Editor’s Note: Joe would say this isn’t that great, but over a sample size of 264 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 1% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high), meaning he’s been good enough to at least not lose money.
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Two picks for today’s games.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written.
- FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Baseball Savant, Spotrac, and ESPN are all great sources of data.
- The writeups for picks of individual games 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.
Los Angeles @ Arizona
Robbie Ray has yet to post one of those dominant starts that drew eyes in 2017, but he appears fully healthy after missing nearly two months last season, and he’s arguably pitching the best he ever has.
While he’s walking more batters than he did prior to last year, he’s dramatically reduced his home runs, which are coming at their lowest rate since 2015. The home run numbers don’t look fluky, either, coming on the back of a 3% decrease in average exit velocity from last year and a 24% decrease in average launch angle.
He’s brought back his sinker, which he abandoned entirely in 2018, and while he’s still only throwing it about five percent of the time, comparable to 2017, it’s certainly a possible source of the launch angle shift, as its increased use corresponds well with the decreased use of his four seam fastball.
On the offspeed side, he’s significantly increased how many sliders he throws, shifting away from curveballs. This doesn’t seem to be a reaction to last year, when the exit velocities and whiff rates on the pair were comparable, but the slider is undeniably performing better this year, as curveballs have drawn the highest average exit velocity of any of his pitches while his slider has provoked the most whiffs.
Only 27, Ray is far from a certain product. If the upside he’s currently flashing holds, that’s a good thing for Arizona.
Pick: Arizona to win +135. Low confidence.
Pick: Under 8.5 -105. Low confidence.
