Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 471 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), Joe’s picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 5% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is pretty good. It would be a decent annual ROI for an investor. But instead it’s coming, on average, on each of these picks.
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Three picks today.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Baseball Savant, Spotrac, Sagarin, Massey Ratings, and ESPN is often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. You are not required to read these. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
Milwaukee @ St. Louis
Adam Wainwright is not what he once was. Perhaps because of this, what he still is goes unappreciated.
Wainwright, who turns 38 on Friday, is a far cry from the 31-year-old who topped 240 innings while walking only 35 in 2013. His ERA’s an unimpressive 4.51. He’s already allowed more home runs than he did in any one season from 2010 through 2014. Yet he’s been worth 1.7 fWAR on a Cardinals team lacking in starting pitching depth. The impact of this is significant: the Cardinals lead their division by two and a half games, and lead the wild card pack by only four. If Wainwright keeps it up, he might earn himself something it looked like he’d never again see: a start in October.
Pick: Under 10 (-115). Low confidence.
Pittsburgh @ Philadelphia
Jason Vargas’ 3.99 ERA is good. His 4.83 FIP is merely adequate. The Phillies lefty has one of the largest ERA/FIP gaps in the league, feeding on an impossible-to-maintain .251 BABIP and a likely-to-regress 75.7% LOB rate.
It’s possible Vargas will keep things up, or that his performance will improve such that his FIP approaches his ERA, rather than the other way around. But at 36, one year removed from a 5.77 ERA/5.02 FIP season, neither of those things looks particularly likely.
Pick: Pittsburgh to win (+127). Low confidence.
Kansas City @ Oakland
Jorge Soler has broken out. After displaying impressive raw tools for the Cubs early in his career, to the degree he was deemed worthy of a Wade Davis trade by the Royals prior to 2017, the 27-year-old is crushing the ball, with an xSLG better than 95% of his peers.
Soler has been especially good since the All-Star Break. In fact, his 169 wRC+ trails only eight qualified hitters over that stretch, and four of those eight have posted their numbers on the backs of BABIP’s over .350, hinting at a touch (or more) of luck. Soler’s .286 BABIP over the stretch is, contrarily, lower than the .308 it’s been over his career, suggesting he’d be doing even better had a few more balls dropped in for hits.
Soler remains flawed. He’s a mild liability defensively, and he’s yet to sustain this sort of performance for very long. But if he can keep his wRC+ in the 120’s, where it’s been the last two seasons, he’s going to make a lot of money when he finally hits free agency in a few years.
Pick: Kansas City to win (+138). Low confidence.
