Editor’s Note: Joe downplays how good this is, but over a sample size of 245 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), his picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have a 1% average return on investment when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high), meaning he’s been about as good as a bettor who’s correct on 53% of their straight bets.
As always, use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose following Joe’s picks. At the same time, though, you’re also responsible for any money you win.
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One pick for today’s games.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written.
- FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Baseball Savant, and Spotrac are all great.
- The writeups for each pick aren’t justifications. The justification for each is that the numbers I’m using indicate its expected payout is positive by more than a standard deviation or two, and I’m not coming across enough red flags to pass on it. The writeups are just words about the teams playing the games.
Boston @ Houston
Following an 8-0 loss to the Yankees on April 16th, the Red Sox were 6-13, and Chris Sale’s ERA was 8.50 (with its accompanying 6.31 FIP offering little optimism). Boston had yet to bottom out—they did that two weeks later, when their FanGraphs’ Playoff Odds dipped below 50% for a couple days—but Sale, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, had reached his low.
“I just flat-out stink right now,” Sale said at the time, and he wasn’t wrong. Through four starts, Chris Sale had stunk.
But in the six starts since, Sale has been as good as ever. His ERA is 2.35 since that shellacking by the Yankees, and FIP actually thinks he’s been the slightest bit unlucky, pegging his true performance at 2.09. He’s struck out 10 or more batters in five of those six starts (including each of the last four), and over back-to-back outings against the Orioles and Rockies, he struck out 31 combined in 15 innings, walking zero.
Sale still has some distance to cover to get his numbers back to their natural habitat. But he’s well on his way.
Pick: Over 8.5 -120. Low confidence.
