Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 342 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 7% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high), meaning he’s been good enough to consistently make the people money.
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Two 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 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.
San Francisco @ Colorado – Game 1
Jeff Samardzija’s name has not come up this year in trade speculation.
But the 34-year-old is only signed through 2020, and by FIP, he’s been better this season than roughly 30% of qualified pitchers: starters who are getting lots of innings. He’s pitched better than qualifiers on the Astros, Yankees, Cubs, Red Sox, Phillies, A’s, Cardinals, and Rangers (along with some bottom-dwellers), so while he wouldn’t improve a team’s top line, he could eat innings and possibly offer consistency at the bottom of the rotation.
His contract, of course, is the problem. He’s owed $19.8M, plus roughly $7M over August and September of this season. But if the Giants don’t trade him, they’ll be paying him anyway, and contention doesn’t look imminent for San Francisco. In other words, they might include some significant cash if they could turn Samardzija into one or more future assets.
Samardzija does have a limited no-trade clause, blocking eight teams of his choosing a year, but he’s worth a look for teams looking to upgrade their rotation’s back ends.
Pick: San Francisco +1.5 (-105). Low confidence.
Los Angeles @ Philadelphia
The Phillies haven’t met expectations this year, but it’s important to remember that they’re still very young. Their two best pitchers by fWAR, Aaron Nola and Zach Eflin, are 26 and 25 respectively. Their four best position players (Realmuto, Hoskins, Segura, Harper) are all under 30. The few impending free agencies affecting them are minimal: Brad Miller, Juan Nicasio, Tommy Hunter, and Sean Rodriguez. After 2020, it’s a bit of a different story, but even then, their core of young talent is set up for a nice future.
Eflin struggled in his first two major league seasons. He made eleven starts in both 2016 and 2017, posting FIP’s of 5.48 and 6.10 with nearly identical ERA’s. But last year, he turned a corner, posting a 3.80 FIP over 128 innings.
2019 has been a bit of a regression (4.66 FIP), but he’s stranded enough runners (79.0% LOB) that his ERA’s dropped from 4.36 last year to 3.78 this season. His strikeout rate’s dropped from 22.5% to 19.4%, but that’s been accompanied by a drop in walk rate from 6.8% to 6.1%. Considering that his home runs allowed have also increased (1.13 per nine innings last year, 1.53 this year), it might be that he’s just grooving more pitches, but either way, he’s significantly more effective than he was two years ago.
He’s far from an ace, but as he’s under team control through 2022, he’s a piece the Phillies should be able to count on to grab a couple WAR for the foreseeable future. To the degree one can count on pitchers, of course.
Pick: Philadelphia to win (+160). Low confidence.
