SPORTS WAGERS
Pittsburgh +109 over N.Y. METS
Trevor Williams throws strikes. He’s only walked four batters over his last 25 frames and that goes hand in hand with what he did in the spring. In fact, the 6'3", 230-pound Williams had a great spring, striking out 18 in 17.2 IP while walking only two. Trevor Williams is a rookie also but he’s paid his dues and has a swing and miss rate of 10%. He also has a four-pitch mix that he can throw for strikes at any time. Williams doesn’t have any real put-away pitch but he’s adept at keeping hitters off-balance. That said, this one is all about fading Tyler Pill.
Yeah, yeah, we know we said we wouldn’t bet the Pirates again but that was just steam. We have to continue to play value and we promise you that Tyler Pill is not even close to being major-league ready. Pill is coming off a beauty against the Brewers ---on paper but it was one of the luckiest starts you will ever see. His pitching line in his first start was 5.1 innings pitched, six hits and one earned run but under the hood reveals a completely different story. In those 5.1 innings, Pill walked four batters and struck out four batters but his swing and miss rate of 3% says the Brewers were a little too anxious to hit his 88 MPH fastball. Pill was pitching with traffic all game and left with a 1.83 WHIP and a BABIP of .125. A 3% swing and miss rate is what an everyday fielder registers when he comes into pitch in a blowout game in the ninth inning. We’ve all seen it. The score is 20-2 in the ninth inning and the manager doesn’t want to use an arm so he asks one of his bench players to throw the ninth inning. That bench player will get a 3% swing and miss rate too. At Triple-A Las Vegas, Pill walked 14 batters and struck out 23 in 46 innings so he wasn’t striking ‘em out in the minors either. This is a Double-A pitcher making his second career start after the planets were aligned perfectly for him in his first.
MILWAUKEE +125 over Los Angeles
Zach Davies is a consistent strike-thrower with a strong groundball lean (56%) with not much of a platoon split and few disaster starts over the past two years. His marginal swing and miss rate likely caps his K rate and his xERA shows, the "low ceiling, high floor" label does seem to fit here. However, value in that predictability. Davies is a risk when favored but he has profit potential as a pooch.
Kenta Maeda is an iffy proposition for this road start in Milwaukee. Maeda’s fly-ball tendencies play into a big positive in the Milwaukee splits (.855 OPS vs. fly-ball pitchers), and the Dodger right-hander is coming off back-to-back shaky starts. The Brewers have an excellent aggregate line against the slider, an important pitch in the Maeda arsenal. Most importantly, the Dodgers are overpriced here in a big way.
Minnesota -1½ +147 over L.A. ANGELS
Ricky Nolasco has a 5.07 ERA after 11 starts. What’s more disturbing is that he has a strand rate of 80%. If his strand rate was normal, he’d be counting heads on the bus from the hotel to the park instead of taking the mound every fifth day. The Angels have lost Nolasco’s last six starts in which he’s been tagged for 46 hits in 31 innings. That hit percentage is the result of always being around the plate with pedestrian stuff. His 35%/45% groundball/fly-ball split isn’t encouraging either.
It’s very tempting to play the Twins here at -111 just in case they win by only one run but if we thought it was going to be that close, we would not bet it. Of course nobody knows for sure but the Twinkies -111 is a bargain and so is spotting the extra half run here.
Jose Berrioshad a big debut month after being recalled from Triple-A. He had a great 2.70 ERA and 0.79 WHIP over his four starts, and those marks were backed by strong skills: 9.1 K’s/9, 2.7 BB’s/9 and a 46% groundball rate. His command sub-indicators were rock solid too: 10.5% swing and miss rate, 62% first-pitch strike rate and 65% overall strikes. Berrios is one of baseball’s best pitching prospects and has started to show it at the big league level. He labored through an ugly 58.3 IP last year with virtually nothing going right (the 8.02 ERA and 1.87 WHIP tell the story, as the skills weren’t there and the poor results followed) across 14 starts. He’s been electric in four starts and looks nothing like the young arm who struggled so much last year. All three pitches are markedly better, but the fastball is the key, of course. The high fastball has been particularly important and led to a .259 OPS and 35% K’s on the pitch. High fastballs have ended 25% of his plate appearances this year. The curveball has been straight filth. He’s gotten 12 strikeouts with it in 23 plate appearances. He has hung a couple for homers in his outing at Baltimore but it’s a true out pitch right now and the Angels aren’t the Orioles. Play the Twinkies straight up or -1½ but play it because it’s a true pitching mismatch at a bargain price.
