Midweek Musings - Quality Of Life Patch

Hey everyone, Johnny here. It's been a really cool week for GerbilSports. After launching the Patreon, we're already up to nineteen members, which is nineteen more than I expected! Some of the stuff we're working on over there includes a deep dive into potential 2026 sleepers by deep diving into players with high xwOBA (looking at you, Ben Rice) vs wOBA differentials, and seeing what's going on under the hood:

This is the project that will eventually wind up being the GerbilSports 2026 sleeper list, and it's currently being updated in real time as I work on it. It will, of course, be posted for free on reddit before the 2026 season, and I think it will be my best one yet! As for GerbilSports QOL, I was thinking "Damn, I know I've written about JT Ginn in the past, but this is really fucking annoying to find. I wonder if people have come to my site and wanted to search certain players to see if I've written about them. Shit, why don't I have a search bar?"

So now there's a search bar at the top of the page. To get results on a search, you'll have to press return or enter - there won't be a dropdown of results right on the bar. But it's good enough! I also added a little scroll-to-top button at the bottom-right corner, because my wife said it was pretty annoying to scroll back to the top. JT Ginn It's really nice to see Ginn not only returning from an injury that kept him sidelined for months, but also back in the starting rotation after a brief bullpen stint. If you were reading GerbilSports throughout the earlier part of the seasons, you may remember I was a pretty huge Ginn fan right from the jump, and I wanted to see what I had written about him back in the day. To summarize - "His sinker is actually really fucking filthy, and reminds me a lot of a really fast changeup in the way it breaks." So there you have it, the guy has a good sinker! But that's not what I actually want to talk about. I noticed Ginn has a really cute changeup that he seems a bit reluctant to throw, sometimes neglecting to throw it at all in a few appearances. In his most recent outing, he threw it 7.8% of the time:

And as you can seen, from May 18th to Jun. 29th, he didn't throw it a single time. So how has it faired as of late?

.036 xBA, 60% whiff .174 xBA, 50% whiff Not put in play, 100% whiff Not put in play, 50% whiff Not put in play When Ginn decides to throw the changeup, the results are exemplary. The 7.8% usage rate in his most recent start is encouraging, and we can only hope he continues to trust the pitch and bump that usage up, ideally to around at least 15%. Just looking at the changeup itself, it's clear why it works so damned well:

See how both the changeup and sinker have well-above average vertical movement compared to the rest of the league, and beyond that, only an inch (EDIT: Whoops, was comparing the 'vs comparables'. There's an 8 inch difference, this is better), of movement separates them coming out of the arm slot? Then you add in the 5 mph velocity difference, a .2 inch horitonztal break difference, and you realize, damn, that sinker really does look like a fast changeup, and that changeup really looks like a slow sinker! These two pitches look near identical coming out of Ginn's hand! This changeup/sinker combo is a fun little bag for Ginn, and I hope to see him play with it further going forward.

Andrew Vaughn, .240 BABIP Allow me to share a snippet from my Patreon project, as I believe it helps validate Vaugn's recent success:

"Vaughn is the current unluckiest player in the entirety of baseball with a -70 differential. His xBA clocks in at a solid .273, and his actual BA pales in comparison at a paltry .217 - and that's after his recent Brewers resurgence. Even more puzzling is Vaughn currently rocks a solid Air Pull %:

Hitters with high air pull % tend to find more success as pull-side balls travel shorter distances to the fence, have a high correlation with slugging percentages, and are typically more indicative of power potential than Oppo Air %. His 20.7% Pull Air % is well above-average, making Vaughn as strong a candidate for positive regression as anyone out there. We're now starting to see the math work itself out since Vaughn's joined the Brew Crew, and he should be viable down the 2025 stretch, alongside being a nice late-round sleeper in 2026 drafts." Aside from that deeper look into Vaughn's hitting tendencies, the statcast is to-die-for. His power metrics come in at borderline elite levels, but the most impressive part of the statcast are the bat-to-ball metrics. It's rare to see such solid whiff rates, 69th percentile in this case, accompany such strong power numbers across the board. And those elite squared-up, sweet-spot, and average exit velocity rates? Oh baby. In tandem, those paint the picture of a guy who is almost always hitting the ball above 90 mph at the exact right launch angles. Vaughn putting the ball on the ground is a rare sight indeed. Kerry Carpenter

I've always maintained that Carpenter is one of the most talented, naturally-gifted hitters in all of baseball, even as his Rumpelstiltskin-ass golden-straw-spun hamstrings continue to fail him at every turn. Owning Carpenter is about as enjoyable as owning Nico Collins in dynasty football, which is to say, not that enjoyable. You know there's vast amounts of talent there if he could just...stay....healthy. Well, now he's back from his most recent IL stint, and absolutely crushing baseballs. Even today, Kerry went 2/3 with a dinger and three RBIs. And guess what? He's only 50% owned across fantasy leagues. If by the grace of forune, Kerry has been rage-dropped in your league, do yourself a favor and scoop him up. This is league-winning potential and a guaranteed .800 OPS+ finish. Positive regression is here to claim Kerry. Troy Melton Forgive me for being late on Troy Melton, but it's time to discuss this kid.

https://prospectsavant.com/player/675512

We start off looking at his prospectsavant page, because why wouldn't we? What did the Tigers see in him that had them feeling good about a promotion? Well, you don't really need me to tell you - look at those whiff, K, BB, and contact induced rates! Not only is Melton whiffing at a 77th percentile clip, inducing chases at an 88th percentile clip, and K'ing at a 96th percentile clip, but he's also somehow limiting the BBs at an elite 85th percentile rate. It's pretty rare to see a guy with this kind of stuff - premium flamethrower type shit - and also have really good location, all coming out of the minors. There are a few drawbacks - nobobody's perfect - and that really comes down to the hard contact hitters find when they do actually manage to make said contact. Let's look at his aresenal:

https://prospectsavant.com/player/675512

So immediately noticeable are the psStuff+ grades all coming in over the 100 mark - this guy has tools in the bag, without a doubt. But looking further into it, we see a few problem children: Splitter with a 71% hard-hit rate and.380 xBA Cutter with a 60% hard-hit rate and .403 xBA Sinker with a 33.33 % hard-hit rate and .283 xBA, but the highest stuff+ score and lowest sample size. These two pitches are, frankly, enormous liabilities, even being thrown at their combined 16% usage rate. So what's going on at the MLB level after two starts?

That velocity on the fastball + 90th percentile extension has Melton throwing over 100 mph perceived velocity at a tricky 37 degree arm angle. That's the stuff aces are made of.

Fangraphs is loving Melton. 109 pitching + is awesome.

Across two starts, Melton has already made some noticeable changes to his pitch mix. We can see the fastball usage went from near 30% in start 1, up to 42% in start two. And with that increased usage, the cutter ( a problematic pitch at AAA) usage also went up at a nearly indentical rate, from 3.3% to 13.8%. So 10-ish % for the 4-seam, and 10% for the cutter. It's clear the Tigers view these as the two most complimentary pitches in the arsenal. His sinker usage went from 21% in start 1 to 4.6% in start 2, a rather drastic change. It seems that the Tigers' staff has identified the Sinker as a redundant pitch, at least in the early going of Melton's MLB career. I don't necessarily agree with the decision to throw that cutter more - I think he should be throwing that sinker instead - but the results of his 2nd start prove something worked well. Melton's pitch mix is something that will most likely be tinkered with each and every start down the stretch, but the main takeaway here is this guy has some serious juice. Dillon Dingler

Ah yes, another familiar face on the blog having a real nice stretch. Welcome back to the conversation, Dinglerberry! I fear that this midweek post may be becoming a Tigers post - blame the Tigers for having so much talent. After a real nice start to the season, Dingler kind of cooled off big time approaching the all-star break, so much so that I wound up dropping him from my team, opting to go with Ben Rice and Agustin Ramirez as my two rostered catchers. Over the past week, Dingler has been on fire:

Not only is Dingler arguably the best defensive catcher in the entire MLB at age 24 (fuck man, that's impressive, but his bat is the real deal. He currently rocks a .292 xBA, 73rd percentile xSLG, and a beautiful 94th percentile sweet-spot %. When Dingler makes contact, he tends to hit the ball at some really solid launch angles and with just enough juice to find the gaps and get over the infield. For a free-swinger who almost never walks, this is nice to see - he better be making contact with a 2nd percentile BB rate!

And if you don't believe in the sweet-spot percentile, just check out these hitting tendencies! He has a 66.5 air % as opposed to a 33.5% ground-ball %, to go with a Vaughn-esque 20.3 Air Pull %. It's actually impressive just how often Dingler lifts the ball, and with a little more juice as he begins to enter his prime....we could be looking at a real power threat over the next few years. Hit the weights, Dingler!