Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 380 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
For its first four seasons, Marlins Park’s park factor hovered around the league average, meaning statistically, a relatively average number of runs were scored there.
The park was, however, known as a difficult place to hit home runs, prompting changes prior to the 2016 season that lowered the fences and brought them in.
Following the shift, scoring dropped dramatically—the opposite of what you’d expect. Marlins Park, from 2016 to 2018, consistently found itself with one of the lowest four park factors in baseball.
This year, the park is back around average, with a park factor of 1.059, 11th-highest in the league.
All of which goes to say that Park Factors can be kind of fluky and should be viewed with a critical eye.
Pick: Over 8 (-105). Low confidence.
Chicago (NL) @ Milwaukee
Robel García is hitting leadoff today for the Cubs, the second game in a row he’s occupied that spot in the lineup. It’s the latest attempt by Joe Maddon to jumpstart an offense that ranks eighth in both on-base percentage and slugging percentage, but only 13th in runs scored.
If you’re unfamiliar with García’s journey to the majors, give it a google. It involves four years in Italy and a dramatic return stateside. Since being called up shortly before the All-Star Break, García’s been one of the Cubs best hitters, ranking fifth on the team in wRC+ over the month of July. He’s got four home runs already and two triples, reflecting a high barrel % (in a small sample size) and a top-quartile sprint speed (in an adequate sample size).
It remains to be seen if he can keep things up. He still has only 53 plate appearances. But he’s given the Cubs a spark at a time when they’ve needed one, and in a big game today, they’re hoping he can do it again.
Pick: Chicago (NL) to win (+103). Low confidence.
Cleveland @ Kansas City
If Trevor Bauer does get traded before Wednesday’s deadline, he’ll bring in a lot for Cleveland’s future. But as has been mentioned before in this space, his FIP isn’t as rosy as his ERA.
A large part of Bauer’s allure is his dominant 2018: 2.21 ERA, 2.44 FIP, 11.34 K/9 IP, 2.93 BB/9 IP. But those numbers, over the course of his career, are anomalies. His rise in strikeouts did begin in 2017, and has been maintained to some degree into this year, but his walks, ERA, and FIP have all regressed towards their career averages.
Clearly, Bauer has the potential to win a Cy Young. And even at his career-average level, he’s certainly a solid pitcher. But part of why Cleveland might be open to trading him, even in the midst of a tight division race, is that they might have suspicions he isn’t as good as the market believes. In other words, it might not just be about cutting costs in 2020 and extending the contention window: it might be about selling high.
Pick: Kansas City +1.5 (-105). Low confidence.
