MLB Best Bets Today July 6:
The long holiday weekend rolls on with 15 games and all 30 teams on the field on Saturday. We’ve got two Saturdays left before the MLB All-Star Break, which begins on July 14 after all the games have concluded. It is the proverbial oasis in the desert for teams during the course of the long season, but we’ve got a lot of baseball to go before we get there.
In case you were wondering, the offensive slash line here in July is .246/.314/.415 coming off of a .246/.313/.407 June. Business has definitely picked up in the SLG department now that the weather has gotten hotter.
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Tampa Bay Rays at Texas Rangers (-112, 7.5)
4:05 p.m. ET
The Rays and Rangers get together in Arlington for today’s matinee headlined by Taj Bradley and Andrew Heaney. Tampa Bay lost yesterday, but the Rays have shown some signs of life recently and haven’t lost consecutive games since June 14-15. The Rangers are still trying to find a groove and some consistency.
Somebody who has found a groove is Bradley. The 23-year-old right-hander has a 1.24 ERA with a 2.88 FIP over his last five starts. He’s struck out 40 over those 29 innings with just four earned runs allowed. He hasn’t allowed more than two runs in any of those starts and has cut down on the hard contact against with a 38.5% Hard Hit% and a 7.7% Barrel%. He’s allowed zero Barrels in three of those five starts.
In that stretch, Bradley has a 14% SwStr%, including a 20.2% SwStr% against a Nationals lineup known for making a lot of contact in his last outing. Bradley has just a 79% Z-Contact% and a 31.7% Chase Rate in those five starts, so he’s getting a ton of swings and misses in the zone and also getting guys to expand.
Heaney has been pitching well also, including a 10-strikeout effort against the Orioles in his most recent outing. He hasn’t allowed more than three runs in a start since May 23 against the Phillies, but he does draw a Rays lineup that ranks ninth in wOBA against lefties over the last 30 days. Meanwhile, the Rangers lineup ranks 29th in wOBA against righties over the last 30 days, as they continue to struggle to find it offensively.
I’ll trade the seven cents and play the 1st 5 on the Rays instead of messing with their bullpen, which has been an issue most of the season. The Rangers pen has also been quite good lately.
Pick: Rays 1st 5 (-115)
Toronto Blue Jays (-112, 8.5) at Seattle Mariners
4:10 p.m. ET
Yariel Rodriguez and Emerson Hanco*ck are listed for the Blue Jays and Mariners game up at T-Mobile Park. The Toronto offense was stymied last night by Luis Castillo in a 2-1 win for the Mariners in the first game outside the Eastern Time Zone for the Blue Jays since June 12.
This is a bad Blue Jays team. As I mentioned yesterday, they beat the Guardians on June 16 to improve to 35-36 and they are 4-13 since. I’m looking to fade this team at any reasonable number and I think today gives us another opportunity to do exactly that.
Rodriguez is coming off of an outstanding start against the Astros, as he went 6.2 innings and allowed just a solo homer and one other hit with six strikeouts. That great effort lowered his ERA to 4.44 and his FIP to 4.72. However, I really don’t like this spot for him at all. He allowed five runs and only faced nine batters over 1.1 innings on June 21. He faced four batters and then left his start on June 26. Then, all of the sudden, he pitches into the seventh inning and throws 83 pitches last time out?
He’s going back out there on four days rest now, so I don’t expect him to be overly sharp after so many up-downs and so many pitches, especially when you consider what he did in two prior outings. I realize that the M’s strike out a lot, but they do walk a lot as well, and Rodriguez has 14 walks in his 24.1 innings pitched. This is a Blue Jays bullpen working shorthanded right now without some key arms and no true long reliever.
Hanco*ck threw 9.1 shutout innings for Triple-A Tacoma after getting sent down following a good start against the White Sox back on June 13. He’s not a guy who misses a lot of bats, so the advanced stats aren’t going to view him in a very favorable light, but he has fared significantly better at home than he has on the road in limited action. He’s held batters to a .208/.287/.376 slash with a .292 wOBA in 115 batters faced at home and has an ERA of nearly 9 on the road over 63 plate appearances.
The Mariners are also just playing a lot better than the Blue Jays and I think there is a lot of dissension and discontent in that Toronto clubhouse. I’ll trust the team with the better vibes and the better bullpen here.
Pick: Mariners -108
Philadelphia Phillies at Atlanta Braves (-110, 8.5)
7:15 p.m. ET
We have what I believe is a really good pitching matchup in Atlanta tonight. Ranger Suarez goes for the Phillies and Spencer Schwellenbach goes for the Braves. I think this is a game capable of going either way and we have seen slight movement against the Phillies side, which is a daily occurrence when Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber are on the IL.
My handicap, though, focuses on Schwellenbach and his strikeout prop. I think the Braves have a really good one here in the 24-year-old right-hander. He has a really deep pitch mix with solid command and the velocity to generate a lot of swing and miss. In six starts, Schwellenbach has a double-digit SwStr% in every one of them and sits at 13.4% for his MLB career with a F-Strike% of 62.3%. He’s got an 82.2% Z-Contact% against and has generated a very high rate of chases.
If we look at his Baseball Savant profile, he has a 98th percentile Chase%, so that means his 37.3% mark ranks in the top 2% of all pitchers. He’s got 82nd percentile extension with 73rd percentile fastball velo, so his pitches get on you in a hurry. Plus, he’s thrown six pitches anywhere from 24% to 7% of the time, so you can’t really guess much against the former Nebraska Cornhusker.
Based on the depth of his arsenal, his Chase%, and his overall SwStr%, I expected more strikeouts to come for Schwellenbach and that has been the case over his last three starts with 20 strikeouts in 16 innings of work. Today, he draws a Phillies lineup with a 27.4% K% against righties dating back to June 28. Harper and Schwarber both hit the IL on June 27. Philadelphia has the sixth-highest K% against righties in that span.
Schwellenbach’s prop is 4.5 with -130 on the Over after a couple of line moves while writing this up. He’s a positive regression candidate in a lot of ways with a 5.68 ERA, but a 4.01 FIP and a 3.79 xFIP, plus a 3.90 xERA. I think better fortunes are coming overall to allow him to work deeper into games, but I really like the strikeout upside today.
Pick: Spencer Schwellenbach Over 4.5 Strikeouts (-130)
