Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 457 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 6% 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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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 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.
Miami @ Atlanta
We can’t talk enough about the year Mike Soroka is having. He turned 22 earlier this month. He’s tied with Clayton Kershaw in fWAR. He’s tied with Max Scherzer in ERA. He’s narrowly ahead of Stephen Strasburg in FIP.
Soroka has been, in almost every way, a top-ten starter when on the mound this season. The fact that he isn’t the overwhelming favorite for the NL’s Rookie of the Year award this season is a testament to how good baseball’s youth movement really is.
Pick: Under 9.5 (-120). Low confidence.
Colorado @ St. Louis
German Márquez continues to impress, ranking 18th among qualified starters in fWAR. And that’s with a certainly Coors Field-inflated 19.9% HR/FB ratio, fourth-worst in the league. In xFIP, which assumes HR/FB ratio will revert to the mean, Márquez ranks eleventh.
Normally, I’m a bit skeptical of xFIP, because pitchers do tend to allow home runs in different quantities. But with someone like Márquez, pitching a mile higher than most of the league for roughly half his starts, it’s a useful barometer.
Pick: Under 8 (-110). Low confidence.
Toronto @ Los Angeles
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, and Cavan Biggio are all very good hitters. They’re in the major leagues, after all, but even adjusting to that sample, they’ve been solid. They may soon be great baseball players. But right now, they’re only strong ones.
Bichette’s 173 wRC+ is the outlier among these three, but it’s come over only 103 plate appearances, and it’s been driven by a likely unsustainable .391 BABIP. His .297 xBA is very good, but not as good as his .333 true batting average. He’ll likely return to earth, and still be good, but not what he’s been so far.
Guerrero’s 117 wRC+ places him 63rd among the 183 hitters with 350 or more PA’s this season. Better than average by a good deal. But among third basemen, he’s only 14th out of the 31 at or above that threshold. Again, sensational for a rookie, but not on the level of Kris Bryant or Alex Bregman yet (or even Yuli Gurriel).
And Biggio, while above replacement-level, has actually been a bit below average at the plate, with only a 91 wRC+. On the opposite side of Bichette, he looks like he’s had a bit of bad luck. His BABIP is a below-average .276. His xBA is .238. His true batting average is .210. Still, probably not much more than a league-average hitter right now.
This is not at all to criticize these players or the attention given them. They’re rookies. They’re on the same team. They’re very, very good (especially Bichette so far). They, and the storyline of their former MLB-star dads, are great for the game, and they figure to only get better as they spend more time at the major league level.
Instead, I’m saying it to temper expectations a bit in the short-term. They’re rookies. They’re being asked to carry the load for their team against very good pitchers. They shouldn’t be expected to perform like the Alex Bregman’s of the world just yet.
Pick: Under 9.5 (-115). Low confidence.
