Editor’s Note: Joe would downplay how successful this is, but over a sample size of 274 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), his picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 2% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high), meaning he’s been good enough to make money.
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.
Similarly, if you have a gambling problem, or even think you might have a gambling problem, get help. If you need help getting help, reach out to us via the contact information available on our About page.
Two picks for today’s games.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written.
- Data from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Baseball Savant, Spotrac, and ESPN is often used and/or cited.
- The writeups often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. This is because in general, picks are being made because the numbers I’m using indicate the pick is beyond a certain confidence threshold, and I’m not coming across enough red flags to pass on it.
Texas @ Cincinnati
Hunter Pence was a bargain buy for the Rangers when they signed him to a minor league contract this season. 35 at the time, he was coming off a -0.9 WAR season in which he posted a 59 wRC+, 41% worse than that of the average MLB hitter. In the best-case scenario, it seemed, he’d be a serviceable outfielder.
Instead, he’s on pace for one of the best years of his not-at-all-young career.
Pence is slashing .293/.354/.597 with 14 home runs (including that inside-the-parker this week). His wRC+ sits at 141, 41% better than that of the average MLB hitter. He’s already tallied 1.6 WAR, which becomes 3.8 WAR when extrapolated out across an entire season—he’s eclipsed 4.0 only three times, never since 2014.
Hunter Pence, the bargain buy, turned out to be a winning lottery ticket. And while the other shoe may yet drop (it’s hard to imagine him posting a .304 ISO for the entire season), the Rangers have still cashed in. It’s mid-June, and they’re in the thick of the playoff race.
Pick: Texas to win +150. Low confidence.
Anaheim @ Tampa Bay
Blake Snell’s ERA is nearly twice that of last season’s Cy Young campaign.
His FIP has only changed by 0.02.
There are few better demonstrations of the limitations of ERA as a measure of a pitcher’s performance. Yes, ERA is great at measuring how many runs the pitcher allowed, but there are elements of run prevention outside a pitcher’s control.
Snell’s opponents average exit velocity has hardly changed since last season, and his pitches’ velocities and spin rates are nearly identical as well. He’s striking out more batters than ever before, and walking fewer. Yet his ERA, as noted, as risen quite a bit.
He has pivoted markedly away from his fastball and towards his curve, but given that his curveball draws a lower average launch angle than his fastball, it’s odd that his opponents’ average launch angle has increased back to its pre-2018 levels. This increase seems to be driving the 33% increase in BABIP and 50% increase in HR/FB ratio, which in turn have been major factors in driving the ERA rise (I should note, too, that he was never going to produce another season in which he stranded 88% of possible runners on base—that’s making a big difference in the ERA-FIP gap as well).
Is Snell locating his fastball somewhere different in the zone? Is he throwing it in different counts? That would require a deeper dive than these picks/notes merit, but a very possible explanation is that Snell’s luck has simply run out. Which makes his 3.50 season-to-date ERA all the more impressive.
Pick: Over 7.5 +100. Low confidence.
