Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 443 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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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 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.
Houston @ Oakland
While teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Astros run away with their divisions, few others in the MLB are safe. In the American League, with the Red Sox down, much of that insecurity can be traced back to the Oakland A’s.
As recently as the middle of June, FanGraphs had the A’s with just a 5.2% likelihood of making the playoffs. But even as Tampa Bay and Cleveland have righted their respective ships, the A’s have managed to pull things closer. Now, the A’s, those two, and Minnesota are all within four games of one another, with one team destined to be the odd one out. And while it looks most likely that Oakland will be that team (FanGraphs breaks down the odds of a playoff appearance as: MIN 97.6%, CLE 91.3%, TB 69.5%, OAK 34.5%, BOS 7.1%), anyone sitting only half a game out in the middle of August has ample reason for optimism.
The left side of the Oakland infield deserves the largest share of credit for that. Marcus Semien and Matt Chapman, both with 4.7 fWAR (15th and 16th in the league), have been two of the five most valuable infielders in the American League, trailing only Xander Bogaerts, Alex Bregman, and Rafael Devers. The A’s don’t have a world-beating offense. Their starting pitching is impressive relative to expectations, but not sensational in its own right. Their bullpen is good, but not the best in the league. And their defense, while good, isn’t measured by FanGraphs to be in the MLB’s top five.
But here are the A’s, tenth in hitter fWAR, seventh in pitcher fWAR, with two infielders who deserve to find themselves on almost all MVP ballots, even if not near the top. They’re the underdog, but a few games could change that. At the very least, they’re very much in the race.
Pick: Oakland to win (+128). Low confidence.
San Francisco @ Arizona
Giants prospect Logan Webb is making his major league debut tonight.
At 22 years old, with only one start at AAA to his name, Webb is an interesting choice by San Francisco, but having declined to cry uncle in the wild card race, and currently sitting two and a half games back of a playoff position, taking a flyer on a hot minor league hand is a reasonable course of action.
Webb’s had a tumultuous 2019. After five starts at AA, he received an 80-game suspension for using performance enhancing drugs. But the right-hander, who’s risen from Tommy John surgery a few years ago to become one of the Giants’ better pitching prospects, has performed strongly across four levels of the minor leagues in his seven appearances since returning. Combined with those five starts made prior to the suspension, he has a 1.85 ERA on the year, backed by a 2.42 FIP, and his 26.4% strikeout rate would, at the major league level, would be comparable to that of Aaron Nola or Clayton Kershaw this year.
Of course, there’s a big difference between posting those kinds of numbers in the Eastern League and doing so in the NL West. But here’s Webb, 22 years old, trying to help the Giants pull off a remarkable comeback to playoff relevance.
Pick: San Francisco to win (+112). Low confidence.
