Posted:
#1
Do You Want to See a Dead Body?
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Posted:
#12
I’m looking pretty hard at Arizona 1st 5 -0.5 tonight. A couple things under the hood I like
Rodriguez’s ERA is definitely outperforming his xERA/FIP, so I’m not blindly buying the 2.71. But Lodolo actually looks worse underneath his surface numbers his xERA is pushing 6, his FIP is over 5, and his sinker has been getting absolutely smoked.
Arizona also loaded the lineup with right handed bats against Lodolo, and they’ve been one of baseball’s best teams against LHP recently, especially at home.
The part that interests me most is the pitch matchup. Lodolo’s curve is his real weapon, but when he has to come back with the sinker/changeup, that’s where Arizona has a chance to do damage.
Cincinnati stacked righties against E-Rod, so it’s not a perfect matchup Elly and Stewart especially worry me. But once you get past the top of that lineup, E-Rod’s four-seam/changeup combination actually matches up pretty well.
Posted:
#13
I’m looking at Boston 1st 5 -0.5 A couple things under the hood I like beyond just Sonny Gray vs. Logan Webb.
Gray’s 2.65 ERA is a little better than his underlying numbers, but nothing looks wildly fraudulent. His sweeper and sinker have both been legitimate weapons, and San Francisco is running six left-handed bats at him tonight.
Webb has been excellent, especially lately, so this definitely isn’t a fade of him. The interesting part is his sinker. It’s his most-used pitch, and the expected contact numbers are considerably worse than the actual results roughly a .350 xwOBA with a hard-hit rate over 50%.
That matters because Boston has several bats that match up extremely well with sinkers. Contreras, Duran and Abreu have all done serious damage against that pitch type.
Webb’s changeup/sweeper combination is the counterargument. If he commands those and stays out of sinker counts, he can absolutely make this a 0-0 or 1-1 type game through five.
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