Point Blank – October 7
On David Price’s Playoff Pitches vs. Outcomes…Trying to determine if there is any Gospel on Matthew yet…They’re playing Baseball all day, and so are we…An old-fashioned brawl at College Station (there are still some defenses that know how to tackle)
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover today, with wall-to-wall baseball, and the numbers football board flashing for multiple reasons, including the marketplace trying to zero in even more on what impact Hurricane Matthew is going to have. So let’s get to work.
This thread will kick off and carry us through the football weekend, but there will be separate MLB-only editions on Saturday and Sunday, so that it will be easier to sort through the details. And as is the case when the word count is going to build up the Jukebox will be plugged in to help you along. With weather playing such a big part of the handicapping consciousness the next few days let’s go right to the heart of the matter, a little Jimmy Buffet never being a bad thing. This morning many of us are “Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season”, this version a closing number from Atlanta last summer…
Now on to some MLB, first taking a different look at David Price than you may be reading or hearing from others…
Item: David Price has thrown the ball just fine in the playoffs
David Price will be taking the mound for the Red Sox at Cleveland this afternoon, and along with that comes the usual gamut of attention from the Sports Mediaverse. And you know where much of that attention is going to go? To the fact that it looks like Price just can’t get it done under the playoff pressure. And who can blame folks when a quick glance puts this in front of them -
W/L ERA
RS 121-65 3.21
Playoffs 2-7 5.12
Simple stuff, right? Price is one of MLB’s best during the regular season, but when the pressure is on he folds up. It is so common of a story that it is the sort of thing that can impact the Betting Markets. But what if that isn’t the real story? What is Price has actually thrown the ball just fine in the playoffs?
First let’s note a key to the W/L record – he has had eight career playoff starts, and the team behind him has scored 19 runs, just 2.4 per game. Not going to win much with that support, are you? But now let’s go a step further and look at his pitches thrown -
WHIP K/9 BB/9
RS 1.14 8.6 2.3
Playoffs 1.17 8.4 1.7
Close to being identical across the board, and the biggest gap is actually a positive one – he has walked fewer batters in these pressure games. There has been the problem of a higher home run count in the post-season, but overall he has been awfully close to his regular-season form – in seven of those eight starts he worked into the seventh inning, and in the other he finished the sixth. Not once has there been an early KO.
There is always the issue, of course, about how a performer perceives himself, and the psychology of pitching is written about here often. Price made three starts in the 2015 post-season, and had more strikeouts (21) than base-runners allowed (16 hits and four walks). But the Blue Jays behind him lost every one of those games, two of the defeats attached to Price. Will that impact his confidence level? That is not easy to gauge, but what is rather easy to see is that notions of him performing poorly under playoff pressure in the past are misguided – he has thrown the ball well; it is just that the Baseball outcomes have not been favorable.
Item: Hurricane Matthew, and the Possibilities
Weather tracking is going to literally be a minute-by-minute issue this weekend because there just isn’t any other way around it – the impact of a storm this size is almost impossible to calculate.
For now LSU/Florida is off indefinitely; Tulane/UCF is off until November 5; Massachusetts/Old Dominion will play Friday at 8:00 Eastern instead of Saturday; Georgia/South Carolina will play on Sunday at 2:30 eastern; Charlote/FAU is tentatively set for Noon on Sunday, but that is not etched in stone yet.
While much of the focus will naturally go on the field conditions of games that will be played, a big part of the digging today will be on how practices have been disrupted, and how travel for the road team into the storm areas may impact the visiting teams. There will also be some re-evaluating of home field advantages, since some of the games may have lesser crowds in attendance.
Here is what it looks like, as of 11 AM Eastern on Friday morning –
On to the MLB Diamonds…
As will be the case through the playoffs, we will be joined by Eric Strasser, author of “Betting Baseball for Profit”, and better known as Palmtree around these parts. His comments will be in italics.
We will both be in play behind #958 Texas (1:05 Eastern). I like the form of Yu Darvish, and as Palmtree notes well he is a great matchip into the Blue Jays swing-for-the-fences right-handed lineup.
Darvish brings the poise and mentality to be good under pressure, and it has been a long wait for him, four years since his only playoff outing. I believe being injured earlier works in his favor here, coming out fresh instead of worn down, and his last two outings were flat-out superb – he struck out 21 of the 48 batters he faced, while allowing only five hits, including a rare “Minus FIP” performance. The Blue Jays don’t have much experience against him and some of it is downright awful, like the 1-18 from Jose Bautista that includes nine strikeouts, the only hit a single.
The flip side of that equation is that we have likely already seen the best that J.A. Happ has to bring. His 20-4/3.18 will go down as one of the great all-time campaigns for a guy that had been nothing more than a journeyman prior to this season, but that success does come with a price attached – 195 innings. That is by far a career-high, and there was an alarming lack of pop down the stretch – only three strikeouts of 57 batters faced over his last two outings, compared to six walks. Make the Rangers a fit at -125 or less.
I am also in play in Cleveland with #956 Indians/Red Sox First Half Under (4:35 Eastern), with 4 good up to -125 (some early Over money in the marketplace should help to keep that in play). Part of that grows out of the lead topic, Price being a tick under-valued because of that reputation for pitching poorly in the playoffs, something that does not hold up under deeper scrutiny. And while some may fear the layoff for Corey Kluber while he was nursing a minor hamstring strain, I don’t see it is a negative, and perhaps it is even a plus to get physically recharged this late in the campaign.
A lot of folks were bothered by the fact that it was Trevor Bauer instead of Kluber for Game #1, taking that as a negative sign for the latter, but note that Terry Francona based that on which pitcher would be more likely to come back well on three days rest for later in the series, which is his plan with Bauer for Game #4. That is just sound baseball strategy. Here is Kluber’s own take on that front - “We talked about it as a group. We came to the decision if somebody has to pitch on short rest, right now Trevor is probably better equipped to do that. I’m not disappointed. I have confidence in him.”
Note the timing of the game is significant – it is going to be a sunny day in Cleveland, and that brings shadows into play that benefit Price/Kluber. As such I make the early part of the game the path, which also means not having to deal with the aftermath of those Andrew Miller/Cody Allen extensions on Thursday.
Eric’s notion was to also play Dodgers/Nationals the same way - No reason Kershaw/Scherzer won’t be Bumgarner/Syndergaard II. There has never been a game started at 5:30 PM in October at Nationals Park, so the lighting angles and shadows are unknown. Trea Turner has never faced Kershaw so it probably will save him at least one at bat to get comfortable. I assume Murphy will start but he hasn’t faced live pitching in 3 weeks. Wilson Ramos and his 1.008 OPS isn’t there and Harper is one for 15 against Kershaw.
The Dodgers bats finished the year poorly. Scherzer struggled Sunday against the Marlins but outside of the Fish his last 6 starts were two earned runs or less. I expect both pitchers will dominate early and will play 1st 5 innings under 3-120 or better.
Use his value guide as your barometer – the markets have taken a major stand there this morning so the price point will not be easy to find – it would not be a shock if the full game Total dropped to 5.5 in that one.
I don’t have anything going for Giants/Cubs and Eric may chime in later there. I would have had a series interest in Chicago at -220, which the markets quickly crashed away any hope of. The Giants have not been anything special since the All Star break, and now face the prospect of a series in which Madison Bumgarner may only be able to pitch once, that matchup going head-to-head with Jake Arrieta anyway. But that was not lost on the folks shaping the market.
Now let’s bet a little more college football…
In the Sights, NCAA Saturday…
I don’t think the markets have the proper read on the game flow in the Top 10 showdown between a pair of SEC unbeaten teams for Saturday, and that will mean #378 Texas A&M/Tennessee Under (3:30 Eastern), with 56 having gone as high as 58 in that one, and plenty of 57.5 to be found in the morning trading. Value holds back down to the opener of 56.
Kevin Sumlin’s program has changed in scope, much of that due to the realities of what it takes to win in the SEC, speed and finesse not being enough to get through the grind. As such there was a lot of money spent to bring John Chavis on boards as DC, and also a changing in mindset up and down the program, as Sumlin himself notes - “changes with player development and what we do with the lifting program. Not subtle changes, drastic changes, that have become apparent to me. Whether it changes the results or not, we’re going to see, but certainly the things that we wanted to get done because of our body types not looking like the rest of the body types in our league. We were a very lean, very athletic, very fast football team.”
The results do bear it out, A&M playing dead Unders in SEC play vs. Auburn and South Carolina keyed by the defense, and even that seeming shootout of 45-24 vs. Arkansas was only sitting on 17-17 late in the 3rd quarter. There may not be a tougher place for an opposing QB to play this season than Kyle Field, with Myles Garrett (back this week after sitting out last Saturday) and Daeshon Hall rushing from the edges, and arguably the best safety trio in the nation in Donovan Wilson, Justin Evans and Armani Watts, who all have a chance to play on Sunday’s. This is now a defense-first team, with the offense good, but not great, Trevor Knight being an experienced game manager at QB, but a player with limitations.
Tennessee helps bring value to this equation because of a pair of back-to-back misleading scores to open SEC play, in particular the 34-31 win at Georgia last week that brought a series of didn’t-have-to-happen TDs late in the fourth quarter – there were only 754 yards of total offense in that game, 90 of them coming on TD passes in the final minute. It looks like lead RB Jalen Hurd is unlikely to play, and while his numbers have not been special 4.0 per rush, with the Vols OL not getting a lot of push), his 6-4/240 does matter as a pass blocker, especially in this matchup. But the Vols have some guys that can hit and make plays on defense, which makes this one much more old-fashioned than the way the markets are pricing it.
For your listening pleasure…
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