When Ohtani Steals, Juan Soto's Slump, and Double Steals

Jimmy’s Three Things is a production of Dan Patrick Productions, Jomboy Media and Workhouse Media

Watch today's episode on YouTUbe HERE: https://youtu.be/FpjVyMroePg

0:00 Intro
0:54 Shohei Ohtani stealing tactics
11:08 Juan Soto’s bizarre slump
19:09 Double steal merchants
24:24 Ridiculous bunt

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to Jimmy's Three Things. My name is Jimmy,
and there are three things in Major League Baseball that
I want to talk about today. We got Otani stolen bases.
We got Jan Soda slumping, we got double steals, getting
rides or giving rides. Who's doing it? That's what we got.
Jimmy's Three Things is a production of Dan Patrick Production's
John Boy Media and Workhouse Media. So let me catch

(00:21):
my breath and then we will get right into it. Hello.
Thank you very much for joining. If you enjoy these
shows and you're returning, I appreciate it. Click subscribe like
all of that. If this is your first time tuning in,
thank you very much. Don't click subscribe or like or
anything like wait it out. See you might hate me,

(00:44):
and that's fine. I like to do deep dives. Sometimes
I come up with things that are cool. Other times
I just dig myself into a corner and then have
to turn around and revert anyway. I saw this stat
on July twenty second show, Hey. Otani was caught stealing
for the fourth time this season, giving him twenty three
stolen bases out of twenty seven attempts. Since then, he

(01:06):
has doubled his total number of stolen bases to forty six,
a perfect twenty three out of twenty three. Thought, that's cool.
I like that. That's a lot of stolen bases without
getting thrown out. What's he doing? What's his trick? First pitch,
second pitch? Does he have a rhythm, a rhyme, a reason?

(01:27):
So I got all the data out. I asked Lucas
on our team to sort it and did we find
some conclusions? Maybe? Maybe not, let's get right into it.
But I did like this top response saying, here's show
hey Otani with a stopwatch studying and timing the picture
in the dugout, and you can see this video they're playing.

(01:47):
He's watching the pitcher and he's got the stopwatch time
to the plate. So I have that data too. Actually,
we have a ton of data. Look, this is all
the data we put into the Google sheet we looked at. Okay, well,
this is what everything we looked at. Who was the pitcher,
the catcher, which base was he on, who was up?

(02:11):
Who was up to plate? Who was the batter caught
stealing stolen base? What inning was it, what was the
previous pitch type, what was the previous location, what was
the previous pitch result, the count, the out, the pitch
type that he actually stole on, time to the plate,

(02:31):
exactly time to the plate, group whole time. So look,
if you look at time to the plate, which is
what we were just looking at with the stopwatch, you
can see and I'll zoom in a little for you
guys and just sorting it by highest. You know, one seven,
five to one nine he's going. That's how they grouped it.
One five to one seven four. That's another grouping. And

(02:54):
then they have under they have one point two five,
one point five, one point four to nine, and that's
considered quick. So this is a pitcher's motion to the plate.
How fast is he from the from his set position
and delivering the ball to home plate. If you're under
one five, you're considered quick to the plate. You usually

(03:16):
don't get stolen on a lot. And yeah, Otani is
very it seems very particular about this. Now he has
some where he's stolen and it's quicker, but not a ton.
So we have all these grafts that we were looking at.
I'll just go through a couple. Otani's stealing early in
the count, most base stealers do most do uh thirteen

(03:40):
times he has stolen on a on the first pitch
of the app bat, six times with two outs, three
with one, four with zero, and then oh in one
twelve times, one to oh eight times, And if you
add all that up, it's twenty three times he has

(04:03):
stolen on the first two pitches. The rest of the
time you got three, seven, nine, fourteen, seventeen others. So
it makes sense. In math wise stolen base attempts, I
think would that be? And then if you're near this show,
sometimes I just like get confused by math simple arithmetic,

(04:27):
and I try to do it in my head, and
then I'm like, let me just do it on a calculator.
That's fifty sow. He's got fifty stolen base attempts, forty
six stolen bases, four caught stealings. Is what we're looking
at here. So you look at that thirteen plus twelve
plus eight is thirty three divide about fifty sixty six

(04:48):
percent of the time it's in the first two pitches.
Now he has stolen after that. Obviously most of the
times after come with two outs, so he really wants
to get something in motion before the inning ends by inning,
you're looking at first, third, eighth. That's probably just has

(05:10):
more to do with where he bats in the batting
order than anything else. Stolen base attempt by previous pitch type.
And this is not that much of a surprise, but
it might be to some people that you know, don't
follow baseball closely or haven't heard of this before, looked
at this, But twenty six so over fifty percent are

(05:31):
on fastballs after fastballs. Thinking is, if a guy executes
a fastball, then he's probably going to go to something
off speed, which is better to steal on, and he's
probably not going to double up the fastball. So that's
that's that. So stolen base by previous pitch only on
a one oh or on one count. So he saw
the first pitch and it was a fastball and then

(05:54):
he stole. Well, that's twelve of the eighteen steals. He's
got eighteen attempts on the second pitch of the bat.
Twelve times out of the eighteen. Has it been I
just saw a first pitch fastball, I'm gonna steal. So

(06:18):
what you're looking at right now is if the guy
the pitcher, his time to the plate is one to
five or above, and the first pitch is a fastball,
most likely Otani might be stealing on the next pitch,
because that's kind of a formula he likes already. Right,
that's something we've learned. Pitch by location we have I

(06:41):
don't know how much how much we can go off there.
And then stone base by previous results swinging a miss
not that many a ball most often, and then you
can see here stone base attempt by pitcher's time to

(07:01):
the plate, and vast majority are one five or more.
He does have some where the guy's a little quicker,
does have some, but vast majority thirty eight of the fifty,
he's a one to five or more. So if you're
if you're slower to the play of Tony's gonna get you.
He's smart, he knows what he's doing. Look at it

(07:22):
by month, really ratcheted up in July and August. I wonder,
you know, is he just getting closer to fifty to fifty.
I think batting order has a lot to do with it,
But he's just really you know, he had five stolen
bases in June fourteen, in July fifteen, in August, that
was the tweet that sparked this. It's just kind of

(07:43):
like looking at that, and then days of the week.
He's never been thrown out on a Thursday, never, not once,
nor Tuesday or Wednesday. Every day of the weekend he's
been thrown out, been thrown out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I mean,
you got the Dodgers Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday series. Never. Now,

(08:09):
I will say, I've been jinxing a ton of shit
on this show. So every time I do a stat
like that, it happens. We had like, the White Sox
are terrible on Mondays or whatever it was, and then
they beat the Yankees and Joey gallow has never hit
a two strike forcing fastball, and then he did it
against the Yankees. That so I'm just jinxing a lot.

(08:32):
I was really interested in the batter. These are all
the batters, and Freddy's got the most fourteen, and then
Smith's got thirteen, and then Betts has eleven. But my
spidy sense was like, wait, those numbers seem real low
for Freddy, real higher for the other two. So we
actually went into the data a ton and I found

(08:56):
Freddy Freeman has has played There's been seventy one games
where Freddy Freeman was the batter directly behind Otani. Only
nineteen were bets is directly behind Otani. And will Smith
bets either behind Otani or two after him a lot,

(09:17):
and Freddy bets as bad as There's been fifty two
games where Freddy Freeman was two behind Otani in the
batting order. So then I went and I looked up
every time Freddy Freeman was on or if Freddy Freeman
was at plate and Otani was on first base with
no one on second, And then how many times was
Otani on second with no one on third and Freddy

(09:40):
on base? And that was ninety six times, so ninety
six opportunities for Otani to steal while Freddy was up
to plate for Mooki. Only nineteen times has Mooki bets
been up and Otani was the lead runner at first
or second. But look at that he has attempted eleven

(10:03):
times of those nineteen with Mooki, only fourteen of the
ninety six with Freddy. And then I got to thinking, like,
maybe Freddy doesn't like when guy's steal. He's a lefties
in his line of vision. Maybe it's because Freddy hits
doubles and Otani can just steal anyway. And I was like, Acuna,
did he steal when he was in front of Freddy?
Who else has been in front of Freddy? Did they steal?

(10:23):
I didn't have time to look at all that. But
he likes stealing when Mooki's up fifty seven percent of
the time. If Mooky's up and Otani's gone, opportunity steal.
He's been taking it thirty three percent of the time
for Gavin Lux but it's not that many at all
at all, and then eighteen percent for the other two.
But it looks like that's the formula he likes. Mooki's up,

(10:45):
I'm stealing. I'm going. I like this. So if Mooky's
at the dish, the pitcher is one five or slower
to home plate, and the first pitch was a fastball Tamooki,
He's off, gone in the breeze, Otani doing it. Second

(11:08):
segment today, someone messaged me or tweeted at me and said, Jimmy,
a three thing segment on Soto's slump would be interesting,
and I said, Okay, let's do it. So Soto had
twelve we or twelve games, twelve wee games. He's kind
of out of it already. His last four games have

(11:29):
been good. But he had twelve games where yeah, it
was like not good, right, not Soto if if it
was August sixteenth to August twenty eighth, and he had
two good games in between. But if you look at
the the batting average was one thirty three, on base
was two fifty, slugging three fifty six ops, six oh six,

(11:53):
hit three homers. He only had six hits eleven strikeouts,
not consuming The one hundred and eighteen games before that
was three oh seven four thirty eight one dot. And
the four games after he's been he's been hitting the
ball again. So the Saint Louis series in Texas, you know,
the numbers are back to normal. So I went and

(12:16):
I looked at all the peripherals to see if I
could make something up or find something and let me
see if I can. I looked at a lot of shit.
I looked at expected batting average. So if you look
at this, the blue is the twelve game slump, the
red is one hundred and thirteen games leading up and
the four after wildly different sample sizes, I know, but

(12:39):
the expected data and the expected slugging plays off of
the slump. It's not like, hey, the expected stayed the same.
The results just weren't there. No, the expected change. It
was a three seventy six all season in those twelve
games of two thirty four, then a four to ninety
four for batting average, and the same trend for slugging.

(12:59):
Uh uh. In the last four games he's barreled four games.
In the twelve games before that he only barreled three.
The batting average on balls in play one hundred and
thirteen games two ninety two and then these twelve games
zero three seven. So they were being like, nah, dog, no,
you're not supposed to get hits. The whiff rates stayed

(13:23):
the same in the last four very small Sam has
gotten better, but the whiff rates stayed the same. It
went up zero point one. The exit velo dropped a
ton in one hundred and thirteen games when he was
hot ninety five mile prior exit vlo on average in
the twelve game slump eighty nine. That's a you know,

(13:43):
a big dip. Six mile per hour difference between eighty
nine mile prior exit velo in ninety five is is
pretty drastic. It's back up in the four games so
if any if your gang, he's paying these four games,
we're back up ninety five mile progs. Back up the
bats speed was interesting because seventy five point five bat
speed on average, and then it did drop half a

(14:10):
mile per hour. Is that a big difference, Like maybe
in the calculations, it's back up the last four games,
it's back up. Is he like a nagging injury that
slowed him down just a tiny bit which hurt him.
The hard hit rate dropped from fifty nine percent of
the time to forty. Now back up and the barrel dropped,
so like the expected say he just sometimes guy's getting

(14:36):
a slump, and they're like, well, dude, all the peripherals
stayed the same, don't worry about it. And this is like, no,
something was going on. I really don't know what. And
then I was looking at all of his numbers versus
specific pitches, so like versus four seams, see the expected

(15:01):
stayed the same. You know, he expected numbers versus four
seeing fastballs was still good. He just and he still
barreled some up sinkers did him in pretty badly. He
had zero whiffs on sinkers in the bad stretch, but
not much good contact, zero barrels, no good hits. The

(15:22):
bat speed was a was like faster on sinkers. The
exit vela was just down a ton on sinkers, and
I wonder, I wonder what was going on. I think
the sliders got him like way. If you look at

(15:42):
breaking balls sliders, let's see, let's see, where's the whift percentage.
So when he was hot one hundred and thirteen games,
he had a nineteen wift percentage on sliders, and then
in that twelve game span he had a thirty one
with percentage on sliders and curveballs, a twelve withfth percentage

(16:08):
during the high streak, fifty fifth percentage on curveball. So
he just was not he was not making contact, swinging
and missing. The curveball batspeed is wild seventy four percent
on average his bat speed versus curveballs in the first

(16:30):
one hundred and thirteen games in the twelve game slump
sixty seven. So I think maybe he's that's him not
being able to lay off it and doing like a
half ass swing at the end. Maybe that's a big drop. Huh.
The launch angle's not there. If I had to guess

(16:53):
from just looking at some of this data, I would
guess he was had something nagging him lower body or
arm or something and just couldn't just couldn't get to
balls as quickly as he can. If you look at
his spray charts, Oh do I not have those up anymore?

(17:14):
Did I download them? Yeah? So this is his spray
chart in the one hundred and thirteen games. And obviously
it's a ton, but you can see all the doubles
are down the line, you know, with the quick turn
here or outside fastball going with it. See know the

(17:35):
purple it's down the line or in the gaps those
were where your doubles are hit. The singles are splattered
all over, a lot of them to the right side,
but he does have some over here, not a lot,
but over here in front of the outfielder's got some.
And then if you look at during the slump, he's
rolling over everything. A lot of ground balls, nothing in
the air down the line, one blocked double, but just

(17:59):
a lot of ground balls to the right side. So
I have no conclusion who tweeted, I mean, what was
his name, Jack? I don't really have a conclusion here,
but the all the expected numbers show that like someone
was going on. I was also looking at out of
the zone he he chased. He chased pitches out of

(18:27):
the zone at a higher clip during the slump, but
actually put more in play, put put more in play
than normal. They just weren't like good balls in play.
You chase out of the zone. Usually you want to
fill it back or miss or you put it in
play with good contact. He usually just doesn't even chase.
But he started chasing out of the zone more. He

(18:49):
got pitched out of the zone less small sample, so
I don't know. I think I think the the bat
speed going down on certain pitches and sinker just seeming
to do them in could be. Also he faced a
ton of lefties and they just add his number. I
don't know. I don't know. Anyway, Moving on the third topic.

(19:10):
As I was looking at the Otani stuff, as I
was checking that out, I saw that on inside Edges
data system that you can I can sort by all
of the double steals that have taken place this year,
and that kind of was like, Oh, that's interesting, I
want to I want to take a look at all

(19:31):
that data. So I pulled every double steal that has
happened this season, and the amount of double steals that
you have this season, guests, you want to leave your
guests pausive video take guests talk about it. One hundred
and twenty two double double steals have taken place. Does

(19:52):
your team utilize the double steel or are they saying, yo,
jump up my back for a piggyback round. I got you.
If you are the Chicago Whites, no, you've only had
one double steal, just one itty bitty double steal. And
it was versus the Twins April twenty fourth, so a

(20:12):
long time ago, and Shoemake took Lee on a ride. Now,
if you're the Minnesota Twins, the answer for you is
also just one. Also back in April, April thirtieth, and
that was when Jeffers said, come on, Kepler, let's steal
off Martin Maldonado against the White Sox. So they both

(20:41):
Minnesota and Chicago White Sox only have one double steal
each and it was against each other. Damn, damn the
most by good margin. Your Cincinnata, Cincinnata, you Cincinnata rats,
your Cincinnati Reds have twelve double steels on the season.
Let's do it. Here we go. And then I was

(21:03):
looking at that and I was like, well, that's just
got to be because Ellie's stealing a ton and people
are just you know, running behind him and not entirely.
Ellie de la Cruz has been the lead runner three
times of the twelve. He took Steer twice. He took
Steer on a ride twice, he took De la Cruze,

(21:25):
he took fair Child once. Benson, Benson's taken Ellie day
la Cruz on aariety. He was the lead runner and
double Steel twice. Now Fairchild he's got four times where
he said, all right, let's do it. I'm on first,
you're on second, let's run. I was Steer, Marte, de

(21:49):
la Cruz, Benson, So four different people gave Fairchild a
stolen base as the trail runner. And then India three times.
So India has been the trail runner three times. He's
never once recuperated. He's never once said hop on my back,

(22:11):
I'll be the leader runner. You know, he owes Thompson,
Marte and Fairchild a steal. He's not doing it. Steer
has been the trail runner three times, and he's been
the leader runner once. Okay, but dey lu Cruze has
given Steer, three rides. Fredal's given him, Freedom's given him one.

(22:34):
So the next question that everyone has is who has
given the most rides? You want a stolen base on
your baseball reference page, just beyond first while I'm on second.
All right, nothing to worry about. I got you. And

(22:58):
that person is Volpi. Volpi has given five five times
he's given someone a ride. He's the lead runner double
steal and it's been five different players. He's spreading the love.
So it's a very nice job by Volpi spreading the love.

(23:21):
Garcia four times, Hamilton four times, and then as the
trail runner, fair Child, Steer, Ramirez, Lindor India all three.
But how about Volpi? That's nice of him, right, that's
uh a good gesture. Let me assort it. So we

(23:43):
just have lead runner Volpi, Ope clear, Volpi select him.
He has given Sodo, just Oswaldo, Cabrera, Grisham, Jazz, Chisholm.

(24:04):
He's given them all a nice lift to the next base,
which is kind of him. Has he ever been the
trail runner? Ooh one one time? Jazz Him and Jazz
traded off. Nice. You know what made me laugh? Did

(24:26):
you see that I got some time here? At the end,
I went way faster than I thought. Did you see
that by Jack Lopez on the Angels? Did you see this? Guys? Incredible?
It's got to be. It's got to be the shortest

(24:49):
ball in play ever, so in play, and then the
metric I want to see is hit distance. It's gotta be.

(25:10):
It's gotta be the shortest hit ball ever. I want.
I wonder what they have for it, player name player
an event I'll see maybe we'll find the like the
the next shortest balls hit hit distance? Where are you? Hey?

(25:31):
Where are you at? Hit distance? Oh? Projected distance four
four feet? He's got a ton. These all buns? They

(25:55):
just make a bunt. No, no, no, no, that's not
what I want. That was just a ground ball that
he hit straight down. I get, I understand that's what
he means. Now, that's not what I mean. That's not

(26:16):
what I mean. I mean. I mean, like the total
time of it rolling, It only went a foot spray chart.
Let me find this. What do they not even count it?
Competitive swing? No? No, no, remove buns? How dare you?

(26:39):
That's what I'm looking for? Baseball Savanna? Why did it
remove bunts on me? So? Are they not gonna have this.
It's gonna bum me out. Okay, this is supposed to
be a hit and run. Oh my goodness, they did

(27:02):
it that time. Oh my god, I didn't know that
they've done it before. All right, So this is a
suicide squeeze where he gets it down. Oh that's actually awesome.
Suicide squeeze. You gotta get that ball down no matter what.
Look at this pitch he has to get down. It's
coming in. It's like a backfoot slider. He gets it

(27:23):
down and then he has to dive out of the
way for the runner and then get up and run
to first. The second one makes so much more sense
to me. Now, okay, that is funny. They scored a run.
Watch this one. H Yeah, we did this unweekly dumb

(27:51):
and it cracks me up. Okay, so this is another
breaking wall. Look at his form. He gets it down
like credit to him again and just fucking it's got
so much spin on it that he just deadens it
right there. You know, by the time Cal picks this up,

(28:11):
is it over the plate? Who knows? No way? That
ball just spins on the plate. Instill, look at this,
That ball goes nowhere. That ball travels an inch. I mean,

(28:31):
it's gotta go fair anyway. The runner's just out and
then he has got to run, but the bat's still
in the way. I mean, I think Cal tags him
right there. Yeah, Cal tags him right there. That's so funny.

(28:55):
Did the ump call who's the ump bringing up? There?
Is he ringing both of them up? No? Fair ball out?
He didn't call the tag on Lopez out, but he
was out and then he just like toss it down
to Turner, who tags him. Oh look look at Ron
Washington's face. Look at his face. What the that is

(29:28):
such a funny face. Oh anyway, that's got to be
the least far of ball has traveled while being in play.
So that was a little something extra for you. Thank
you for tuning in. Appreciate you guys. We'll see you later. Goodbye.