Editor’s Note: Joe would say this isn’t that great, but over a sample size of 266 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 1% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high), meaning he’s been good enough to at least not lose 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.
- 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.
Milwaukee @ Houston
Brad Peacock has been mentioned here before, but he’s pitching well enough to bear mentioning again.
In nearly 65 innings, Peacock has posted an ERA and FIP just over 3.00, which while not altogether necessary for the Astros, is certainly helping things. He and Wade Miley have pitched well enough to make up for the woeful performance of various starters not named Justin Verlander or Gerrit Cole, keeping starting pitching from being an active problem for the AL’s best team.
Peacock hasn’t been dominant—he’s only reached double-digit strikeouts once—and he hasn’t eaten many innings—he’s only pitched more than six innings once. But he’s been enough, and right now, enough is valuable.
Pick: Houston to win -118. Low confidence.
Detroit @ Kansas City
Spencer Turnbull has been one of the American League’s best rookies.
This isn’t all that exciting, when taken as one piece of data. I mean, it’s exciting for Turnbull, and for his friends and family, and for the Tigers community at large. But in the grand scheme of baseball, it isn’t that big of a deal. Somebody has to be the best. Somebodies have to each be one of the best.
Viewed in context, though, this is much more exciting, because Turnbull didn’t enter the year heralded as much of a prospect. He was a second-round pick, which is promising, but that was back in 2014, and since then, he didn’t do much to suggest he’d one day be a major league team’s second-most valuable player—even a bad team’s.
But here he is, putting up an ERA of 3.01 and a FIP under 4.00, saving the bullpen at a 185-inning pace, and making the Tigers’ future look a little less bleak. Because if Turnbull can even just be a contributing member of the rotation going forward, that’s one fewer piece the Tigers need to cobble together before they can get back to contending in the AL Central. And if Turnbull can be a sub-4.00 ERA guy going forward, behind a currently-breaking-out Matthew Boyd and one-of-baseball’s-top-prospects Casey Mize, starting pitching might soon be a strength in Detroit.
Pick: Detroit to win +130. Low confidence.
