Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 377 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), meaning he’s been good enough to consistently make the people money.
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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 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.
Arizona @ Miami
The Diamondbacks are reportedly going to sell over the next few days, and veteran outfielder Jarrod Dyson is a prime target.
Dyson, who’s never been an above-average hitter (career-best wRC+: 91) and has never been an everyday player (career-high PA’s: 390) might not even be replacement-level at the plate, but he shines defensively and on the bases. His UZR/150 is 9.2 on the season, and he’s been one of baseball’s best base-stealers, with a 92% success rate on 25 attempts. Despite his age (34), he’s in baseball’s top quintile for sprint speed, and Statcast measures his ability to get good jumps on fly balls to be elite.
Better yet, he’s only owed a little more than a million dollars over the remainder of the season.
Pick: Over 7.5 (-120). Low confidence.
Houston @ St. Louis
The Cardinals are hotter than hot, having gone 12-3 since the All-Star Break, including wins in each of their last six games.
Over these fifteen days, Paul Goldschmidt has raked, with seven home runs, a .692 slugging percentage, and a 154 wRC+ across 59 PA’s. He, Paul DeJong, and Kolten Wong have each accumulated half an fWAR over the stretch, and Matt Wieters and Tyler O’Neill aren’t far behind.
It’s never fun to play a team as good as the Astros, but when you have to, better to get to do it playing one’s best.
Pick: St. Louis +1.5 (+100). Low confidence.
Texas @ Oakland
The Rangers are fading, and with Joey Gallo undergoing surgery the other day, it’s likely some of their pieces will be finding their way to new locales by Wednesday night.
One of those is Chris Martin. Martin, a 6’8” reliever, enters tonight with a 3.08 ERA. He’s struck out 29.3% of batters, which is good but not exactly remarkable, but he’s accompanied that with only a 2.7% walk rate, which is very remarkable.
FIP expects Martin to regress (it pegs him at 4.01), because of his unsustainable 93.5% LOB rate. But xFIP (which pegs him at 2.92) thinks that negative regression might be outweighed by positive regression in his HR/FB ratio, which stands at 25.0% after finishing last year at only 11.9%.
Martin’s career has followed a winding road. He didn’t make the majors ‘til he was 28, was DFA’d after his first big-league season, was released after his second, and spent 2016 and 2017 in Japan. Now, at 33, he might be about to find his way into the middle of a pennant race.
Pick: Texas to win (+155). Low confidence.
