MLB Betting Picks & Tips
New York (-120) at Baltimore; Total: 10
The Yankees and Orioles fire it up again on Tuesday night with CC Sabathia up against Jeremy Hellickson. Sharp bettors have to be beside themselves about this game since these are two pitchers that they have been looking to fade throughout the season. To his credit, Sabathia has put together a pretty decent season. He has a 3.71 ERA with a 4.37 FIP and a 4.30 xFIP. What Sabathia has done has been impressive because he has dealt with a loss of velocity and a loss of swing and miss by changing his approach. Over the last two seasons, Sabathia has had ground ball rates over 50 percent. He has issued more walks, but he has also induced a weaker level of contact.
Jeremy Hellickson just isn’t very good. He’s induced a fair amount of weak aerial contact, but he has also allowed a lot of home runs and has a much lower strikeout rate than Sabathia. Hellickson has a 5.15/5.53/5.39 pitcher slash on the season. Sabathia has been more fortunate with stranding runners, but he also has better overall stuff. In six starts with the Orioles, things have not gone well for Hellickson with a 6.55 ERA, a 5.67 FIP, and a 5.41 xFIP.
We’re starting to see some money hit the market on Sabathia and I believe that is the right side. Factor in the Yankees bullpen and this looks like the right approach to the game. I’ll be on the visitors in this one.
Minnesota at Tampa Bay (-140); Total: 9.5
The lack of respect for Bartolo Colon is evident in the marketplace. It is hard to envision Jake Odorizzi and the Rays as a -140 favorite over anybody and certainly not a team that has been playing the way that the Twins have. Byron Buxton is raking and the Twins are getting a lot of contributions from a lot of different players. Yet, they still trail the Indians by 10 games in the AL Central. Minnesota just wrapped up 20-10 month of August and lost ground in the division, but obviously picked up some ground in the Wild Card standings.
Colon has a 6.25 ERA with a 5.08 FIP and a 5.12 xFIP for the season as a whole, but he has had some effective starts with the Twins. In 13 starts with the Braves, he only stranded 48.2 percent of his runners. In nine starts with the Twins, he has stranded 85.4 percent of his runners. He’s still allowing way too much hard contact, but Minnesota is a vastly improved defensive team with their outfield shifting and aggressiveness with shifts on the infield. Colon’s BABIP against is still .323, but given that it was .360 with the Braves, he is making some strides with an improved defense.
Jake Odorizzi has a 4.85 ERA with a 5.97 FIP and a 5.47 xFIP. He’s made 23 starts and has allowed 28 home runs. He’s a very extreme fly ball pitcher, with a ground ball rate of just 29.3 percent. Since he came off the DL on August 9, Odorizzi hasn’t been overly effective. He has walked 17 and struck out 15 in 22.1 innings of work across five starts. He’s given up five home runs. His command and control are both lacking. That doesn’t profile as a guy that should be a -140 favorite in this spot or against anybody for that matter.
Colon is a tough guy to back for a lot of reasons, but I’m confident that the Twins win this game more than 44 percent of the time, so I think there’s some value on this number. I’ll be looking to back Minnesota here.
Kansas City (-140) at Detroit; Total: 10
The Royals will send Jason Vargas to the mound for this AL Central showdown against Anibal Sanchez and the Tigers. The market has shown a slight preference for the Tigers in this spot, which is something that I cannot get behind. The Tigers have been a great offense against left-handed pitching throughout the season, but Miguel Cabrera is hurt, Justin Upton has been traded, Ian Kinsler is a shell of himself, and it is just a team that is in shambles right now.
The fact that the market is fading Vargas is not surprising. He has a 3.87 ERA with a 4.52 FIP and a 4.93 xFIP. The Regression Monster has been gnawing on Vargas for a while. Since July 5, the left-hander has a 7.20 ERA with a 6.64 FIP and a 5.33 xFIP. He only has 38 strikeouts in 50 innings and has allowed 14 home runs in that span. It was almost like his level of performance wasn’t going to continue. In six August starts, Vargas had a 7.18 ERA with a 6.23 FIP. He’s going in the wrong direction in every way imaginable.
Unfortunately, so are the Tigers. They’ve traded off a bunch of players and Brad Ausmus is probably a dead man walking, or at least he should be. He’s not the right type of manager to oversee what is sure to be a long and arduous rebuild. Even though, like Odorizzi and the Rays, the Royals don’t deserve to be a -140 favorite, this is a spot where I simply cannot play the underdog.
Texas at Atlanta (-130); Total: 9.5
The Rangers and Braves square off in Atlanta for some interleague action on Tuesday night. Miguel Gonzalez battles it out with Julio Teheran. This will be Gonzalez’s first start with the Rangers. He’s been with the White Sox since the start of 2016. Gonzalez had a 4.31 ERA with a 4.56 FIP and a 5.56 xFIP in his 22 starts with the Pale Hose. He had a career year in 2016, but wasn’t able to repeat it this season and the Rangers were looking for a warm body to work some innings late in the year. Guys like Gonzalez always find work, but he’ll have to look good in September to get a decent offer.
His strikeout rate is down, his walk rate is up, and his command is down with a spike in BABIP and home runs. Gonzalez still has just an 8.4 percent HR/FB%, so he has been able to keep the ball in the park, which has been a big help.
Julio Teheran was a guy that I isolated early in the season as a fade candidate. He has a 4.75 ERA with a 5.11 FIP and a 4.89 xFIP. He’s given up a career-high 29 home runs in just 157.1 innings of work. Last season, he allowed 22 HR in 188 and his previous career-high of 27 came in 200.2 innings. Teheran has experienced a velocity drop and a big spike in walks, so I postulated that he was hurt, but he’s managed to take the ball every fifth day. He just hasn’t been that good when he has done it. His recent starts have been a mix of good and mostly tolerable, so maybe he is going to finish the season on a high note.
The Rangers are a team that I haven’t had much interest in backing this season. I’m not sure I like them here either. Like the two games above, the favorite doesn’t deserve to be this big of a favorite, but Gonzalez is starting for a new team with a new catcher. There can be some miscommunication in that department. It’ll be a stay away game, though I may look at Gonzalez as a buy candidate down the stretch run.
Arizona at Los Angeles (-125); Total: 8
Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu are set to get it going tonight at Chavez Ravine. The Dodgers continued to struggle and were absolutely dominated by Robbie Ray and the Diamondbacks on Monday night. That was a stunner, as Arizona hasn’t done much with lefties this season, but the Dodgers are in some kind of funk right about now. Better now than in October, but this is one of those spots where you have to wonder when the bleeding will stop and who will stop it.
Greinke is having a fantastic season. He has a 3.08 ERA with a 3.14 FIP and a 3.25 xFIP. He’s back to getting lots of swings and misses and his other peripherals look more like the Zack Greinke we’ve come to know. It has been a really strong season for Arizona overall and Greinke has been at the front of the efforts. August was a little bit of a tough month for Greinke, as the sequencing and BABIP gods made a stop in his locker and followed him out to the mound. One thing that could be a potential worry is that he only has 14 strikeouts in his last 16.2 innings of work. The explosiveness has been lacking a little bit from the stuff lately.
Hyun-Jin Ryu is another lefty for the Diamondbacks, who have struggled in that split throughout the season. Arizona rocked Ryu last time out though with six runs on eight hits, including three home runs. Ryu’s only start worse than that one came at Coors Field on May 11. Will he be able to bounce back in this spot and have better success or was that a sign of things to come? Ryu, who has spent the last two seasons hurt, has gotten pretty lucky with balls in play in two of his last three starts and only has a 10/9 K/BB ratio across his last 15 innings. I’m wondering if the workload is becoming a bit of a factor for him. Ryu has thrown 111.2 innings this season after throwing just 4.2 at the MLB level last season and zero in 2015.
Right now, it’s hard to step in front of the Diamondbacks. The Dodgers have a plethora of talent, but guys have hit a bit of a wall. The urgency isn’t really there to stop it because the top seed in the NL, home field advantage in the World Series, and the division are all pretty much locked up. Arizona just keeps pushing. Paul Goldschmidt is hurt, didn’t play last night, and Arizona still scored 13 runs. This is a team that is feeling good about itself right now.
I’m a numbers guy. I don’t like grey areas. But, there are confidence elements in baseball that can come to the forefront. Right now, Arizona is as confident as anybody and they’re playing like it. That has to be factored into your handicapping, as much as it pains me to say since that is a rather unquantifiable element.
