Studs like Trevor Bauer and Jacob deGrom have led off the daily round up the last two days, but today we’re leading with the less-studly Joe Musgrove . In his first start of the year yesterday, Musgrove blanked the Reds over seven innings allowing just three hits and one walk while striking out eight. Musgrove is owned in a little less than 60 percent of ESPN leagues, and he’s certainly worth considering as an add if still available in your league for some reason.
On the other side of the plate, it was Jorge Polanco who had the best game of the day as he logged the first cycle of the season and the 11th cycle in Twins history. He did it relatively easily by capping it off with a double in the seventh and tacking on an extra single in the ninth for good measure. Here are the highlights courtesy of MLB.com.
Game of the Day
The most exciting contest on Friday was easily the Mariners-White Sox game. Take a look at this game graph courtesy of Fangraphs.
The Sox jumped out to a 3-1 lead in the bottom of the first primarily thanks to a Yoán Moncada two-run double. They led 6-2 going to the bottom of the third and had an 89.8 percent win expectancy at that point. The M’s turned things around in the sixth when Ryon Healy and Mitch Haniger both hit two-run home runs, the first tying the game at six and the second giving Seattle a two-run lead. However, Seattle’s bullpen gave the game away in the seventh when Cory Gearrin walked the first two batters of the inning and later plunked Welington Castillo with the bases loaded. Zac Rosscup then allowed a two-run single to Moncada, and the White Sox never gave up the lead again.
Greg Jewett highlighted Moncada’s hot start in this space yesterday, and Moncada kept right on chugging with his two-hit, four-RBI performance. He currently leads the league in wRC+ at 311 with a 35-point lead on second place Mike Trout , who oh-by-the-way homered twice last night. Other guys who double donged last night were Trevor Story (in the first Coors game of the season) and Ketel Marte who homered from both sides of the plate and whose second home run was a grand slam.
First career grand slam for Ketel Marte. pic.twitter.com/DaeCGIEBo9
— Brendan (@brendan_camp) April 6, 2019
Cody Bellinger Raking
Bellinger homered again last night, which brings him to six on the season and gives him the lead in that category, one ahead of Paul Goldschmidt and Khris Davis . He’s off to an incredible start that puts him into some excellent company.
Cody Bellinger of the @Dodgers joins the Braves' Eddie Mathews (1953) and the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez (2007) as the only players in MLB history to have at least 6 HR and 16 RBI through their teams' first 8 games of a season.#LABleedsBlue
— Stats By STATS (@StatsBySTATS) April 5, 2019
Aside from the counting stats, Bellinger’s plate discipline numbers have been excellent so far. Bellinger is swinging at roughly the same percentage of pitches that he swung at in his first two seasons, but his swing rate on pitches outside the zone is down seven percentage points from last season while his swing rate on pitches inside the zone is up four percentage points. His contact rate is also up 14 percentage points, which has led his swinging strike rate to be cut in half. It’s admittedly a small sample size and some regression is to be expected, but it’s improvements in these areas that we’re looking for with young players with a chance to go to the next level.
What to Watch for Today
As mentioned above, we got the first Coors game of the season yesterday, so there is obviously another one tonight with the Dodgers visiting the Rox. The game unsurprisingly has the highest over/under of the day at 10 runs, but it’s worth noting that the game has a decent pitching matchup with Walker Buehler facing Jon Gray . Buehler struggled in his first outing only making it through three and allowing five runs while Gray struck out 10 against the lowly Marlins.
The premier pitching match up of the day is Patrick Corbin against Steven Matz as the Nats are in New York to take on the Mets. Also unsurprisingly, that game has the lowest over/under of the day at seven runs, tied with the Rays-Giants game. Both Matz and Corbin had solid but unspectacular season debuts. Matz allowed one earned run over 5.1 innings while walking none and striking out three. Corbin went six in his Washington debut allowing two runs while walking two and striking out four.
The only nationally televised games of the day will come from FS1 with a doubleheader of Rangers-Angels at 4:05 PM ET followed immediately by Cubs-Brewers.