Editor’s Note: Joe would downplay how successful this is, but over a sample size of 294 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.
Seattle @ Milwaukee
Zach Davies is an interesting specimen.
He’s six feet tall, weighing only 155 pounds.
He’s a former 26th-round pick.
He throws a slower fastball than 96% of major league pitchers.
He strikes out fewer batters than 94% of major league pitchers.
Yet his opponents’ XBA (expected batting average, given the exit velocity and launch angle of balls in play) is lower than that of 86% of his peers.
Yes, Davies is productive on the mount, having managed a combined 5.2 fWAR over the 2016 and 2017 seasons before missing a good chunk of last year with shoulder and back injuries. And this year, he’s having his best season yet, healthy and notching a 3.06 ERA to date.
But if you read this regularly, you know I’m going to mention the FIP. And the FIP—4.46—doesn’t look as rosy.
Now, with a softer-throwing guy, the speculation could be made that he’ll often have a lower ERA than his FIP indicates. And over the course of his career, he has, posting a 3.89 ERA and a 4.15 FIP. But that’s a gap roughly 80% smaller than his 2019 spread, and it highlights another foreboding reality: his FIP is higher than his career average.
The difference doesn’t come from balls in play: his opponents’ BABIP is right on its career average of .298, despite the fact his opponents’ XSLG and XWOBA (expected slugging and weighted on base percentage, based on Statcast’s batted ball data), are .436 and .332, respectively, against career averages of .410 and .322.
Instead, the difference comes from timing. Davies is stranding 81.0% of possible runners on base. His career average is 73.8%. The league average is somewhere around 72%.
In other words, Davies, while still pitching much as he always has, has gotten luckier than ever before.
And that bodes poorly for his ability to sustain this performance.
Pick: Seattle to win (+160). Low confidence.
Los Angeles @ Arizona
Ross Stripling was never a top prospect. He was a fine prospect, but never a top one. And in a loaded farm system, that doesn’t draw a lot of attention.
Similarly, strong performance in a loaded pitching staff doesn’t draw a lot of attention, which is why Stripling—the Dodgers’ sixth starter in a world of perfect health—doesn’t get much love.
Yet since debuting in 2016, the 29-year-old has been nothing but consistent, with his ERA and FIP always between 3.00 and 4.00, walks never issued to more than eight percent of opposing hitters, more than 70 innings always consumed, even in 2017, when he was almost strictly a reliever.
While the report is that his start tonight will be “abbreviated” as he returns to the rotation following Rich Hill’s forearm injury, the Dodgers are in good hands.
Pick: Under 9.5 (-110). Low confidence.
