Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 344 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 7% 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 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.
Tampa Bay @ New York (AL)
Tonight marks CC Sabathia’s fifth start of the season against the Tampa Bay Rays. In those four starts his ERA is 2.63, and three of the four have been quality starts.
But beneath those encouraging numbers lies a FIP of roughly 5.38, not all that different from Sabathia’s season-to-date FIP of 5.26. He’s only struck out 18 Rays batters in 24 innings, and he’s walked eleven.
In such a small sample size, it’s possible there’s a good reason for the ERA/FIP gap. It’s possible Sabathia really has pitched better against the Rays this year. But even then, it’s hard to make much of it in such a small sample.
Which is part of why it’s good to be skeptical of “matchup” stats. As this example shows, they’re often easy to spin.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win (+146). Low confidence.
San Francisco @ Colorado
The Giants are, unexpectedly, hot. They’re 9-2 over the month of July. They’ve climbed within two games of second in the NL West. They’re only three games back of the Cardinals for the final NL wild card spot.
Should the Giants buy? No. They’re still in last place in the division, and there are still five teams between them and the Cardinals, who hold the final NL wild card spot (for the day, anyway). They’re a decent team, but not a good one, and while the NL is looking more and more like a four-team league with the fifth playoff spot open to just about anybody, the Giants would still be wise to bolster their farm system rather than roll the dice for the chance at a coin flip for the chance to play the Dodgers in a five-game series.
What’s happened has likely been more a correction than any new trend. FanGraphs’ model rates them as a .464 team, independent of schedule. Through June, their win percentage was .434; today, it’s .479, more than 50% closer to what’s probably their true talent level than the former was.
What’s behind the hot streak, though? The offense has woken up. Through the month of June, the Giants were scoring 3.9 runs per game. In their eleven July contests, they’ve averaged 7.8 per game. With more decimal points, it isn’t exactly double, but it’s close. Of course, if you take out the 19-run outburst in the first half of yesterday’s doubleheader, it’s only 6.7 runs per game. But still, that’s quite a leap for what was, just two weeks ago, the league’s third-lowest scoring offense, and is now one run behind Cleveland for a spot in the top 20.
Small sample sizes, plucked out of a baseball season, don’t tell you a lot about a team or player. But they can still dramatically change the overall picture of that team or player. Partially because, at just 162 games, the baseball season itself isn’t the most robust sample imaginable.
Pick: Over 14.5 (-110). Low confidence.
