SPORTS WAGERS
Texas +119 over N.Y. YANKEES
The Chicago Cubs open the season on fire and for the first 2½ months of the season they are a 2-1 favorite or more in a high majority of their games. The Cubs have since cooled off. The Texas Rangers open the season on fire and they come in as a dog almost every night, even in their own park. The Rangers remain hot and now have the most wins in MLB after leapfrogging over the Cubs yesterday. They have not cooled off. Funny, isn’t it, how the market sees two teams with identical records? The difference is that the Cubbies have quality starters going almost every day while the Rangers have one quality starter in Cole Hamels. In the case of the Texas Rangers, pitching isn’t everything, which brings us to this series in New York.
The Yanks are 6-7 over their past 13 games. However, five of those six wins occurred against the Twins. The other victory occurred against the Rockies in a game the Yanks trailed 8-4 in the seventh inning. The Yankees are 37-37 overall but have played the 21st ranked schedule in MLB. Against top-10 teams, New York has seven wins in 24 games and that alone makes them worthy of fading here. Then there’s Ivan Nova, who has a mere 44 K’s in 64 innings to go along with a 5.18 ERA and 1.38 WHIP. Nova has been tagged for 12 jacks in 64 innings. When all of your bad seasons are HR-heavy, it's not just hr/f bad luck. Nova’s return from TJS last year kept his expectations light, but he still disappointed. His fastball is awful (career 5% swing and miss) and he lacks a reliable 3rd pitch. He needs a better fastball or return to the slider to get back on the radar. To spotting a tag with Nova and the Yanks, we say no thanks.
By contrast, Texas has played the ninth ranked schedule in the league and has won 13 of 20 games against top-10 competition. Against top-15 competition, Texas is 30-12 while the Yanks are 12-25. The battle to keep the fifth starter’s slot warm for Yu Darvish is more or less a heads-up competition between Nick Martinez and Chi Chi Gonzalez, even though it probably shouldn’t be. Martinez essentially turns every hitter he faces into Xander Bogaerts and keeps getting himself demoted. Chi-Chi Gonzalez has significantly higher upside—how could he not?—though he has battled his own inconsistency thus far in his brief big league career. His heinous ratio of 30 strikeouts to 32 walks drove a xERA in his rookie season that ranked 201st out of 216 pitchers to log his 67 innings. Gonzalez has done little to ease concerns with a 5.04 ERA at Round Rock of the Pacific Coast League this year. However, Gonzalez has only been taken deep three times in 80.1 innings for Round Rock. The PCL always inflates the numbers against pitchers. Furthermore, in his 67 innings last year for the Rangers, Rodriguez held the opposition to a meager 47 hits and a .202 batting average. That all occurred after pitching 35.2 innings of the 67 he threw at hitter-friendly Globe Life Park. With a heavy groundball lean, surely, Gonzalez is capable of a solid outing against a Yankees’ team that beats up only on the weak.
COLORADO -1½ +185 over Toronto
Jonathan Gray is coming off a game in the Bronx in which the Yankees won, 9-8. Gray only allowed three hits in four innings but one of those hits was a grand-slam. He uncharacteristically walked five batters and got the hook early after throwing 80 pitches. Gray is now 4-3 with a 4.80 ERA after 12 starts. Thing is, Gray has a 57% strand rate. That is the lowest strand rate in the majors among qualified starters and it is a hugely luck-driven stat. Gray comes in with a BB/K split of 24/75 in 69 innings to go along with a 50% groundball rate. His swing and miss rate is 12% but it is 13% over his last five starts after he struck out 36 batters in 37 frames. Gray’s ERA over his last five starts is 3.13 and his overall xERA is 3.30. With top-tier punch-outs and a groundball tilt, Gray is a budding ace who won't come cheap much longer. That he’s a dog at home to Marco Estrada is extraordinary.
Do we really have to go over this again? Of course we do and we love it only Estrada is getting worse, not better. In his last start, his fly-ball rate was 75%. We’ll see how that plays out at Coors. In his last start against Arizona, Estrada only allowed two hits in six innings but one was a jack and six balls were warning track shots.
That out recorded by Kevin Pillar in CF will go down in the box score the same way as a soft roller to first base. It’s an out. Thing is, Estrada has been recording outs like that all season long, not to mention all of last year too. At some point, those hard hit balls will NOT be hit at people. Instead, they will find the gaps. Estrada’s velocity is also down a couple of ticks to 87.8 MPH. There has never been a pitcher in the history of this game that has ridden a changeup to the type of success that Estrada has. That’s his weapon of choice and guys go up there trying to hit the cover off the ball because it’s so juicy. Most of the time batters just miss hitting it out. Estrada comes in with the luckiest BABIP in the majors at .183. That’s 135 points lower than Noah Syndergaard’s .318 BABIP. It’s also 80 points lower than Clayton Kershaw’s and 104 points lower than Jake Arrieta’s. Estrada’s 80% strand rate is doing a lot of the heavy lifting too.
Most ordinary pitchers are helped out by some good and bad luck. They’ll have a low hit rate but a low strand rate to even it out. They’ll have a high strand rate but a high BABIP to even it out. There are many luck-driven stats in baseball. It’s a stats driven game but Marco Estrada has taken one pitch, the changeup and turned it into months of incredibly good luck. No luck-driven stat has worked against him. He has a low hit rate, a high strand rate, a remarkably low BABIP rate, he walks too many guys that don’t come back to score, he is often behind in the count and he has the highest fly-ball rate in baseball among qualified starters. These aren’t skills that equal up to a 2.70 ERA. So while guys like Buck Martinez and Pat Tabler salivate all over themselves when talking about Estrada, we’ll continue to fade this less than ordinary pitcher because once the floodgates open, it’s going to be a tsunami. Those fly-balls to the warning track will not be outs in Colorado.
St. Louis +106 over KANSAS CITY
Danny Duffy is breaking out—again ... Duffy has done this before. He posted a 2.53 ERA in his breakout 2014 season, but underwhelming skills that year made his 2015 dud somewhat unsurprising. Duffy's at it again in 2016 with a 3.38 ERA. Does this breakout have more legs than the last one? Not really. While there are several encouraging signs, there are also some concerns that MLB hitters catch onto real quick. Duffy has 71 K’s in 59 innings. We're typically skeptical of a major strikeout rate spike like this but Duffy's fastball velocity is up nearly two mph and his swing and miss rate has exploded. Looks like Duffy can certainly keep a K-per-inning + pace. Duffy's impressive performance comes with plenty of support, as he's throwing more strikes, generating more whiffs, and doing it with more velocity. Duffy's changeup, which has produced a 19% swing and miss rate this year, has been an increasingly used weapon as well (9% usage in 2014-15; 15% in 2016). We need to urge caution given the 59-innings sample size. We also must point out that Duffy is not durable. He started the year in the pen for his first 17 appearances. Many of his K’s happened when he was facing three batters an outing. He threw 102 pitches in his last start in just four innings. That suggests he has trouble “putting away” hitters and that occurred against the Mets. He has yet to make it past the sixth inning in any of his starts and he’s only made it past five innings in four starts. Duffy also has a 33%/47% groundball/fly-ball ratio. Incidentally, the Cardinals .786 OPS on the road is the third best in MLB. Danny Duffy's numbers are pretty but they are also deceiving because so many of his good stats have come in relief only.
Adam Wainwright had ace status for years but this market is quite aware of the slide he’s been on for well over a year. Wainwright rallied from an April Achilles injury to pitch out of the pen late in the second half of last year but it was too small to matter (8 IP including post-season). Wainwright got off to a rocky start this year too with a 4.73 ERA after his first eight starts through May 12. We were quick to point out Wainwright’s skills decline but we’re also quick to point out when a correction to the good is forthcoming. Wainwright finally has his strength back and he is looking once again like an ace. Wainwright wasn’t striking out many batters early on so he only has 65 K’s in 91 innings but he has whiffed 30 over his past 34 innings. That comes with support of his 12% swing and miss rate over that span. Wainwright’s groundball rate is increasing too practically every start. That rate was at 40% in the first month of the season but it is up to 50% over his last five starts. Adam Wainwright’s xERA over his last five starts is 3.19. That puts him in elite company. His actual ERA over that span is even better at 2.94. Adam Wainwright has his skills and confidence back.
