| Range | W | L | P | +/- (Units) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yesterday | 2 | 1 | 0.00 | +3.60 |
| Last 30 Days | 39 | 45 | 0.00 | +3.34 |
| Season to Date | 81 | 95 | 0.00 | +2.03 |
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All plays are for 2 units
Listed pitchers must go
St. Louis +175 over LOS ANGELES
Clayton Kershaw has started 11 games and has just four wins. His ERA is 3.73 but we’re not about to make an argument that he’s laboring. Kershaw has been extremely unlucky with a high 34% hit rate and a low 69% strand rate. He is still one of the best in the game but this has nothing to do with fading him. If the best pitchers won even 75% of the time, we’d all be rich. This has nothing to do with fading Kershaw and everything to do with backing Jaime Garcia and the Cardinals. It also has a lot to do with the price tag.
Garcia has only three starts this year. He was recovering from shoulder surgery so he spent the early part of the year on the DL. In his first start, he threw 102 pitches against the Mets over 7 frames and allowed just five hits and two runs. In his second start, he threw 91 pitches at home against the Snakes over six full innings and allowed eight hits and three earned runs. Finally, last week, Garcia went seven full again and allowed just three hits and one run against Milwaukee. Over his last two starts, Garcia did not walk a single batter while striking out 9. In his three starts, Garcia has a sick groundball/line-drive/fly-ball rate of 67%/16%/17%. Over 21 innings, it’s been mostly weak contact against him. He has a 2.70 ERA, a 3.11 xERA and a 1.05 WHIP. Indeed it’s a small sample size but his skills remain intact or better and his history proves what he’s capable of. It’s not unusual for a pitcher to look better than ever after surgery and recovery and that applies to Garcia. He’s never looked better. Now Garcia brings his confidence into pitcher-friendly Dodger Stadium, where L.A. is 21-7. However, overall the Dodgers are only 3-9 against teams at or above .500 and 2-6 vs. southpaws. The Cardinals have the best record in the majors, they took the opener last night and they absolutely have a great chance to beat the Dodgers again here.
Milwaukee +120 over MINNESOTA
We have to trust that the Twins are the sucker play of the day. What we have here is the first place Twinkies spotting a very cheap price against the last place Brewers. Furthermore, Minnesota’s 19-8 home record is best in the AL and second best behind St. Louis in the entire league. It gets even better. Milwaukee sends out Matt Garza and his 5.52 ERA over 10 starts and 1 relief appearance. Garza is 3-7 over 10 starts with a road ERA of 7.07 over five starts and he’s pitching for the worst team in baseball. The Twins opened as a -111 favorite. Most gamblers will see the short price and see J.R. Graham’s 3.10 ERA (1.80 ERA at home) over 20 relief appearances and jump in, thinking they got the steal of the year. The money started coming in on the Twins very early this morning and has not stopped.
Did the oddsmakers err here? Think again friends. This is a clear enticement to take the favorite and it has worked. The oddmakers have clearly taken a position here and when they do that, we want to be on the same side as they are. We’re not going to break down Garza’s struggles because it’s really not that relevant in this situation. Instead, we’ll take a closer look at Graham making his first start of the year. Graham is now in the category of reliever turned starter. We cannot overstate enough the difference between the two. Every reliever you see out there is a former starter that could not make it as one. Instead they turn into a specialty performer. They come into face just a handful of batters and sometimes just one or two. Relievers rarely bring more than a two-pitch arsenal to the mound with them. Not many starters have ever lasted at this level with a two-pitch arsenal. Relievers usually have a higher k-rate than starters because they can just fire away as hard as they can for the 20 or so pitches that they’re being asked to throw. Put absolutely no weight on J.R. Graham’s 17 K’s over 21.1 relief appearances.
Graham was once one of the Braves top prospects. He was selected in the December 2014 Rule 5 draft by the Twins. He has taken a step back the past two seasons due to his declining velocity, stuff, and mediocre results. Graham has spent the bulk of the past two-and-a-half seasons in Double-A, some of which could be attributed to a strained shoulder suffered in 2013. He used to consistently throw in the mid-90s, but his velocity took a step back. However, reports indicate that he’s hitting 95 on the gun but again, that’s in relief. In 2013 and 2014 combined, pitching at the Double-A level for the Mississippi Braves, Graham started 27 games and recorded two wins. His ERA’s in those two years was 4.04 and 5.55 respectively. His respectable 3.37 career minor-league ERA is a direct result of a 2.13 ERA over 157 innings at A-Ball, pitching for Danville is 2011 and Lynchburg in 2012. There are many whammy’s against Graham but the two most noteworthy is the undeserved jump from Double-A straight to the majors and going from relieving to starting. The Twins may look appealing here but it’s all fool’s gold. The opening line says so.
TORONTO -1½ +142 over Houston
In two starts since coming off the DL, Brett Oberholtzer has posted a 3.24 ERA. That’s nice, it really is but we’re not buyers. You see, Oberholtzer allowed 12 hits in those 8.1 innings, not to mention issuing four walks. That equals a WHIP of 1.92, which does not coincide with his 3.24 ERA and oppBA of .364. Small sample size, yes, but Oberholtzer went 4-13 with a 4.39 ERA over 144 innings for the Astronauts last year over a much bigger sample size. Truth be told, Oberholtzer is a fly-ball, soft-tosser with his change-up as his only true strikeout rate. His success is at the mercy of his defense, luck and hr/f rate, which we would not count on at this park. The Blue Jays are 5-2 at home against lefties, they own the best marks in BA, slugging% and OPS against lefties in the entire league and it shouldn’t take them too long to get to this southpaw.
Drew Hutchison has an ERA of 5.26 after 11 starts, which is further proof of just how misleading ERA’s can be at times. Hutchison brings a strong overall skill set that is masked by some unfortunate strand rate issues. His low strand rate of 61% is due to normalize and the result will be an ERA correction to the good. Hutchison’s biggest problem in the past was difficulties against lefties but he has solved that with a BAA of .243 against left-handed batters. Solve the strand rate issues and this gets really exciting. Hutchison has a BB/K split over his last five starts covering 32 innings of 4/31. He can flat out dominate a lineup when he’s on his game, like he did two starts back when he threw a four-hit complete game shutout over the South Side. At the Rogers Center, Hutchison is 3-1 with a 2.97 ERA over five starts, which is right in line with his home xERA of 3.43. The Jays have won three in a row while scoring six runs or more in all three, which includes knocking out Max Scherzer in the sixth inning and outscoring the Nats 15-3 in the final two games of that series. Jays bullpen is well-rested too.
Texas +150 over KANSAS CITY
You really have to like what the Rangers are doing. Projected to be bottom feeders, Texas is now 29-26 and on the heels of the Astros in the AL West. The Rangers took the opener last night, 4-0. They have now won six of seven. Wandy Rodriguez is 2-0 on the road with an ERA of 2.02. While we can’t expect him to maintain that level of success, we can expect him to remain reliable and give his team a chance. Rodriguez has a nifty BB/K split of 16/54 over 63 innings. His swinging strike rate is up to 10% over his last five starts and his velocity on his fastball is up to 92.2 mph with sink. We also like that Rodriguez has had success against current Royals, holding them to a BA of .211 over 51 combined AB’s.
Yordano Ventura throws hard. Boy, does he throw hard. It is said that he reaches triple digits on the radar gun several times every game. His average fastball is the hardest in the game. However, there are big concerns, discovered by Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, who talks about the inverse relationship between fastball velocity and pull rate. Home runs tend to get pulled. Doubles and triples tend to get pulled. Pulled balls are hit harder. You understand how this works. Against righties, Ventura has allowed an above-average rate of pulled air balls. Against lefties, Ventura has allowed an above-average rate of pulled air balls. Overall, his pulled-air-ball rate ranks fifth-highest out of 137 starters so this isn’t just about grounders. Batters have turned Ventura’s pitches around and they’ve done damage. Lefties in particular. When batters have pulled the ball against Ventura, they’ve slugged .573. When they haven’t pulled the ball (but did still hit the ball), they’ve slugged .354. Ventura has been pulled unusually often. He’s allowed solid contact unusually often. What that means is that hitters have been taking unusually comfortable swings. Ventura’s rates are worse than they were a year ago, in this regard. Ventura has baseball’s second-highest pull rate, between Jered Weaver and Jeremy Guthrie. To make matters less encouraging still, Ventura owns baseball’s lowest rate of softly-hit batted balls. Next-lowest is Colby Lewis, and the two are separated only by a couple percentage points. Do you really want to spot this big a price with a pitcher that is matching under the surface peripherals with Colby Lewis, Jered Weaver and Jeremy Guthrie? We don’t.
Scouting report:
Joe Ross (RHP - WAS)
Younger brother to the Padres Tyson Ross, the 6’4”, 205-pound 22-year-old packs serious potential in an exciting package. Ross throws 91-93 mph fastballs from a loose, slightly crossfire delivery, and he muscles up to 96 when he needs it. He sinks the ball and runs it to his arm side well enough to record a 1.59 groundout/airout ratio in 2014 that ranked just outside the top 50 for qualified minor league starters. Ross throws two promising secondary weapons, including a plus slider in the low to mid-80s that he uses to back-foot lefties and expand the zone against righties. He throws a low-80s changeup with increasingly good arm speed and separation, and some scouts project the pitch to above-average. Ross began to show a killer instinct in the second half of 2014, going after batters with his best stuff rather than pitching to contact, and the strategy paid off with the best SO/BB ratio of his career. 2015 has seen more of the same kind of domination from Ross, with some of the best rates of his career, which includes 9.5 K’s/9. However, Ross still only has 71.1 innings above Single-A and has not faced a tremendous amount of advanced bats, so how he adjusts to major league batters at this point of his career is more of a dice gamble. With Stephen Strasburg nursing a troublesome neck/back and even worse pitching performances, an effective Ross would help take pressure off a team that has had its fair share of difficulties to start 2015 until they can send him back to Harrisburg for more development. Ross is a guy to keep an eye on. He has all the tools and potential to be a good one but he does not come recommended at this point until we see what he can do at this level.
His career minor league numbers: 351.0 IP, 2.81 ERA, 7.6 K’s/9, 21 HR, .250 oppBA, 1.28 WHIP.
STATS: 2015 Harrisburg (AA): 9 gs, 2-2, 2.81 ERA, 51.1 IP, 2.1 BB/9, 9.5 K’s/9, 3 HR, .246 oppBA, 1.13 WHIP
