high-leverage pitching so far. According to fangraphs.com, teams have allowed a .337 wOBA so far in high-leverage spots. That's 20 points higher than any other season of the current decade. Last season, that number was .305.
To a certain extent, the scale of this uptick has been driven by a few problem bullpens. The Cubs have allowed a surreal .703 wOBA in high-leverage spots. Cincinnati is at .513, and eight other teams are over .500. However, a total of 21 teams are allowing high-leverage wOBA's greater than last season's .305 mark. So it is indeed kind of a league-wide thing.
Ring! Turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. The Athletics have faced 54 hitters in high-leverage spots, the most in the majors. The Padres have faced eight. In other words, the samples aren't small -- they're tiny.
However, think of it like this: Using TruMedia, I ran a query of all situations so far in which a team was pitching in a game in the seventh inning or later with a run margin of three or less. The league ERA in those spots thus far is 4.15. Last season, it was 3.37 for the entire campaign. Not a good trend. The number at this time last season was 3.24.
This is all driven by those struggling bullpens. After all, given the well-recognized trend toward bullpen proficiency in the game, why all of a sudden would teams become worse in high-leverage spots? But if it seems to you, as it does me, that relievers haven't been as good in tight situations, you're not imagining things. Just don't expect it to be a lasting trend.
Alarm No. 5: Team Mendoza
After a week, five teams are hitting under .200. Four of those were under .180 through Wednesday's games. Is it too early to wonder if, in a league where the aggregate average is .233, we could have a team that hits under .200? As in for the entire season?
Suffice to say, this has never happened. It's never come close to happening. During the modern era -- since 1901 -- the lowest team batting average we've ever seen is the .210 mark of the 1910 Chicago White Sox. During the live ball era (since 1920), the worst team batting average is the .214 mark of the 1968 Yankees -- Mickey Mantle's last team. Right now, nine clubs are hitting worse than those Yankees.
Well, we know it's far too early to actually start worrying about this. However, if you're as concerned about the disappearance of balls in play as I am, you might worry about it anyway. To worry is to be human. The Indians are bringing up the rear in average thus far at .160. Cleveland had 156 at-bats as a team after Wednesday's games, a number that will swell to around 5,550 by season's end. With that many at-bats to go, Cleveland would need to hit only .201 the rest of the way to keep its overall average at the Mendoza line.
At this point last season, there were five teams hitting under .200. In last place were the Indians ... at .161. Cleveland ended up hitting .259 as a team.
Ring! Hit snooze. You might wonder about the fixation with batting average in this piece. As we all know, that shop-worn statistic has largely lost its allure as an evaluative tool. That's fine. It's progress. But average still holds plenty of sway as a descriptive tool. It tells us a lot about the style of play we are seeing on the field. A higher average means more balls in play and more action for defenders and more runners thrilling us on the bases.
Baseball is not at its best in a .233 universe. It's still great, still the best game we have going. There is no other game that is more rewarding to think along with. But .233 is not a style of baseball we can or should be satisfied with. If it's not quite nightmarish, it's at the very least unsettling. For now, I'm hitting that snooze button. When I wake a month from now, I can only hope that .233 was just a bad dream.