Run It Back
Revisiting LLHRs, FPOTGs, and E's.
Last week I wrote about Mason Miller intentionally walking Mike Yastrzemski to load the bases in extra innings. If you read that whole post in the email view, you saw that I mangled the win expectancies of the various options the Athletics had for the situation. To ease all the tension in the room, let me try again. Here’s what I meant to say:
The Athletics’ chances of losing the game that inning if they pitch to Yaz: something like 18 percent
The Athletics’ chances of losing the game that inning if they IBB Yaz: something like 27 percent
So the A’s win expectancies, extrapolated out for the game, would be ~41 percent if they pitch to him, ~36.5 percent with the walk. We’re all clear.
Keeping with the theme, it just so happens that all of this post’s items are basically updates on previous fixations. (Also, we have finally caught up to the out-of-sequence Day 59 piece, about Denzel Clarke’s home run robberies. If you were saving that post, or have only subscribed since then, now you can go read it!)
Day 60 Of The 2025 MLB Season
On May 25 Ryan O’Hearn hit a Little League home run:
That’s a solid four-star LLHR by the standards I previously laid out, and it’s a rulebook LLHR according to the strict SABR standards. If you include the bobble in center—which didn’t affect anything, but adds to the klutziness—there are three distinct defensive mistakes in the play. The ball gets redirected two separate times. There are waves of fan groans. And a couple extra charm points for:
the throw to second being so low stakes. At that point no runners were advancing anywhere; the throw was merely an administrative act to bring the ball back to the infield. To give up a LLHR from that point is like choking on pudding.
the throw to second actually hitting O’Hearn, who had his back to the play. At the heart of a Little League Home Run is the sense that the defense is taking on the burden to drive you home. Here, O’Hearn was no longer even facing the play, but the defense nudged him on the back and said he should keep going.
But the main reason this play advances the LLHR discussion is simple: Reader Jim noted that O’Hearn—who did some sarcastic “yay me” poses as he returned to the dugout—did not get to drink from the homer hose, which is the Orioles’ traditional dugout celebration for dingers. Reader Jim agrees with this decision, calling it “right and proper.”
I do not agree with it. Teams’ home run dugout celebrations are in the spirit of Little League to begin with. So when you amplify the Little League aspect of a play I think you should also amplify the Little League-inflected celebrations. That’s especially so for the Orioles, whose homer hose is, explicitly, a callback to the experiences of playing ball in your youth:
Let the panting boy drink.
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Day 61 Of The 2025 MLB Season
As I write this, on Aug. 7, the league has hit 43 home runs on the first pitch of the game, which is the second-most FPOTG homers in history. They’ll likely pass 2021, the previous record year, before the end of August. Leadoff hitters have gotten used to the fact that the first pitch of the game is almost always a fastball (over 90 percent), and in the strike zone (60 percent rather than 50 percent), and a half mile slower than the average fastball to boot.
Through May 13, the league’s wOBA on FPOTGs that were put in play was .465, “which means hitting the FPOTG turns the league’s leadoff batters into Yordan Alvarez.” Since then, the league’s wOBA on FPOTGs is .516, which upgrades them to Shohei Ohtani. To put those numbers a bit more in context:
wOBA on all balls put in play this year is .363
wOBA on FPOTG put in the game since 2008 is .427
wOBA on 3-0 pitches put in play since 2008 is .485
wOBA on FPOTG in play this year, since Opening Day, is .494
So first pitch swings at meatball fastballs have become about as lethal as we’re accustomed to 3-0 swings being. Batter who put that pitch in play are slugging ~.800. The tee-off is only accelerating.
On Day 60 of the season, which was May 26th, 24 teams played 12 games. Every starting pitcher’s first pitch was a fastball. Batters swung at 11 and put six in play. One was a 103 mph lineout to center field, which had an expected batting average of .650:
One was a 101 mph flyout, with an xBA of .490:
One was a 104 mph line drive single:
One was a weirdo double chopped down the opposite line:
One was a Jackson Chourio home run, which hung a loss on a subsequently dominant Garrett Crochet:
And the sixth was a home run by Shohei Ohtani off Gavin Williams:
If you can believe it, that last one was the third FPOTG home run that Gavin Williams had allowed this year. Eleven starts and three began with homers. The pitch Ohtani hit wasn’t even in the strike zone, but the problem with throwing the same pitch every time—and with everybody else also throwing that same pitch every time—is it doesn’t necessarily matter.
That was the 43rd start of Williams’ career, and the 43rd time he had started the game with a four-seam fastball. But Ohtani hitting that pitch that far broke him.
