Editor’s Note: For almost two years now, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. There have been moments of greatness (the Nationals winning the World Series last year, the first two months of last college basketball season). There have been moments of frustration (the second two months of last college basketball season). Overall, the results have been positive, with an average return on investment, per pick, of 6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,012 published picks, not including pending futures. And while 6% might not be a great annual return on overall investments, if you strategize well with timing, you can turn daily 6%’s into a whole lot more than 6% over the course of a year.
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas Consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. The blurbs aren’t always explanations of the picks—sometimes they are, but often they’re just notes related to the contest, to avoid redundancy. Data and predictions from FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks. Data from Baseball Savant and ESPN is also often used.
More futures today, so here’s the obligatory note that those lines come from Bovada, unlike the game lines, which come from the Vegas Consensus.
Colorado @ San Diego
With Mike Clevinger in the fold, the Padres rotation has jumped from competent to good. Clevinger and Dinelson Lamet are a potent one-two punch, and there are options behind them, from Garrett Richards to Chris Paddack to tonight’s starter, Zach Davies.
Last year, Davies achieved great results, posting a 3.55 ERA over nearly 160 innings for Milwaukee. A sinkerballer, Davies is somewhere in the area of Kyle Hendricks stylistically, though he doesn’t induce as many groundballs.
There’s a temptation with these pitchers to write off ERA-FIP gaps. Davies posted only a 4.56 FIP last year, and so far this season his FIP’s a very good 3.31, but nowhere near his 2.23 ERA. On the long haul, though, that sort of gap is unsustainable for any style of pitcher. Hendricks, on his career, has only a 0.38 gap. Davies, on his career, has only a 0.36 gap. Greg Maddux had a 0.10 gap. Those aren’t nothing, and it’s possible even those of Hendricks and Davies are sustainable, but even that leaves a lot of room for immediate regression from Davies, and the fact he’s backing up a .237 wOBA with a .347 xwOBA points towards a reversion toward the mean as well.
Davies is probably the Padres’ third starter, and a good one at that. That doesn’t mean the market can’t overvalue him.
Pick: Colorado to win +155. Low confidence.
Cincinnati @ Chicago (NL)
Yu Darvish and Trevor Bauer are among the best starting pitchers in the game. They’re tenth and twelfth in strikeouts. Their ERA’s are 1.44 and 2.05, respectively. They’re each going to receive a lot of Cy Young votes.
There are gaps at the top, though, and sometimes those look smaller because there are fewer pitchers filling them. Darvish’s 2.02 FIP is more than a run better than Bauer’s 3.18. Darvish walks more than one fewer batter per nine innings. Darvish allows half as many home runs (though that may not be an issue tonight, with the wind blowing in again at Wrigley).
It’s fair to call this a showdown of aces. But some aces are better than others.
Pick: Chicago (NL) -1.5 (+140). Low confidence.
Futures
FanGraphs projects both the Twins and Giants to land as seven-seeds in the playoffs. Of course, this is a narrow projection, a plurality-of-simulations sort of thing rather than a hard and fast prediction. Still, it’s believable. The Twins are playing from behind in the AL Central. The Giants are better than the Marlins on paper, are in a solid place relative to the NL field, and have little chance of catching the Padres.
For the Giants, the allure of the seven-seed is clear: It would likely allow them to line up on the side opposite that of the Dodgers and Padres, playing the flawed East or Central champion in the Wild Card Round and likely the other—or their runner up—in a potential Division Series. The math works out well for San Francisco.
For the Twins, the seed doesn’t really matter. The AL’s best teams are all between 85-win and 90-win teams in quality (again, from FanGraphs), and with the Blue Jays possibly bound for the middle of the field, it’d take some needle-threading to actually get much of an advantage beyond batting as the home team in a bubble environment. This is why FanGraphs, while still projecting the Twins as the second-to-last team in the playoff field, also projects the Twins as the current American League favorite.
It’s a narrow favorite-ship—16.1%, with the A’s close behind at 15.3%, and five other teams at ten percent or above. But it’s a favorite-ship nonetheless, and it demonstrates that the Twins, on paper, are the best team in the American League right now, and deserving of far better than 15-to-2 pennant odds.
Pick: Minnesota to win ALCS +750. Low confidence.
Pick: San Francisco to win World Series +7000. Low confidence.
