Editor’s Note: Joe would downplay how successful this is, but over a sample size of 290 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 4% 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 for today’s games.
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.
Chicago (AL) @ Texas
Nomar Mazara made headlines the other day when he hit a baseball 505 feet, tied for the longest home run since Statcast began measuring them.
But while this was certainly worthy of attention, it does not mean the 24 year-old outfielder is finally breaking out.
Mazara is capable of hitting the ball a long way. But he still doesn’t do it as often as he needs to in order to be a weapon. Entering today, his wRC+ is an even 100, which is exactly that of a league-average hitter. It’s better than any of his three prior MLB seasons, but it still has him on pace for only about 1.5 WAR. Good, yes, but not the stuff scouts anticipated when, at 15, he received a four million dollar signing bonus from the Rangers, and not the stuff expected from a former top-five prospect.
He clearly has plenty of power, but he’s translated it into only a .194 ISO—the best of his career, but in the lower half of qualified hitters.
Mazara seems to be trying to adjust, specifically by changing his approach. After ranking near the middle of the league for the last three years in Swing% (simply what percentage of pitches a batter swings at), Mazara has jumped into the upper quartile. And while the increase, proportionally, has come slightly from swinging at more pitches outside of the strike zone, a tendency to chase doesn’t necessarily translate into a bad hitter. The eighteen qualified hitters with a higher O-Swing% (Swing%, but only on pitches outside of the zone) than Mazara include names like Nolan Arenado, Javier Báez, and Eddie Rosario, not to mention hot bats like Tim Anderson and Eduardo Escobar.
Free-swinging is risky. Pitching staffs can take advantage of the tendency. But with his strikeout rate close to the league median, Mazara might be able to stand being even more aggressive.
Pick: Under 11.5 (-105). Low confidence.
Colorado @ Los Angeles
When the Royals finally moved Wade Davis away from starting full-time, he immediately became one of the best relievers in baseball. In his second full season out of the ‘pen (the Rays had done it with him too, successfully, but the Royals nonetheless tried to make him a starter in his first year there), he posted a 1.00 ERA backed by an unheard-of 1.19 FIP, amassing 3.1 fWAR, which is tied for the fifth-best season by a reliever in the last five years.
The success was no fluke, and for the next three years, Davis continued to be one of the best. Never again a 3-fWAR pitcher, he still managed a 0.94 ERA with a 2.29 FIP in 2015, a 1.87 ERA with another 2.29 FIP in 2016, and a 2.30 ERA with a 3.38 FIP in 2017. He was valuable in the postseason, and while he was definitely declining, he was still a great closer. The Rockies’ willingness to pay him over $17M a year was understandable.
But things kept getting worse.
Last year, his ERA increased to 4.13, with his FIP continuing to climb, landing on 3.65. The FIP increase was only slight, so while his luck had shifted, it would be fair to attribute some of that to Coors Field.
But this year, the trend has persisted, and Davis’ 5.14 ERA and 4.27 FIP have some Rockies fans pushing for Scott Oberg to take over as closer.
The importance of a closer is debatable (it’s probably less important than it was assumed to be when Francisco Rodriguez got all that praise for 62 saves, and more important than it’s been treated at times by the sabermetrics crowd), but the desire for Oberg to pick up higher-leverage situations than Davis is certainly justified. Davis’ velocity continues to drop. He’s walking 15% of opposing hitters. He’s above-average, and bouncing back isn’t out of the question (he’s definitely had hot stretches since moving to Denver), but his contract looks more an more like an albatross.
Pick: Over 9 (-110). Low confidence.
