18
MAY
2017

MLB May 3rd

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Yesterday: 3-0, +3.06 Units
April: 62-49 +14.93 Units
May: 4-1, +3.11 Units
Season: 66-50, +18.04 Units

It’s a new month but we’re still rolling right along at 4-1 in May after the 3-0 sweep last night. Now up over 18 units on the season and will just keep the good times going as long as we can. Here’s what we have tonight….

Nationals (-134): I like Robbie Ray, if you’ve followed my plays and write ups over the past year or so you are well aware of that. Tonight however he’s got a pretty rough matchup. The Nationals are flat out murdering left handed pitching this season. As a team they have a 194 wRC+ against lefties which is far and away the best in baseball. Ray has good stuff and as usual his K rate is elite but his BB’s are becoming more and more of an issue. Last year he put up a 3.67 BB/9 which is already shaky, but now that’s spiked to 5.04 BB/9 and that’s just awful. Against a team that hits lefties as hard as the Nats do you can’t be giving them free passes on top of it. On the flip side the D-Backs are struggling with lefties so far this year with only an 82 wRC+ against them which ranks 20th in the league. Gio Gonzalez is hoping he can keep those D-Backs struggles against lefties going. On the year he’s pitched pretty well but has also seen a bit of luck go his way in terms of strand rate and BABIP. Now I don’t expect Gio to keep an ERA under 2 all year or anything but even when the regression does come I still think he’ll be alright. Tonight he should have the benefit of plenty of run support behind him and at only -134 I’m plenty comfortable taking a team as stacked as the Nats are.

Pirates (-129):
I don’t want to be overly harsh but I might as well shoot straight. Rookie Davis looks absolutely horrible. I’ve seen a few of his starts this year and he doesn’t look even close to someone that belongs on a big league roster, let alone in a big league rotation. He’s gone 9.2 IP in only 3 starts so lets start there, an average of about 3 IP per start… kind of tells you all you need to know. Every stat and every angle you look at with this guy is awful. I’m going to dare him to prove me wrong today and I suspect that when he doesn’t that he’s probably headed back to AAA. Pirates youngster Jameson Taillon however has more than proven he belongs at this level. In 134 career innings he’s got a 3.08 ERA, a respectable K rate and a very low BB rate. In addition to all that he’s also got a 53.0% career ground ball rate. He throws in the mid 90’s, has good command, and he checks all the boxes in what you are looking for in a pitcher. Taillon is worlds better than Davis right now at even on the road -129 feels too cheap here.

Blue Jays (-105): CC Sabathia had a few decent starts to start the year but things have come off the rails here recently and now we’re left the same over the hill CC that we’ve seen the past few years. He’s only got a 6.21 K/9 rate, he’s got a 3.41 BB/9 rate which is on the high end, he’s still only throwing about 90 MPH on the fastball and frankly his stuff is well below average at this point in his career. For all the problems the Blue Jays have had to so far this year hitting left handed pitching isn’t one of them. On the year they are 8th best in baseball with a 105 wRC+ against lefties and I think they do just fine against CC tonight. One of the other few things that have gone well for the Jays is Marcus Stroman. Now Stroman isn’t an elite stuff guy, he isn’t a high K guy and doesn’t miss a ton of bats. What he does however is throw strikes, not walk many, and get a ton of ground balls. Again this year Stroman is flirting with a 60% ground ball rate and that’s on the heels of being over 60% in both 2015 and 2016. That’s the simple formula for his success. He isn’t going to blow you away but he won’t give you anything for free and he’ll force you to pound the ball into the ground all game long. Against a pitcher as shaky as Sabathia is that should be enough to get his squad in the win column tonight.

White Sox/Royals Ov 8 (+100):
This line doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I know neither the White Sox or the Royals are offensive dynamos or anything but we’ve got two gas cans on the mound in this one. Lets start with Nathan Karns. Karns has a career ERA of 4.56 and has been awful again so far this year with a bloated 6.26 ERA to his name. As usual he’s allowing too many BB’s and now his usually solid K rate has come down too. That said he’s still better than Mike Pelfrey. Pelfrey has no business in the big leagues right now and his stuff is some of the worst you’ll see from any starting pitcher in the league. Last year in 119 innings he put up 4.24 K/9 which was right there with the worst totals in the league. So far in 9 innings this year it’s been more of the same with only 3 K/9 and for good measure he’s at 5 BB/9 to go with it. Pitching is hard enough to begin with and when you don’t get easy outs (K’s) and give up far too much for free (BB’s) you just aren’t going to have success. That’s the issue Pelfrey is dealing with now. The Royals are a bad offensive team but even they should be able to knock around Pelfrey a bit tonight. If these two gas cans find a way to keep this thing under 8 I’ll just take my loss and move on. I’ll have to see it to believe it though.

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