2024 MLB Superlatives: NL West

This is part two of a six part series. If you’ve not read part one, previewing the AL West, the link can be found here: ***https://allphly.com/2024-mlb-superlatives-al-west/***

The National League West has garnered most of the attention this offseason, or rather, one team has. The Los Angeles Dodgers have spent over a billion dollars to become a certified superteam, signing free agents Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and trading for Tyler Glasnow. Expectations are now astronomical for the Dodgers, and rightfully so.

But there are four other teams in the NL West, including the defending National League champs, the Arizona Diamondbacks, and the still talented, albeit self-admittedly broke, San Diego Padres.

With the national focus on the Dodgers, why don’t we focus on all five teams in this edition of MLB Superlatives.

Arizona Diamondbacks: Catcher Gabriel Moreno wins NL catcher Gold Glove

It is hard to repeat as an award winner, but if there were an award to win in consecutive seasons, it’s definitively Gold Glove. And Gabby Moreno is poised to own the award for a long time.

In Moreno’s Gold Glove 2023 season, the catcher posted the fifth highest defensive runs saved, or DRS, in Major League Baseball. His 20 DRS was behind just Daulton Varsho, Fernando Tatis Jr., Andrés Giménez and Ke’Bryan Hayes. All but Varsho, who was a finalist, losing to Cleveland’s Steven Kwan, won a Gold Glove in 2023.

Moreno’s calling card, without question, is his ability to throw runners out on the base paths. He ranked fifth amongst qualified catchers in pop time on throws to second base, posting a 1.90 pop time. To put that time into perspective, JT Realmuto led the league with a 1.83. Moreno will likely only get better in his second full season as the Diamondbacks’ backstop. Moreno was just as efficient in his exchange rate as well, a stat determined by the time it take the catcher to receive the pitch and release a throw. He finished fourth in the league with a 0.61, just five hundredth of a second behind the league leader, Austin Wynns.

Exceptional pop time and exchange rate led to a league leading 48% caught stealing rate. His 9 caught stealing above replacement also led Major League Baseball in 2023.

Finally, Moreno has done a tremendous job of using his body to block pitches. He ranked fifth with 10 blocks above replacement in 2023, and seventh with 0.11 blocks above average per game caught.

Entering his age-24 season in 2024, Moreno will almost assuredly be the National League frontrunner for the Gold Glove.

Colorado Rockies: Worst Team ERA in MLB (I won’t say modern era history, but I want to)

Okay, so this isn’t a player stat, but the 2024 Colorado Rockies are definitively one of the worst teams in the league heading into 2024, and might just be one of the worst pitching staffs of recent memory.

Fair? Maybe not. Objective? I think so.

Heading into the 2024 season, the Rockies are projected to carry up to nine arms that posted a 4.50 ERA or worse last season. That number includes every projected starting pitcher, a group that features just ONE arm, Dakota Hudson, with a sub-5.00 ERA last year. The 2023 Rockies posted the seventh worst team ERA since 1947. This year could be worse.

This shapes up to be the worst starting rotation since, at least, the 2021 Baltimore Orioles. But the saving grace for Baltimore that season was a 28-year-old John Means, who, despite a 6-9 record, posted a 3.62 ERA. No one on this Rockies staff will come close to that.

Realistically speaking, the team I harken back to is the 2003 Detroit Tigers. That team won 43 games. And while I expect the Rockies, by offensive ability or a stroke of shear luck, to win more games than that, the pitching rotation resembles that Detroit squad.

That was a Detroit team that featured a 20-game loser, and the third most losses for one pitcher at 17. They were dreadful. Every starter, sans Nate Cornejo, had an ERA above 5.00. One pitcher recorded 100 strikeouts.

All of this leads to the team’s collective regular season ERA: 5.30. A number still worse than what Colorado produced last season.

And, ooh yeah. Forgot to mention one little detail. They play at Coors Field. Good luck, Rockies fans. It’s going to be a long season.

Los Angeles Dodgers: 1B Freddie Freeman wins NL MVP

You could pick any of the Los Angeles Dodgers projected top three hitters to win the National League MVP, and it wouldn’t be farfetched.

Shohei Ohtani won the AL MVP in 2021 and 2023. Mookie Betts won the award in 2018. Freddie Freeman won the NL MVP in the shortened 2020 season. The trio has finished in the top five of their respective league’s voting 13 times. Pick any of them, jot them down for your MVP bet, and feel good for the majority of the season, barring injury.

So, why Freddie Freeman? How did I come to that conclusion amongst the three? Could it be as fickle as where the three hit in the Dodgers’ batting order? It’s quite possible. While it’s unknown where each of the will hit within the top three (that’s not debatable), my guess is that Freeman will likely hit second. That means he’ll get the additional, and approximate, 0.1 at bats per game more than Ohtani. It doesn’t sound like much, but over the course of 150-plus games, that does add to an additional 15-16 at bats per season. Silly, I know, but it very well could mean a handful more opportunities for Freeman.

The fun, variable conversation revolves around a batting order placement, but it does dive deeper than that, I promise.

Firstly, Freeman is a doubles machine. That’s a known quantity. But in 2023, Freeman hit the seventh most doubles in the history of the game. None of the single seasons that finished with more doubles than Freeman’s 2023 happened in the last 85 years. Nearly 28% of Freeman’s hits were doubles last year. 43% of his hits were extra base hits. All Freeman does is rake.

Next, let’s take a deeper look at the 2023 statistical leaderboard. Freeman finished first in doubles, second in hits, second in runs scored, third in average, fifth in on base percentage, sixth in slugging, and sixth in OPS. He also finished fourth in WAR, posting a 7.9 for the 2023 season. The only three players above him? His teammates, Betts and Ohtani, and NL MVP winner Ronald Acuña Jr.

Taking those WAR totals into perspective, fair or unfair, Ohtani is eliminated from the trio first, due to the fact that 2.4 of his league leading 9.0 WAR came on the mound. That means, offensively, as you know, he was still an insane 6.6 WAR, which would have been good for sixth in MLB had he not thrown a single pitch. With Ohtani’s sidelined from the mound in 2024, he would have to have a statistically better year than 2023, where he hit 44 homeruns and led the American League in OBP, slugging, OPS and OPS+. Ohtani is assuredly capable of repeating those numbers are an everyday DH. But to get even better would be very difficult.

So it comes down to Betts and Freeman for me. Mookie Betts, in my estimation, is the best player in MLB. His rare attributes as a true five tool player, paired with his versatility, makes him the most well rounded player (not named Ohtani) in baseball. Betts finished as good, or better, than Freeman, in nearly every statistical category last year, sans doubles. If there was a year for Betts to win his first NL MVP, 2024 seems like a perfect opportunity.

It really is a toss up for me between these two. I would be more shocked if one of these two, or Ronald Acuña Jr, did NOT win MVP than if they did. Freeman just returns you the best odds at most sportsbooks (And that’s the first and last time I’ll mention gambling) for an award that anyone within the Dodgers trio could take home.

San Diego Padres: IF Ha-Seong Kim wins NL Platinum Glove

For the second consecutive season, the San Diego Padres take home the
National League Platinum Glove Award. Assuming, that is, Kim is a member of the Padres for the full 2024 season.

Kim’s name has circulated on the trade market for some time now this offseason, as the Padres have, fairly publicly, admitted financial struggles. With just one year left on his contract before a mutual option for 2025, Kim could be moved if the Padres feel that an extension past 2025 can’t be reached.

But, let’s play under the hypothetical pretense that Kim will remain with the Padres for the entirety of the 2024 season. Then, under that hypothetical, the Padres secure that Platinum Award for a second consecutive season.

Kim is utilized on both sides of the infield by the Padres. In fact, as AJ Cassavell of MLB.com pointed out, the Padres began using Kim’s skillset to their advantage based on the handedness and roll over rate of the starting pitcher on any given day. Kim played 106 games at second base, 32 at third base, and 20 at shortstop in 2024.

At every one of these positions, Kim thrived defensively. in 2024, Kim posted a 16 DRS, good for 14th in MLB. It was the second highest behind 2023 Platinum Glove winner, and teammate, Fernando Tatis Jr. Unsurprisingly, the Padres ranked in the top five in DRS, as a team, in 2023. Kim posted just seven errors in 152 games played in 2023. Kim’s 2.1 dWAR was tied for 12th in Major League Baseball last season.

But, perhaps the most important stat from 2023 for Kim was his second base range factor per nine innings. What this metric measures is a player’s (putouts plus assists) multiplied by nine, divided by the amount of innings played. Kim’s RF/9 was second best in baseball last year, behind only San Francisco’s Thairo Estrada. This number helps sift through sear innings played and opportunities provided, since Kim did move all over the diamond.

The next step for the first time Gold Glover is to show his range as one of the National League’s elite defenders. Kim, assuming he remains in San Diego for all of 2024, will be a defensive force for a Padres team that SHOULD be better than in 2023.

San Francisco Giants: SP Logan Webb wins NL Cy Young

Not much of a stretch for the guy who led the league in innings pitched last season, and was a 2023 Cy Young finalist.

However, I just genuinely do not think the Giants are going to be very good this season. Don’t get me wrong, there are a handful of players I like on this team: Jung Hoo Lee could be a Rookie of the Year finalist. Marco Luciano is an intriguing, young player. Camillo Doval is an electric reliever.

But the team, as a whole, is lacking in so many areas that it was difficult to justify any other selection than Webb winning the Cy Young that would hold much merit.

Webb threw 216 innings last season, clearing Zac Gallen by, effectively, an entire start (6 IP). He also finished sixth among qualified starters with a 1.07 WHIP. That WHIP stood, due in large part, to his command of the strikezone. We discussed George Kirby’s impeccable control in the AL West edition. Webb finished with just 12 more walks than Kirby in 2023, while throwing 26 more innings. Webb’s 1.3 walks per nine innings pitched was the best in the National League among qualified starters. His 6.26 strikeouts per walk also topped the NL last season.

Where Webb thrived the most in 2023? That would be while using his changeup. Last season, Webb posted a 28 Run Value on his changeup, his most frequently used pitch. He threw over 1300 changeups last season, more than his sinker and four seam combined.

The one downside to Webb is his hard hit percentage. Webb surrendered contact deemed “hard hit” on 46% of his pitches that were connected on. That ranks within the bottom 6% of MLB, according to Baseball Savant. However, Webb does induce ground balls at a near 60% rate. Skill? Luck? Limiting damage? A combination of the all? Sometimes pitching really is just a well rounded grouping of each of these.

But even with this hard hit percentage rising, Webb’s expected batting average against (.255) and his actual batting average against (.248) were only .007 points different. What this tells you is that Webb has, in fact, done a nice job of limiting damage off those hard hit balls. Remember, a hard hit ball hit right at someone is still an out.

Webb is going to be tasked with throwing a ton of innings for a starting rotation that, while it has improved with the addition of Robbie Ray (when he returns from Tommy John midway through the season) and a full season of number one prospect, Kyle Harrison, is still not stellar. Expect Webb to hover above the 200 innings mark again this season. As long as he keeps the ball in the yard, as he’s shown an ability to do, and limits the damage of hard hit percentage, Webb will be a Cy Young candidate in 2024.

Thanks for checking out part two of this six part series. When next we meet, we’ll dive into the American League Central.