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L.A. Angels +100 over TORONTO

The Blue Jays starters are struggling, the bullpen is a mess and now the hitters are laboring too. Over a 10-day span, Toronto has gone from leading the league in batting average with a .302 mark to its current overall BA of .278. That’s a drop of 24 points. Toronto is hitting .237 over their last 10 games. Overall, Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion are hitting .230 and .223 respectively. Two of the nine batters are raw rookies (Ezequiel Carrera, Chris Colabello) while Ryan Goins may as well be with his .231 batting average. Kevin Pillar is down to .233. Things are so bad that manager John Gibbons has power-hitter Josh Donaldson batting leadoff, Russell Martin hitting cleanup and Colabello and Carrera batting 5th and 6th respectively. The Jays made Jered Weaver look like Matt Harvey last night and they’ll face another off-speed starter here. Matt Shoemaker emerged from LAA's bullpen in early May of last year and completely befuddled major league hitters over the next four months, finishing with a 16-4 record. Shoemaker's secondary offerings, including a devastating splitter that induces whiffs at a 22% clip makes up for his so-so fastball, which teeters around 90 MPH. Shoemaker has outstanding control, as evidenced by his BB/K split of 7/38 in 38 innings. Shoemaker is off to a slow start with a 3-3 record to go along with a misleading 5.63 ERA. That high ERA has him undervalued and we’re always interested in undervalued pitchers. Truth is, Shoemaker’s surface stats have been derailed by a low 62% strand rate. His xERA of 3.67 is a better barometer of what he’s capable of. Shoemaker’s xERA over his last five starts is 3.12 so a major correction to the good in his actual ERA is forthcoming.

R.A. Dickey is getting older, slower and more useless with each outing. Dickey has a horrible BB/K split of 19/23 in 50 frames. Over his last 31 innings covering five starts, Dickey has a BB/K split of 7/7. One more 7 and he would be a slot machine. In eight starts, Dickey has one victory. Dickey really needs no introductions because we all know what he is. He’s a knuckleballer that is missing fewer bats than ever. It’s now been two full years plus since Dickey’s dominant Cy Young season. At age 40 and in the AL, those days are not returning and when he’s favored like he is here, he’s pure fade material.

Cleveland -1½ +134 over CHICAGO
John Danks versus Danny Salazar is a mismatch. Danks groundball/fly-ball split of 33%/47% figures to get him into more trouble. Danks has already been taken yard six times in 38.2 innings. He comes in with a WHIP of 1.37 to go along with an ERA of 4.66, which is right in line with his xERA of 4.58. Danks is definitely leaving the ball up, as his 33% groundball rate is 10 points lower than his norm, and his 43% fly-ball % is five points above. That's contributing to a 35% hit rate, but he was a 4.75 ERA pitcher when his hit rate was around 29% - 30% in 2013 and 2014. What we really like is that he’s faced the Tribe twice already this year so they have plenty of information on him. In his second start against Cleveland this year, Danks was taken deep twice.

The South Side has not seen Danny Salazar this season, which is a huge advantage in our favor. Salazar comes in with a misleading 4.01 ERA after six starts but the Indians have won five of those. More importantly, Salazar has posted the best skills of any starter with five starts or more this season. He has a BB/K split of 6/52 in 38 innings. That’s 12.8 K’s/9. His surface stats haven't been similarly as dominating due to a 34% hit rate and a crazy 22% hr/f. Salazar has been unlucky but once his strand rate and hr/f rates normalize, he is going to put up a lot of goose eggs. Salazar’s xERA of 2.43 is a more accurate account of just how dominating he can be. We’re buying his xERA.
 

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