July 29, 2020 • 48 mins
Davis Mattek and Ricky Sanders look at the possibility that MLB could play the rest of the season without the Marlins if their covid issue does not get resolved. The guys look some of the best home run hitters to sue for the week, and who will be the top closers for the season.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:33):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the daily road to our
here on sports grid TV. I'm Davis Mannick, joined today
by Ricky Sanders. We're gonna go around the diamond today.
Baseball heads returned. It's in our lives. We got Sunday
night baseball. We got day games, we got doubleheaders. We
have everything that everything that we wanted, everything that we
were dreaming of during during our forced COVID offseason. Ricky,
(00:56):
how is the first week of baseball ben for you? Buddy?
You've been in doing it. I have loved every second
of it. I know I was grinding kb O Korean
baseball while this was off, but it is so nice
to have baseball at like a normal hour for me,
as opposed to setting the alarm and waking everyone up
in the household and everyone not being happy with me
(01:17):
because I'm sitting there watching Twitch at four thirty am.
So I just loved the baseball experiment. It's probably selfish
because I'm not sure it's the smart thing morally to
be doing right now, is playing baseball. We've seen it,
you know, play out in one of the clubhouses, but
man for selfish reasons, and I think a lot of
people feel the same way, whether they're not exactly sure
how to feel, but just having baseball to talk about
(01:40):
that on play daily Fantasy, Uh, it's so much better
than you know, having to grind one of these overseas
leagues where it's just not convenient with the schedule. Yeah,
having having baseball on at noon and having baseball on
at nine pm, those are those are unique luxuries. Right.
It feels it feels great, feels like a little bit
of a of a return to normalcy. I I gotta say,
(02:02):
you know, I saw some people on Twitter complaining about like, oh,
you know, the automated crowd noise and everything. I really
though it was just relaxing that baseball on TV. Like
to hear um Matt Vaskerson's voice, right, hearing Matt Veaskerson
talk about baseball is to me, that is like the
most relaxing thing that can even exist in this planet.
(02:26):
Oh yeah, and just being able as a Cubs fan
to listen to, you know, their announcers. Go in the car,
listen to Pat Hughes for those of you who know
the Cubs announcer. It just again feels like normal, even
though I know it it really isn't. I mean, the
world we live in still crazy, but any semblance up
this normalcy just just I mean, we're all staying home,
so we're all doing things that are different, but at
(02:47):
least on our couch, we're watching things that we're accustomed to.
So we we do. We gotta start with the bad news, though.
It seems like about half of the Marlins players at
this point have tested positive for COVID nineteen. Right when
we are about to begin the show, it's been announced
that the Marlins season is currently on pause. They were
(03:08):
supposed to be playing the uh the Orioles this week,
that that series basically got delayed. My thinking is probably
that you know, the Marlins, they are not one of
the marquee franchises in Major League Baseball, not one of
the teams that expect to compete for a World Series, Ricky.
It would not surprise me if we just see this
season play out without the Miami Marlins. Would that surprise you?
(03:33):
I think it would surprise me. I think they're gonna
wait out at least part of the incubation period with COVID,
and I mean the so the plans obviously weren't perfect
from the start. We know that traveling city to city
was not the greatest of ideas, but there were plans
in place for like a handful of players to get
(03:54):
it and they would be you know, obviously sent to
the COVID list. You'd have players off site come on board,
and I just don't think they expected half a team
in the first weekend to to be you know, the
basically the guinea pig here. But I think once you
get you know, close to a week of incubation, you
get testing every day, and you can see what the
(04:15):
deal is with the Marlins, they might have to figure out,
you know, not playing in Miami, since Florida is such
a hot spot in general, I wonder if they moved
to a city sort of like Toronto, but basically forcefully,
you know, somewhere where there's way less coronavirus and just
play there because there's no fans anyways, Like who cares, uh,
(04:36):
And I do think that they get a season in
the question is do they play the same number as games?
And I think that's pretty obvious that the answer is
gonna be no. And I want to get your take here,
but I think really the only fair way to do
it is just to go by win percentage, because this
probably isn't the last team that's gonna have games canceled.
Just get in as many games as you can. And
(04:56):
also there's not that many like off days with this schedule,
so just get in as many games as you can,
buy an end date, and at that point look at
winning percentage of a teams played ten less games. Screw it, man,
I mean you you did the best you could and
I think that's the only way they can possibly play
this uh and potentially not playing in Miami along the way.
(05:16):
So I I like your idea of you know, win percentage. Also,
I have not heard anyone throw this out, but if
if we get another outbreak or two more outbreaks, what
what about you know, doing it like soccer right where
there is no postseason and the champion is the team
who has won the most games at the end, right
(05:37):
sixty games, we get as many games in as we can.
The guys play until November or whatever, and the team
that has won the most games out of their sixty
game schedule is just the champion. I don't know if
they would accept to it, but I think it's a
great idea, honestly, Like I don't personally need postseason. I
enjoy regular season mostly because you get these full slates
of games to bet on, you get these full slates
(05:59):
of games to play daily fantasy, and then the playoffs
happen and it's just the same matchups over and over
and over, and there's so much less of them that
to me, it takes some of the fun out of it.
Like I know that the people who are loyal fans
to their to their team, obviously they want to see
a playoffs play out and they get all riled up
for it and YadA, YadA, YadA. But personally, I don't
mind the idea of just regular season games being it.
(06:22):
You give us a season of baseball, and I think
we should all be happy we got it. So if
that's your proposal, I accept so. And I mean, there
there is the very real thing of like, does a
championship in a sixty game season with expanded playoffs count
you know, quote unquote does account ensure it counts. But
like right, I'm I'm a Kansas City Royals fan. They
won the World Series in they grinded out a hundred
(06:46):
and sixty two games of the regular season. They played
some really memorable postseason baseball. You know, that World Series
against the Mets. I will you know, I'll never forget
those games. Those were some of the biggest games I'll
ever watch. And I gotta say, if the Royals were
any good this year and they were serious competing to
win the championship in this shortened season, there's no way
that you're going to associate the same memories. There's no
(07:06):
way you're gonna feel as positively. So you know, when
when the Dodgers do win this World Series, I think
it's gonna feel a little bit empty for for a
lot of those fans. But we are going to go
ahead and head into our first break here on the
daily road to hour. When we return, we were going
to continue to go around the diamond, get you caught
up on everything going on in baseball, and uh yeah,
(07:26):
we'll see you here in a few minutes. Sports grid
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Want the edge than Get on the Grid Sports Grid
(07:46):
dot Com. M M. You're watching Sports Screen Get on
the grade. Hello everyone, and welcome back from breaks. Here
(08:08):
on the daily road to hour on Sportscreen TV. I
am Davis Matock joined by Ricky Sanders today as we
go around the diamond covering all of the relevant baseball
news and notes. Gonna dig into some fantasy outliers, going
to discuss some injuries, some trends that we have seen
in fantasy baseball through the first week of the season. Ricky,
what is the biggest thing that has stood out to
(08:28):
you so far in terms of impacting fantasy and betting.
So far? The bats seem to be ahead of the
pitching early on. We have seen a lot of homer's
and we're recording this on Tuesday. Let's talk about Monday's
slate where we had I think it was four. It
was either four or five different guys hit multiple homers.
Macal Franco, which is interesting. One Tascar Hernandez who gets
(08:52):
moved to the leadoff spot, last second hunter Renfro and
I'm blanking. There's there's multiple others who hit multiple home
as well. So I mean that's just one day, and
you you rarely see days where there's a lot of
you know, multiple homers. On Sunday we saw Nelson Cruz
and Jose Ramirez hit two homers a piece. We saw
(09:13):
Jake Cave hit a grand Slam in that game. Offense
is up early on and it makes sense, right because
these pictures didn't have the extended spring training that they're
used to, so a lot of the velocities are down.
You're starting the season in the middle of hot weather,
which you usually get the season started in you know
in the spring when the weather is colder there's a
lot more rain. But right now, with all this hot weather,
(09:36):
the bats have been crazy good and the power has
been up, and I actually think it's been a fun
brand of baseball to watch. I I've heard people speculate
that the balls are juiced, but I think it's just
that time of the year that they're they're starting these
games that you know, we always see more runs towards
the summer, so my take would be the ball is
(09:56):
obviously juiced watching watching, I think watching some of these
home runs, right I I remember one in particular was
Ian Happ dead center, no wind in Wrigley and it
was a no doubter off the bat. Now, And I know,
I think Ian Happ is good right switch hitter, but
he's not. He's not dead center for fifty you know,
(10:17):
like no, like no doubt off the bat. That's just
not the style of player he is. He's more of
like a gap to gap, you know, good speed, good
intelligent based runner like he he is not. He is
not Aaron Judge basically, is is my opinion. And that
was the one where I was like, you know what,
the ball it's juiced. Well, stat Cast has been off
the hook. So far, We're like four days into the season.
(10:40):
Giancarlos Stanton hits the second fastest recorded baseball that you know,
in the stat Cast era that goes fo three ft,
and Pete Alonso hits the third fastest recorded baseball in
Fenway Park. And again we're three days into a season. Uh, yeah,
we are. We are three days into the season. Also
another thing, like, yes, we do know for sure that
(11:03):
hotter weather does lead to more home runs. It's also
been very humid all over the United States this week,
which is like we're because we're talking about such a
micro trend. It's literally been raining everywhere. Right, We've seen
some games that have had weather concerns. We have a
hurricane that's coming up from the south right now. There's
like a super humid time pretty much all across the
United States. And I think you know in those environments
(11:24):
that the hot, sticky weather, that's where you're going to
see lots and lots of home runs. Yeah, no question.
But for daily fantasy baseball purposes, it feels like people
have just been targeting a lot of the stadiums where
it's hot, and that led to a day where the
Rays kind of snucked under the radar at home in
their dome with a fourteen run games. So, remember, pitching
(11:45):
matchups matter as well, but there's there's no question that
some of these hotter environments, uh, in the long run
are going to be the ones to target just from
a micro perspective on a day to day daily fantasy look,
pitching matchups matter just as much as the weather. Yeah,
and we should also you know, we're we're gonna talk
more macro trends here in second, but I do want
to talk one of these small things, which is that, uh,
(12:07):
Mike Foltonevitch, who was the starter who got tattooed by
the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday July. Uh, him basically
being a non major league pitcher is a pretty big
story for the National League. You know, the Braves were
one of the four most high favorites on the FanDuel
Sports book in terms of World Series odds. If they
(12:29):
have to send Fultonevitch either to the i L or
to the alternate training site to try and figure his
stuff out, because you know his velocity, Ricky generally would
sit at seven. Now his velocity and that start against
the Raise, his average fastball velocity was below ninety. So
now their rotation loses, you know, basically who was supposed
(12:49):
to be their second best starting pitcher. Now they have
Mike Sarroca, Max Freed, Sean Nucom and they're gonna I
don't think they wanted to pitch Kyle right but they're
gonna have to pitch Kyle right now. You know, a
lot of innings. I think probably their plan was to
use him for maybe five or six starts. Now he
probably is going to have to go ten starts. I
mean that that shakes up things in the n L
East for sure. Yeah. So actually it's even worse than that.
(13:13):
The Braves d f ade Mike Fulton Levitch after this start,
so I think they realized that something wasn't right with him,
which is a crazy thing. I mean that Mike Fulton
Evitch was released from the Braves when you think about
how high of an upside pitcher he was two years ago.
We were talking about a guy with a three three
seven FIP under a four x FIP, a guy throwing
in the high nineties, probably one of the few Braves
(13:36):
that was untouchable in the trade markets after a year
with k rate and then his velocity fell off a cliff.
And I mean he's a guy with a straight fastball.
So if you're throwing ninety one point one was the
official according to Fangraphs of velocity of Mike Fulton Evitch
average on his fastball in that first game. If that's uh,
(13:57):
I mean, if that's what you're getting from him, there's
not much there. And I saw as soon as he
was released, basically teams or people on Twitter, speculating that
all these teams should be taking a shot on him,
but if there's no velocity there, he needs to learn
how to pitch before a team can basically take him.
He's been just completely slighter happy since last year and
it's not working. He's not turning into Jamie Moyer. He
(14:19):
really needs to figure things out or else he's just
gonna be a home run bonanza. And I think Kyle
right now is going to be the key to Atlanta season.
If he can step up in his absence, I think
Atlanta has a chance. But if not, they just lost
a big piece of their rotation, you know, being that
I think they had faith in Fulton Evage and not
realize they probably can't. So if Kyle Wright does not
(14:41):
step up and have a breakout season that I think
some people believes he has within the range of possibilities,
this Atlanta teams in a in a lot of trouble. Yeah,
And this is uh, you know, the Fulton Evage story
is part of a larger trend, which is that there
are a lot of starting pitchers right now who are
having health troubles. And the reason they're having health troubles
is they're totally out of their routine. You know, they
(15:03):
started getting ready to play baseball back in February, they
started their warm up process, and their warm up process basically,
first all it got interrupted and they all went home
to go sit on their couch and eat oreos and
play PlayStation, and then pretty much with no warning, they said,
all right, you guys got to come back. You have
to start ramping things up right now. You know, you
(15:23):
basically have three weeks to get ready, and we have
seen loads of pictures already get injured, and we're gonna
talk more about some of those specific injuries in our
next segment. But you know, Ricky, I basically am wondering,
is this gonna be something we see all year long
where pictures are going to continue to be injured and
as a result of that, we're just gonna see guys
(15:44):
not going deep in games. I think probably what we're
gonna see happen is, you know, outside of random occurrences.
You know, Kyle Hendricks throws the complete game with the
pitches on opening Day. I I think the average starter
duration this year is gonna go way down. We're going
to see loads of guys go seventy pitches. Eighty pitches,
you know, not get out of the fourth inning. We're
(16:04):
gonna have relievers in their right away in high stress situations. Yeah,
I completely agree with that. I think by the time
that a lot of these starters are ready to start
going a hundred plus pitches, we're gonna be more than
halfway through the season. So the first half of the
year is going to be a complete crapshoot. We've seen
the Tampa Bay Rays go extremely conservative, you know, Blake
(16:25):
Snell through three innings, Tyler Glass now through four. We've
just seen that around a lot of the MLB is
that these guys who have had great first starts are
we're cut short at four innings for the most part.
So I agree with you. We've seen a lot of
velocities down Fulton. Vitch wasn't the only one. Sean Maniah
was one. There's a few other guys across the league that,
you know, they didn't have their normal time to get ready.
(16:47):
They didn't get ready, you know, the normal month of
the season that they're used to, so throwing them out
of rotation, I think you're going to see a bunch
of things. Corey Kluber already hurt his shoulder, Clayton Kershaws
was was work out related, so I don't want to
include him in there, but I do think this is
gonna be an injury filled pitching season. Yeah, And from
a gambling perspective, I think one of the things that
(17:08):
we need to really take a note of is teams
with stronger bullpens are gonna be underrated in the betting
markets early on because prices for individual MLB games are
heavily based on the starter. Right, So when it's Uh,
when it's Kerr Shaw versus Uh, you know, Mike Foltonevitch right,
Kershaw is gonna be a minus three fifty favorite. But
if Kerse Shaw is only going four innings, and you know,
(17:31):
random starter X is also only going four innings, we
need to place more value on offense, obviously, and we
need to be placing more emphasis on bullpens when betting
individual MLB games. But we are going to go ahead
and head into our second break here on the Daily
Road to Hour on Sports Grid TV. When we return,
we're gonna be digging into some of these individual injuries
(17:51):
amongst the pitchers and the hitters, and continuing to dig
through some league wide trends to help you, guys with
all of your bets and strategy and daily fantasy. See
you in a few moments. Sports grid dot Com Betting
insights and entertainment at your fingertips as our team covers
the most important topics in sports wagering, real time odds,
(18:12):
predictive betting models, expert picks, and more. Want the edge
than get on the grid sports grid dot Com. Hello everyone,
and welcome back to the daily road to hour here
on Sports Grade TV. I'm Davis Mannock, joined today by
Ricky Sanders, as we continue going around the diamond getting
(18:32):
you caught up on all the relevant news and notes
that you need to be betting on Major League Baseball,
playing Major League Baseball, daily fantasy, seasonal fantasy, and everything
in between. All right, Ricky, let's just get through these
rash of picture injuries because there are no shortages too
on the same team. In fact, the World Series favorite
(18:52):
Los Angeles Dodgers. Right now, they have both Clayton Kershaw
and Alex Wood on the ten day injured list. For
many teams, this would be a death sentence. For the
Los Angeles Dodgers not so much. They have Dustin May
replacing Clayton Kershaw. They have basically Julio Urias or Ross Stripling,
depending on how you choose to categorize those guys. Um
(19:15):
replacing Alex would so not not a total nightmare for
the Dodgers, but I mean losing Kershaw losing would uh
you know, two really solid left handed starters. Teams often
struggle to find solid left handed starters. This is this
is a big deal for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Yeah,
I mean we talked about how deep this team was,
(19:35):
and we thought they could sustain injuries basically every which
way and still be competitive. Well, David Price opts out
and then in the first week you have Clayton Kershaw
get hurt in the late room and you have Alex
Would hurt his shoulder pitching. So pretty immediately we're seeing
the depth of this starting rotation test in it. And
it's crazy because you still have an Ace and Walker
(19:58):
Bueller like, you still have one of the best I
think three to four pitchers in the entire league. Even
assuming Clayton Kershaw is out and he's expected to return
over the weekend, so let's just assume the worst, you
still have a Number one and then you have these
high upside secondary guys who with your lineup, I think
this team could still be competitive in a playoff series.
(20:19):
If you rolled out Walker Bueller, Dustin May, Ross Stripling
Julio Urias is your four, I really think this team
could still compete. And that's assuming Clayton Kershaw is not back,
which he will be. So I mean we talked about
the depth of this team. You could see the same
in the bullpen. All of a sudden, Kenley Jansen gets hurt,
Pedro Bias, Joe Kelly Blake Chinon who has tons of
(20:39):
closing experience, These guys can step in the same with
the offense. Uh, It's just crazy how deep this team is.
You really do need to see some improvements and from
some of these youngsters. Dustin May looked excellent in that
first start. He gave up a bunch of hits, but
he was able to miss bats and he wasn't walking anyone.
Julio Urias has arguably the most pure like true stuff
(21:00):
of any young Picture in the league. So I think
he's going to be successful once he holds his in
his control. It's crazy there's two starting Picture injuries. I'm
still not overly worried about the Dodgers just because of
this crazy depth that we talked about. Yeah, the the
depth is really nuts, and it's it's nuts both in
their starting rotation and it's nuts in the bullpen. Though
(21:22):
at a certain point, like, Okay, Dustin May young picture,
he he probably knows his body less than Walker Bueler,
He knows his body less than Clayton Kershaw. Like, I
think we're gonna see in a weird way, I actually
think older pictures are kind of at an advantage because, like,
you know, they just know how they know their elbow right,
they know their shoulder, and they're gonna be able to
(21:44):
tell their coach like, look, you know, I can only
go three innings. I can only go four innings. And
I my expectation is that a lot of the injuries
that we see over the next two weeks, Rick, are
gonna be younger pictures who you know, obviously haven't been
paid yet and also just are not as familiar with
the and to me of a big league season and
how to deal with, you know, kind of the ways
in which the arm gets nicked up for pictures over
(22:06):
the course of the year. Yeah, I think I agree
with that I mean the guys who haven't gone through
the routine at all before. I think the older guys
for the most part. I mean, we're gonna see exceptions.
Corey Kluber, he's had some issues over the course of
the past few seasons anyways, And it's baseball, I mean
throwing and basically not a natural motion. And a lot
of these guys, because they're throwing so often, it's such
(22:28):
a high velocity, there's gonna be issues. But some of
these young guys who haven't been through it before and
just rushed their bodies, I think I agree with you
that those are gonna be some of the injuries. And
just as a side note, did you hear that Walker Bueller? Uh?
The interview within the other day might be one of
the worst interviews in all of major sports. Look, I
I love baseball, Ricky, these dudes suck. These dudes are
(22:51):
not good interviews. I I I watched probably more baseball
this last weekend than I have ever watched. My My
girlfriend was out of town, so it's just me and
the dogs and baseball on all day. I heard so
many player interviews I remembered basically nothing that any of
them said. I I do got to give a shout
out to the one guy who was good though. Max
Scherzer was on ESPN one night. I don't remember which
(23:14):
night it was, but he was. He was really really good. Yeah,
given up to Max. But Walker Bueler, I mean three
word Walker I think should be his new nickname because
I don't think he answered any questions more than like
three words, and the announcers were like, all right, and
they basically had to like go between them coming up
with more questions because they thought it would take more
(23:34):
time than it did. Yeah. I actually I also would
say Clayton Kershaw has been a good interview in the past.
I haven't heard one from him in a long time,
but he's pretty funny. And then shout out to my
boy Brandon McCarthy, who is one of the hilarious, most
long term I I I really wish that he was
involved with baseball this season because he would have some
(23:57):
very good player safety and UH COVID related takes. Definitely,
uh no doubt. So in terms of other pitching injuries,
we actually haven't even talked about the biggest one, which
is Justin Verlander. So he was reported that Verlander initially
was out for the season. Then I think Verlander tweeted,
He's like, uh, this, this is not true. I'm only
(24:19):
out for a month. However, if I was a betting man,
I would actually think that either he doesn't come back
this year, or he comes back, pitches once or twice
and gets injured again. Uh. You know, Verlander is now
thirty eight years old. Like he is, he is definitely
pushing it in terms of how long you can be
as dominant as he has been. And also, my assumption
(24:40):
is anytime something like that is reported, it probably was
the thought at first that like, oh, this is serious
enough to be limited, and then Verlanders like, well, you know,
I I want to play, I want to get paid,
I want to help my teammates and everything. My My
guess is, though, if you drafted Justin Verlander in the
first round of your fantasy league, like you're bummed out
right now? Okay, he has almost three thousand innings under
(25:03):
his belt. When there's four arm issues, that usually means
there could be something with the ulnar nerve, which is
Tommy John related. Uh. Four arm issues are never good
for a picture, so I assume they want to be
on the careful end here. We'll see if there ends
up being a playoffs, but I would guess they don't
want to rush him back. I would think he misses
(25:23):
over a month. I would just take the over there
and I think maybe he pitches down the stretch a
little bit, but if anything, they get him ready for
playoffs and that's it. Otherwise I think there is a
possibility that he's just shut down. Uh. Yeah, I think
I think that is definitely. I think that is definitely
a real possibility. Uh, in terms of pitching. Uh, you know,
(25:45):
in terms of injuries, we have Steven Strasburg with the
nerve issue on his hand. Now. He told the media
on Monday that he threw lightly off of the mound
and that he felt good. But I mean, we know
the history with Steven Strasburg and injuries. It tends to
be not the best, He tends to not be the
quickest healer. Or what ends up happening is he just
(26:06):
pitches injured a lot. You know, he just basically is
going to pitch the rest of the season with his
nerve issue and just not be full of Steven Strasburg. Yeah,
I think that's the main concern for fantasy And I
mean bad Stephen Strasburg. You look at two thousand eighteen
his career highs A three seven four e r A,
So it certainly can get worse than that. But Stephen
(26:26):
Strasburg that year, that was the only year he was
over a one home run per nine rates. Uh. It
was a year that he was given up a ton
of fly balls. His babit was up because he wasn't
able to miss batts with the same fury. So I mean,
Steven Strasberg, as long as he's good to go, I
think you're playing him. You just temper your expectations a
bit because we've seen it before. Like you said, yep,
(26:48):
we have Corey Kluberg shut down for a month with
a Grade two strain of a muscle in the back
of his pitching shoulder. Uh. Any chance that the Rangers
had to compete for or the division, though, I guess
the expanded playoffs, you can't really you can't really write
anyone off. But this, this injury is huge for the
Rangers basically because Klueber was Though he was not good
(27:11):
last season, it was one of the more brutal seasons.
Actually was the most brutal season of his career for Cleveland.
Last year. He was signed to be the ace of
this pitching staff, and they are really gonna miss uh,
you know, the twelve starts he was expected to throw.
He really looked good in spring. I'm you know, for
for personal reasons. I'm happy I missed on him at
fantasy leagues. I felt I was high on him, and
(27:34):
I think the masses who were watching Spring were even higher.
I'm Tory Cluber even though I had him as like
an SP two and a half. But man, this sucks
because Corey Glueber. I mean, I think he was due
for a bounce back year. I think everyone's expecting Texas
to play a lot more hit or friendly than I
think it's gonna play. I think it's gonna be closer
to like a league average stadium with the fences moved
(27:56):
back compared to the old Globe life. So I really
had hopes for him, But I just don't think he's
gonna be back anytime soon. He's old, He's got no
real reason. I think the Rangers will be an iffy
team by the time he's back, So probably a legit
threat to miss the rest of the year. So, uh,
do we think that Otani is injured? So basically, for
(28:18):
those who don't know, Otani pitched his first game in
two years now in Major League Baseball, did not record
an out, has an e r A of affinity as
we as we sit here, an infinity e r A
as he was not able to record. Now I think
he I think he walked. Yeah, so he through only
fifteen of thirty pitches for strikes and walked three guys
(28:41):
before he was pulled. Do we think he's injured? Do
we think this is mental? And are you worried about Otani?
I think he's gonna be okay, which I feel like
is an under reaction, but you know, an infinity start
is always rutal. It's his first start in two seasons.
(29:03):
I thought the velocity looked okay. I mean, he's down
from where he was, but still over ninety is fine. Um.
I don't know what to make of Otani. I think
I'm a wait and see approach with him. He's obviously
had some arm issues which caused him to shut down,
But at worst, I hope he could just continue to
be a hitter and maybe they'll ditch this pitching experiment
(29:26):
if it turns out that this you know, four mile
an hour dropping velocity is not just the fact that
he hasn't gotten ready enough. It's there's something with the arm.
So at least Otani should be in the big leagues
and most scenarios. But I'm not sure what to make
it is. I want to say, like, yeah, sure, I'm
overly concerned, but it's one start and it's his first
start in quite a while, so I want to take
(29:46):
a wait and see approach here. What made me, what
made me bummed out, is that it seems to be
like a mental issue, and I don't, you know, I
don't know if that's something you fix start to start basically,
But we are going to go ahead and head into
our final break here on the daily Road to hour
on sports Grid TV. When we returned, we were going
to talk some closers and some overall league wide trends
(30:08):
that we are seeing early on in the league baseball season.
So see you guys in just a few minutes for
a continuation of going around the Diamond sports grid dot
com betting insights and entertainment at your fingertips as our
team covers the most important topics in sports wagering, real
time odds, predictive betting, models, expert picks, and more want
(30:30):
the edge than get on the grid sports grid dot Com.
Mhm mhmm, you're watching sports Grid get the Hello everyone,
(30:54):
and welcome back to the daily road of our teater
on sports gred TV. I am David Mannick joined by
Ricky Sanders. Today on the show, we are going around
the diving around the diamond, covering lots of news and
notes for all thirty Major League Baseball teams, though maybe
by the end of the season they were only twenty
nine of them playing. Thanks to the Miami Marlins and uh, Ricky,
(31:14):
the closer carousel has been on fire through a week
of the MLB season, just as just as we predicted.
Really yeah, I really thought it was strange around the
industry seeing like the National Fantasy Baseball Championships, seeing all
the ADPs skyrocket of these closers, right, I mean, you
would see these high stakes players have multiple closers on
(31:37):
the roster by round six, and I could not understand it,
being a guy who's always been like fade the top
closers kind of way to play year to year fantasy
baseball because saves are so volatile, so in a year
where health is even more volatile than usual. I didn't
understand why people would would then be like, Okay, I
gotta just get the top closers. We've seen a roll
(32:00):
this Chapman get hurt. We've seen Leave Hendrick struggle, We've
seen Craig Kimberal struggle. I mean, you could go situation
the situation when Edwin Diaz gave up some home runs,
like it's been nuts. It's I mean, this is the
prime year to have punted saves, prime year to have
punted saves. I mean just everything that's happened has been
(32:21):
so crazy. And we took it upon ourselves in the
preseason to go over shows like saying you'd hear the
low end bullpens here or where you can get the
saves from these guys. And we've been proven right because
a lot of these high end bullpen situations have not
looked great. A bunch of these closures have looked ugly,
and I again, I think that was a market miss
(32:44):
price there. I don't understand what these high stakes guys
were doing, and I often don't say that I trust
these guys. I believe in them. They're they're putting up
real money, So you would think they know what they're doing,
but I think they totally totally totally screwed that aspect
up of draft this year. Yeah, I mean, it just
it just did not make sense over sixty games to
(33:04):
treat the most volatile position far and away closer closer
in fantasy baseball. It's more volatile than I mean, just
thinking of all positions across fantasy sports, I can't I mean,
maybe kickers and defenses in seasonal fantasy football or something,
but it it is. It's it's absolutely nuts to think
of how volatile the reliever position is in fantasy baseball,
(33:26):
and you know, guys can get replaced at the drop
of a hat. Guys can just have really bad performance,
like over a sixty game season. If you drafted Chapman
as your closer and he gets blown up twice, that's
gonna be damaged to your ratios that you literally cannot
recover over a sixty game season like that, That's just it.
It's dusted off. I mean, here are your major league
(33:48):
leaders in saves through the three days. Wade Davis, who
was the most volatile closer in the league. I think
of the ones who were drafted Colorado, Trevor got which
was a guy that I was on. And by the way,
even towards the end of draft season, he was the
third San Francisco Giants reliever being drafted, meaning that there
(34:09):
were two guys who people felt were the closer ahead
of him. One of those guys was Tyler Rodgers, who
was Taylor Rogers brother, who was the opener for one
of their first games, or maybe it was the last
spring training game, but anyways, And Joejamenez, the closer on
Detroit So Colorado. San Francisco, Detroit are your leaders in
sages this year, And not only that, we're already starting
(34:32):
to see guys get injured. Ken Giles, the closer for
the Toronto Blue Jays, has been diagnosed with right elbow
sore nous. Basically, it's expected that he is going to
head to the at least the ten d A I
l you know, wouldn't be surprising to nazi him back
for you know, a month or something like that. Who
do you who do you like there as the replacement closer?
(34:53):
I think Anthony bass is the guy. He's the guy
they named. He already locked down a save, which is
weird because he's a former like long reliever uh, turned
into a closer. Maybe he's one of those guys who
just needed, you know, the shorter amount of innings we
saw it with Ian Kennedy was able to crank up
his velocity moving to that relieving role. So maybe he's
one of those guys. But man, it has been strange
(35:16):
looking at this save leaderboard. You talk about like injuries.
Ian Kennedy was used in the fifth inning of a
competitive game without an injury, and Greg Holland was the
guy who got who has the Royals loan save Jokin
Suria after Liam Hendricks looked brutal has a save. Cole
Sulzer was the guy who got the save for the Orioles,
(35:36):
Seth Lugo for the Mats. You mentioned that you know
Diaz had looked bad. Brandon Kinseler, he was the expected closer.
How about Jeremy Jeffris having to save on the Cubs.
I mean, this is just unbelievable the names of guys
who have saved. Like of the top you know, I
guess there's a bunch of guys tied at one, but
of the guys who are in the top twenty, there's
like five guys who were expected to be the closer
(35:57):
up there at the top. So how do you how
do you proceed forward in you know, these high stakes
fantasy baseball leagues? Are you just putting in claims on why?
Like kind of like zero RB teams in fantasy football?
Are you just are you like, every guy who gets
a save opportunity are they getting, you know, five bucks
of FAB every single week. I wouldn't say every, but
(36:19):
I would definitely say nearly all of them. I mean,
I think this is the closest thing to zero RB,
no question. I think if you see a guy pitching
the ninth and he looks relatively good, you throw five
bucks on him. It's that simple. I think of the
guys who have gotten saved so far, maybe my lowest
interest guy is Taylor Williams of the Mariners, even though
(36:42):
they said that bullpen is going to be congested, and
it was interesting to see McGill pitching the seventh, who
basically was their only remaining reliever who we thought had
a chance to factor into saves because Herondo's on the
I L and Austin Adams is on the I L
and then boom, the guy we think is their clothes
are not pitching in the high leverage situation, so maybe
(37:04):
Williams is even worth five bucks. But looking at some
of these other guys, like I think Craig Kimberroll looks horrible,
So Jeremy Jeffers is definitely a guy I have some
interest in. Liam Hendrix looks like he's kind of doesn't
have it right now. I think Joachims Soria, who's one
of the active leaders and Saves obviously has proven he
can get it done. Quank Young Kim. I mean, we
(37:25):
haven't seen Diegos healthy. Oh my, you go up and
down this board, and I don't see how you wouldn't
have interest in some of these guys who have gotten
the safe so far. Just seeing how the season is gone. Yeah,
the first couple of weeks of FAB in these high
stakes fantasy baseball leagues are gonna be really interesting. Of course,
made all that much more competitive by I mean, the
(37:47):
the starting pitching market is insane too. You know, guys
who are crushing early on, who have been great, right
and then also guys you know, the we have injuries,
we have guys who are getting called up. You know,
we have the fact that you know, guys were probably
going to be counting on Caleb Smith and Jose Urina
for the Marlins. Who knows when you're gonna be able
to get those starts again? We had Dylan Bundy with
(38:09):
a strong start for the Angels in his in his
first outing. Like the market is crazy right now? Yeah,
but in a way I feel vindicated with the what
we told people preseason. Not only were we telling people
not to buy saves, but we were telling people to
stack against the bad teams. Have you seen the strikeout
leaderboard at this point you have? So here are the
(38:30):
guys with double digit strikeouts, and tell me if you
notice a trend here. I'll just name a few of them.
Shane Bieber and Carlos Carrasco they do pitch on the
same team, and Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo are amongst
the guys with double digit strikeouts. The only other guy
is Max Scherzer. What did we tell people about the
betting market? Davis go against the Royals and Tigers. Guess
(38:53):
with two teams these guys have faced. You were stone
cold crushing Shane Bieber with fourteen ks against the Royals,
as well as Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Bauer and Luis
Castillo double digit ks against the Tigers. So in a way,
I feel like, you know, the stacking. We talked about
how Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindoor and the offenses were
(39:13):
good guys to use and draft and season leaks because
they'd be playing so many games against them, we might
have overlooked the pitching because if you just get all
these series against these strikeout prone teams, we've seen in
multiple pitchers kicked frush. Yeah, we have. We we have
seen that there is definitely a divide between the haves
and the have nots in baseball, which definitely we expect.
(39:35):
And by the way, that is something to really be
paying attention to. As you know, we expect they're going
to be a lot more injuries. We expect that they're
going to be guys who are testing positive for COVID
nineteen and have to quarantine for a couple of weeks
or have to take a bunch of tests, you know,
like they're just gonna be teams that are fielding triple
A quality rosters. Uh, you know, and and there are
(39:56):
some teams who early on we thought they were going
to be bad, you know, not just the Tigers and
the Royals, But the Giants were a team that, you know,
we thought they were gonna be bad. They've been really bad.
We thought that. But then on the other hand, we
thought that the Rangers were gonna be good. Right now,
Ricky uh. Through the first week of the season, the
Rangers have scored five runs, the Rockies have scored eight.
(40:19):
That series between those two teams in Arlington somehow turned
into nothing but pitchers duels. Yeah, it's so weird. I mean,
not that Harmon Marquez and John Gray are talented pitchers.
Mike Miner had a great year last year, but I mean,
we know that the Rockies have struggled away from home.
Last year, they were dead last in w r C
(40:39):
plus against right handed pitching away from home, so we
knew that they struggled there, and they were a little
better against lefties, but they were still mostly based on power.
I think that series has been a lot of people
are going to have to adjust to global life being
the way it is. It's not quite as power favorable.
I think the gaps are gonna be fine. I mean,
because you've act up the basically the center field walls
(41:01):
on both sides, and I think it's still slightly more
power favorable to the left side of the plate, meaning
the right side of the ballpark. So like Joey Gallo
road Nan Outdoor, if you're worried about how their home
run rate's gonna be affected, I think you you shouldn't
really worry about that. But there was a reason to
like the Rangers pitchers more than you know, basically usual,
(41:22):
because the Rangers in previous years were from two thousand
eighteen to two thousand nineteen, they had the worst home
road e r A splits of their starting pitchers, even
over course field. I don't think that's gonna be the
case anymore. So the fact that you can play Rangers
pictures at home more so than ever before. Like, I
(41:43):
think this is something that the masses are gonna have
to get used to. I'm not saying, you know, playing
in Texas in the heat, especially on days where the
roof is open, it's not going to be favorable. I
just don't think this is gonna be a top five
hitting ballpark anymore. I think it's gonna be slightly below that. Yeah,
I mean I think you are. I think you are
almost certain to be correct about that. I think that's
what the I think that's what are our early returns are.
(42:06):
I think that's what our early returns are showing us.
What what other things have surprised you or that you
you know that we've kind of learned. I guess one
of the things that I that I we should note
this is the Astros turns out, even without cheating, still
pretty good baseball team. They can still smack the cover
off the ball. That which is I mean, some people
were questioning it. That's an important thing to know early on. Yeah,
(42:29):
I mean, I think the talk of their demise was
probably overstated in the sense that even knowing when a
fastball is coming, it's still a major league quality fastball.
Knowing when a breaking ball is coming, you still have
to have the ability to hit it. So obviously, like
guys like jose L to May, Alex Bregman, they they
were good in the minors before they had, you know,
(42:52):
cow bells. They were good in the majors likely before
they had cow bells. So I think, you know, just
thinking that this whole team was gonna fall apart was surprising,
But maybe the most surprising single player was on the
other side of that first Astro series. How about Kyle Lewis. Man,
this guy can hit the living crap out of the ball,
and he did it against some of the best. I mean,
(43:14):
Lance mccohler is the guy who I think looks really good.
He crushed one off him Justin Verlander. I didn't think
he looked hurt in that first start he had. He
had over a strikeout a inning in that start, so
he still had nasty stuff. Kyle Lewis hit one. I
think it was well over for thirty against Justin Verlander.
Kyle Lewis hitting third on a team of Seattle, that's
probably gonna be just utter frustration this year. Looks like
(43:37):
a guy who you want to own in all formats.
We were talking about the betting markets for like under
the radar, you know leaders and homers. A lot of
people like fran mill Reyes, a lot of people liked
Joey Gallo, a lot of people liked etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
I think Kyle Lewis might be your dark horse major
league home run leader. I like the call. You know
(43:57):
anyone who first of all, anyone who gets that head
start right hitting a couple of home runs on the
first week of the season. That's gonna that's gonna give
you a nice little uh, that's gonna give you a
nice little head start. I I gotta say, though, I'm
gonna go with Nelson Cruz to lead the home runs
and the rest of the way. Guy looks as stocky
in his built as ever, and he is going up
(44:18):
to the plate with one thing in mind every game
for sixty games, and that is I want to hit dingers.
I don't care about hitting singles. Literally, all I wanna
do is I want to put the ball over the fence,
which is, you know, an attitude that I think that
we can all respect. But we are going to head
into our final break here on the Daily Road to
hour on sports Crede TV. We've been going all around
(44:39):
the diamond, getting you guys caught up with everything going
on in professional baseball right now, see you guys in
just a few moments to go ahead and close out
the show. Sports grid dot Com betting insights and entertainment
at your fingertips as our team covers the most important
topics in sports wagering, real time odds, predictive betting, model,
(45:00):
expert picks, and more want the edge than get on
the Grid Sports grid dot Com. M hm hm this
is Sports Crede. Hello everyone, and welcome back to our
(45:25):
final segment here on the Daily Road Hour on Sports
Screen TV. I am David Maddick joined by Ricky Sanders.
We've been going all around the diamond getting you caught
up with all the news and notes that you need
to be betting on and playing daily fantasy in the
Major League Baseball. Right now, Uh, kind of close our
show with two bold predictions based off of some of
(45:45):
the information that we have grinded out here so far
through the first week of the season. And Ricky, I
have a a bold prediction for most strikeouts in Major
League Baseball, or at at least top five. And that
is a guy we both really liked preseason. We were, me,
you and Pacheco were all really high on the Cincinnati Reds.
And I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it writing, not with
(46:07):
Trevor Bauer, but with Louise Castillo, who I actually think
has better raw stuff than Trevor Bauer. And you know,
it's just gonna be a little bit better at run
prevention to so gonna keep him in games a little
bit longer. Yeah, Louise Castio, the ground baller along with
the ability to miss bats. And I saw a stat
strikeouts on changeups last year. He had a hundred and
(46:29):
fifty five. Second in baseball was seventy six, So he
was like double the amount of strikeouts on his change
up alone. It's just a crazy good pitch. Plus he's
got that two steamer. I can't hate on you there.
I've got a dark horse for top five in the
league in e r A. I'm not sure specifically strikeouts
is the way for for me to go here, But
Garrett Richards as a picture who looks back to me.
(46:52):
And I mean even in a limited sample size. Last year,
you look at spin rate on his slider, he was
number one in the major leagues amongst darting pitchers by
a wide margin. There was no one even close. And
you looked at that slider in the first game and
it looked just nasty. He did not give up a run,
six k's And I know they're pitching with a designated
(47:13):
hitter now in the National League, but I think Garrett
Richards is back to being a SP one slash SP
two in fantasy. If you drafted Garrett Richards late if
you can just get the health to be there. I
think this is a picture who is going to give
you fantastic numbers pitching in San Diego, which is not
a great power park at all for lefties, and you've
got that out pitch that is just absolutely elite. I
(47:36):
think his home run rate is gonna be way down
from last year, and if he could do that, I
think he's gonna be one of the least e r
A leaders, and I think people aren't talking about him enough.
There we go, Garrett Richards, Louis Castido, two guys to
be keeping an eye on for Fantasy Baseball for dfs
and especially when they take the mound for betting purposes.
You know, I don't think that it can be overstated
(47:57):
just how much these markets are going to be in
flux early in the year for Major League Baseball. Gonna
reward people who are sharp, who have their their nose
to the grindstone, and are you know, trying to find
those small edges. That's gonna do it for us here
today at the Daily road to Hour on Sports Grid TV.
Thank you very much for going around the diamond with
Ricky and I and we will continue the show and
(48:18):
see you guys soon. Sports grid dot Com betting insights
and entertainment at your fingertips as our team covers the
most important topics in sports wagering, real time odds, predictive
betting models, expert picks, and more. Want the edge than
get on the grid. Sports grid dot Com
Sports grid dot Com Betting insights and entertainment at your
fingertips as our team covers the most important topics in
sports wagering, real time odds, predictive betting models, expert picks,
and more. Want the edge than get on the grid
sports grid dot Com. M m M this is sports Dream.
(00:33):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the daily road to our
here on sports grid TV. I'm Davis Mannick, joined today
by Ricky Sanders. We're gonna go around the diamond today.
Baseball heads returned. It's in our lives. We got Sunday
night baseball. We got day games, we got doubleheaders. We
have everything that everything that we wanted, everything that we
were dreaming of during during our forced COVID offseason. Ricky,
(00:56):
how is the first week of baseball ben for you? Buddy?
You've been in doing it. I have loved every second
of it. I know I was grinding kb O Korean
baseball while this was off, but it is so nice
to have baseball at like a normal hour for me,
as opposed to setting the alarm and waking everyone up
in the household and everyone not being happy with me
(01:17):
because I'm sitting there watching Twitch at four thirty am.
So I just loved the baseball experiment. It's probably selfish
because I'm not sure it's the smart thing morally to
be doing right now, is playing baseball. We've seen it,
you know, play out in one of the clubhouses, but
man for selfish reasons, and I think a lot of
people feel the same way, whether they're not exactly sure
how to feel, but just having baseball to talk about
(01:40):
that on play daily Fantasy, Uh, it's so much better
than you know, having to grind one of these overseas
leagues where it's just not convenient with the schedule. Yeah,
having having baseball on at noon and having baseball on
at nine pm, those are those are unique luxuries. Right.
It feels it feels great, feels like a little bit
of a of a return to normalcy. I I gotta say,
(02:02):
you know, I saw some people on Twitter complaining about like, oh,
you know, the automated crowd noise and everything. I really
though it was just relaxing that baseball on TV. Like
to hear um Matt Vaskerson's voice, right, hearing Matt Veaskerson
talk about baseball is to me, that is like the
most relaxing thing that can even exist in this planet.
(02:26):
Oh yeah, and just being able as a Cubs fan
to listen to, you know, their announcers. Go in the car,
listen to Pat Hughes for those of you who know
the Cubs announcer. It just again feels like normal, even
though I know it it really isn't. I mean, the
world we live in still crazy, but any semblance up
this normalcy just just I mean, we're all staying home,
so we're all doing things that are different, but at
(02:47):
least on our couch, we're watching things that we're accustomed to.
So we we do. We gotta start with the bad news, though.
It seems like about half of the Marlins players at
this point have tested positive for COVID nineteen. Right when
we are about to begin the show, it's been announced
that the Marlins season is currently on pause. They were
(03:08):
supposed to be playing the uh the Orioles this week,
that that series basically got delayed. My thinking is probably
that you know, the Marlins, they are not one of
the marquee franchises in Major League Baseball, not one of
the teams that expect to compete for a World Series, Ricky.
It would not surprise me if we just see this
season play out without the Miami Marlins. Would that surprise you?
(03:33):
I think it would surprise me. I think they're gonna
wait out at least part of the incubation period with COVID,
and I mean the so the plans obviously weren't perfect
from the start. We know that traveling city to city
was not the greatest of ideas, but there were plans
in place for like a handful of players to get
(03:54):
it and they would be you know, obviously sent to
the COVID list. You'd have players off site come on board,
and I just don't think they expected half a team
in the first weekend to to be you know, the
basically the guinea pig here. But I think once you
get you know, close to a week of incubation, you
get testing every day, and you can see what the
(04:15):
deal is with the Marlins, they might have to figure out,
you know, not playing in Miami, since Florida is such
a hot spot in general, I wonder if they moved
to a city sort of like Toronto, but basically forcefully,
you know, somewhere where there's way less coronavirus and just
play there because there's no fans anyways, Like who cares, uh,
(04:36):
And I do think that they get a season in
the question is do they play the same number as games?
And I think that's pretty obvious that the answer is
gonna be no. And I want to get your take here,
but I think really the only fair way to do
it is just to go by win percentage, because this
probably isn't the last team that's gonna have games canceled.
Just get in as many games as you can. And
(04:56):
also there's not that many like off days with this schedule,
so just get in as many games as you can,
buy an end date, and at that point look at
winning percentage of a teams played ten less games. Screw it, man,
I mean you you did the best you could and
I think that's the only way they can possibly play
this uh and potentially not playing in Miami along the way.
(05:16):
So I I like your idea of you know, win percentage. Also,
I have not heard anyone throw this out, but if
if we get another outbreak or two more outbreaks, what
what about you know, doing it like soccer right where
there is no postseason and the champion is the team
who has won the most games at the end, right
(05:37):
sixty games, we get as many games in as we can.
The guys play until November or whatever, and the team
that has won the most games out of their sixty
game schedule is just the champion. I don't know if
they would accept to it, but I think it's a
great idea, honestly, Like I don't personally need postseason. I
enjoy regular season mostly because you get these full slates
of games to bet on, you get these full slates
(05:59):
of games to play daily fantasy, and then the playoffs
happen and it's just the same matchups over and over
and over, and there's so much less of them that
to me, it takes some of the fun out of it.
Like I know that the people who are loyal fans
to their to their team, obviously they want to see
a playoffs play out and they get all riled up
for it and YadA, YadA, YadA. But personally, I don't
mind the idea of just regular season games being it.
(06:22):
You give us a season of baseball, and I think
we should all be happy we got it. So if
that's your proposal, I accept so. And I mean, there
there is the very real thing of like, does a
championship in a sixty game season with expanded playoffs count
you know, quote unquote does account ensure it counts. But
like right, I'm I'm a Kansas City Royals fan. They
won the World Series in they grinded out a hundred
(06:46):
and sixty two games of the regular season. They played
some really memorable postseason baseball. You know, that World Series
against the Mets. I will you know, I'll never forget
those games. Those were some of the biggest games I'll
ever watch. And I gotta say, if the Royals were
any good this year and they were serious competing to
win the championship in this shortened season, there's no way
that you're going to associate the same memories. There's no
(07:06):
way you're gonna feel as positively. So you know, when
when the Dodgers do win this World Series, I think
it's gonna feel a little bit empty for for a
lot of those fans. But we are going to go
ahead and head into our first break here on the
daily road to hour. When we return, we were going
to continue to go around the diamond, get you caught
up on everything going on in baseball, and uh yeah,
(07:26):
we'll see you here in a few minutes. Sports grid
dot Com Betting insights and entertainment at your fingertips as
our team covers the most important topics in sports wagering,
real time odds, predictive betting models, expert picks, and more.
Want the edge than Get on the Grid Sports Grid
(07:46):
dot Com. M M. You're watching Sports Screen Get on
the grade. Hello everyone, and welcome back from breaks. Here
(08:08):
on the daily road to hour on Sportscreen TV. I
am Davis Matock joined by Ricky Sanders today as we
go around the diamond covering all of the relevant baseball
news and notes. Gonna dig into some fantasy outliers, going
to discuss some injuries, some trends that we have seen
in fantasy baseball through the first week of the season. Ricky,
what is the biggest thing that has stood out to
(08:28):
you so far in terms of impacting fantasy and betting.
So far? The bats seem to be ahead of the
pitching early on. We have seen a lot of homer's
and we're recording this on Tuesday. Let's talk about Monday's
slate where we had I think it was four. It
was either four or five different guys hit multiple homers.
Macal Franco, which is interesting. One Tascar Hernandez who gets
(08:52):
moved to the leadoff spot, last second hunter Renfro and
I'm blanking. There's there's multiple others who hit multiple home
as well. So I mean that's just one day, and
you you rarely see days where there's a lot of
you know, multiple homers. On Sunday we saw Nelson Cruz
and Jose Ramirez hit two homers a piece. We saw
(09:13):
Jake Cave hit a grand Slam in that game. Offense
is up early on and it makes sense, right because
these pictures didn't have the extended spring training that they're
used to, so a lot of the velocities are down.
You're starting the season in the middle of hot weather,
which you usually get the season started in you know
in the spring when the weather is colder there's a
lot more rain. But right now, with all this hot weather,
(09:36):
the bats have been crazy good and the power has
been up, and I actually think it's been a fun
brand of baseball to watch. I I've heard people speculate
that the balls are juiced, but I think it's just
that time of the year that they're they're starting these
games that you know, we always see more runs towards
the summer, so my take would be the ball is
(09:56):
obviously juiced watching watching, I think watching some of these
home runs, right I I remember one in particular was
Ian Happ dead center, no wind in Wrigley and it
was a no doubter off the bat. Now, And I know,
I think Ian Happ is good right switch hitter, but
he's not. He's not dead center for fifty you know,
(10:17):
like no, like no doubt off the bat. That's just
not the style of player he is. He's more of
like a gap to gap, you know, good speed, good
intelligent based runner like he he is not. He is
not Aaron Judge basically, is is my opinion. And that
was the one where I was like, you know what,
the ball it's juiced. Well, stat Cast has been off
the hook. So far, We're like four days into the season.
(10:40):
Giancarlos Stanton hits the second fastest recorded baseball that you know,
in the stat Cast era that goes fo three ft,
and Pete Alonso hits the third fastest recorded baseball in
Fenway Park. And again we're three days into a season. Uh, yeah,
we are. We are three days into the season. Also
another thing, like, yes, we do know for sure that
(11:03):
hotter weather does lead to more home runs. It's also
been very humid all over the United States this week,
which is like we're because we're talking about such a
micro trend. It's literally been raining everywhere. Right, We've seen
some games that have had weather concerns. We have a
hurricane that's coming up from the south right now. There's
like a super humid time pretty much all across the
United States. And I think you know in those environments
(11:24):
that the hot, sticky weather, that's where you're going to
see lots and lots of home runs. Yeah, no question.
But for daily fantasy baseball purposes, it feels like people
have just been targeting a lot of the stadiums where
it's hot, and that led to a day where the
Rays kind of snucked under the radar at home in
their dome with a fourteen run games. So, remember, pitching
(11:45):
matchups matter as well, but there's there's no question that
some of these hotter environments, uh, in the long run
are going to be the ones to target just from
a micro perspective on a day to day daily fantasy look,
pitching matchups matter just as much as the weather. Yeah,
and we should also you know, we're we're gonna talk
more macro trends here in second, but I do want
to talk one of these small things, which is that, uh,
(12:07):
Mike Foltonevitch, who was the starter who got tattooed by
the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday July. Uh, him basically
being a non major league pitcher is a pretty big
story for the National League. You know, the Braves were
one of the four most high favorites on the FanDuel
Sports book in terms of World Series odds. If they
(12:29):
have to send Fultonevitch either to the i L or
to the alternate training site to try and figure his
stuff out, because you know his velocity, Ricky generally would
sit at seven. Now his velocity and that start against
the Raise, his average fastball velocity was below ninety. So
now their rotation loses, you know, basically who was supposed
(12:49):
to be their second best starting pitcher. Now they have
Mike Sarroca, Max Freed, Sean Nucom and they're gonna I
don't think they wanted to pitch Kyle right but they're
gonna have to pitch Kyle right now. You know, a
lot of innings. I think probably their plan was to
use him for maybe five or six starts. Now he
probably is going to have to go ten starts. I
mean that that shakes up things in the n L
East for sure. Yeah. So actually it's even worse than that.
(13:13):
The Braves d f ade Mike Fulton Levitch after this start,
so I think they realized that something wasn't right with him,
which is a crazy thing. I mean that Mike Fulton
Evitch was released from the Braves when you think about
how high of an upside pitcher he was two years ago.
We were talking about a guy with a three three
seven FIP under a four x FIP, a guy throwing
in the high nineties, probably one of the few Braves
(13:36):
that was untouchable in the trade markets after a year
with k rate and then his velocity fell off a cliff.
And I mean he's a guy with a straight fastball.
So if you're throwing ninety one point one was the
official according to Fangraphs of velocity of Mike Fulton Evitch
average on his fastball in that first game. If that's uh,
(13:57):
I mean, if that's what you're getting from him, there's
not much there. And I saw as soon as he
was released, basically teams or people on Twitter, speculating that
all these teams should be taking a shot on him,
but if there's no velocity there, he needs to learn
how to pitch before a team can basically take him.
He's been just completely slighter happy since last year and
it's not working. He's not turning into Jamie Moyer. He
(14:19):
really needs to figure things out or else he's just
gonna be a home run bonanza. And I think Kyle
right now is going to be the key to Atlanta season.
If he can step up in his absence, I think
Atlanta has a chance. But if not, they just lost
a big piece of their rotation, you know, being that
I think they had faith in Fulton Evage and not
realize they probably can't. So if Kyle Wright does not
(14:41):
step up and have a breakout season that I think
some people believes he has within the range of possibilities,
this Atlanta teams in a in a lot of trouble. Yeah,
And this is uh, you know, the Fulton Evage story
is part of a larger trend, which is that there
are a lot of starting pitchers right now who are
having health troubles. And the reason they're having health troubles
is they're totally out of their routine. You know, they
(15:03):
started getting ready to play baseball back in February, they
started their warm up process, and their warm up process basically,
first all it got interrupted and they all went home
to go sit on their couch and eat oreos and
play PlayStation, and then pretty much with no warning, they said,
all right, you guys got to come back. You have
to start ramping things up right now. You know, you
(15:23):
basically have three weeks to get ready, and we have
seen loads of pictures already get injured, and we're gonna
talk more about some of those specific injuries in our
next segment. But you know, Ricky, I basically am wondering,
is this gonna be something we see all year long
where pictures are going to continue to be injured and
as a result of that, we're just gonna see guys
(15:44):
not going deep in games. I think probably what we're
gonna see happen is, you know, outside of random occurrences.
You know, Kyle Hendricks throws the complete game with the
pitches on opening Day. I I think the average starter
duration this year is gonna go way down. We're going
to see loads of guys go seventy pitches. Eighty pitches,
you know, not get out of the fourth inning. We're
(16:04):
gonna have relievers in their right away in high stress situations. Yeah,
I completely agree with that. I think by the time
that a lot of these starters are ready to start
going a hundred plus pitches, we're gonna be more than
halfway through the season. So the first half of the
year is going to be a complete crapshoot. We've seen
the Tampa Bay Rays go extremely conservative, you know, Blake
(16:25):
Snell through three innings, Tyler Glass now through four. We've
just seen that around a lot of the MLB is
that these guys who have had great first starts are
we're cut short at four innings for the most part.
So I agree with you. We've seen a lot of
velocities down Fulton. Vitch wasn't the only one. Sean Maniah
was one. There's a few other guys across the league that,
you know, they didn't have their normal time to get ready.
(16:47):
They didn't get ready, you know, the normal month of
the season that they're used to, so throwing them out
of rotation, I think you're going to see a bunch
of things. Corey Kluber already hurt his shoulder, Clayton Kershaws
was was work out related, so I don't want to
include him in there, but I do think this is
gonna be an injury filled pitching season. Yeah, And from
a gambling perspective, I think one of the things that
(17:08):
we need to really take a note of is teams
with stronger bullpens are gonna be underrated in the betting
markets early on because prices for individual MLB games are
heavily based on the starter. Right, So when it's Uh,
when it's Kerr Shaw versus Uh, you know, Mike Foltonevitch right,
Kershaw is gonna be a minus three fifty favorite. But
if Kerse Shaw is only going four innings, and you know,
(17:31):
random starter X is also only going four innings, we
need to place more value on offense, obviously, and we
need to be placing more emphasis on bullpens when betting
individual MLB games. But we are going to go ahead
and head into our second break here on the Daily
Road to Hour on Sports Grid TV. When we return,
we're gonna be digging into some of these individual injuries
(17:51):
amongst the pitchers and the hitters, and continuing to dig
through some league wide trends to help you, guys with
all of your bets and strategy and daily fantasy. See
you in a few moments. Sports grid dot Com Betting
insights and entertainment at your fingertips as our team covers
the most important topics in sports wagering, real time odds,
(18:12):
predictive betting models, expert picks, and more. Want the edge
than get on the grid sports grid dot Com. Hello everyone,
and welcome back to the daily road to hour here
on Sports Grade TV. I'm Davis Mannock, joined today by
Ricky Sanders, as we continue going around the diamond getting
(18:32):
you caught up on all the relevant news and notes
that you need to be betting on Major League Baseball,
playing Major League Baseball, daily fantasy, seasonal fantasy, and everything
in between. All right, Ricky, let's just get through these
rash of picture injuries because there are no shortages too
on the same team. In fact, the World Series favorite
(18:52):
Los Angeles Dodgers. Right now, they have both Clayton Kershaw
and Alex Wood on the ten day injured list. For
many teams, this would be a death sentence. For the
Los Angeles Dodgers not so much. They have Dustin May
replacing Clayton Kershaw. They have basically Julio Urias or Ross Stripling,
depending on how you choose to categorize those guys. Um
(19:15):
replacing Alex would so not not a total nightmare for
the Dodgers, but I mean losing Kershaw losing would uh
you know, two really solid left handed starters. Teams often
struggle to find solid left handed starters. This is this
is a big deal for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Yeah,
I mean we talked about how deep this team was,
(19:35):
and we thought they could sustain injuries basically every which
way and still be competitive. Well, David Price opts out
and then in the first week you have Clayton Kershaw
get hurt in the late room and you have Alex
Would hurt his shoulder pitching. So pretty immediately we're seeing
the depth of this starting rotation test in it. And
it's crazy because you still have an Ace and Walker
(19:58):
Bueller like, you still have one of the best I
think three to four pitchers in the entire league. Even
assuming Clayton Kershaw is out and he's expected to return
over the weekend, so let's just assume the worst, you
still have a Number one and then you have these
high upside secondary guys who with your lineup, I think
this team could still be competitive in a playoff series.
(20:19):
If you rolled out Walker Bueller, Dustin May, Ross Stripling
Julio Urias is your four, I really think this team
could still compete. And that's assuming Clayton Kershaw is not back,
which he will be. So I mean we talked about
the depth of this team. You could see the same
in the bullpen. All of a sudden, Kenley Jansen gets hurt,
Pedro Bias, Joe Kelly Blake Chinon who has tons of
(20:39):
closing experience, These guys can step in the same with
the offense. Uh, It's just crazy how deep this team is.
You really do need to see some improvements and from
some of these youngsters. Dustin May looked excellent in that
first start. He gave up a bunch of hits, but
he was able to miss bats and he wasn't walking anyone.
Julio Urias has arguably the most pure like true stuff
(21:00):
of any young Picture in the league. So I think
he's going to be successful once he holds his in
his control. It's crazy there's two starting Picture injuries. I'm
still not overly worried about the Dodgers just because of
this crazy depth that we talked about. Yeah, the the
depth is really nuts, and it's it's nuts both in
their starting rotation and it's nuts in the bullpen. Though
(21:22):
at a certain point, like, Okay, Dustin May young picture,
he he probably knows his body less than Walker Bueler,
He knows his body less than Clayton Kershaw. Like, I
think we're gonna see in a weird way, I actually
think older pictures are kind of at an advantage because, like,
you know, they just know how they know their elbow right,
they know their shoulder, and they're gonna be able to
(21:44):
tell their coach like, look, you know, I can only
go three innings. I can only go four innings. And
I my expectation is that a lot of the injuries
that we see over the next two weeks, Rick, are
gonna be younger pictures who you know, obviously haven't been
paid yet and also just are not as familiar with
the and to me of a big league season and
how to deal with, you know, kind of the ways
in which the arm gets nicked up for pictures over
(22:06):
the course of the year. Yeah, I think I agree
with that I mean the guys who haven't gone through
the routine at all before. I think the older guys
for the most part. I mean, we're gonna see exceptions.
Corey Kluber, he's had some issues over the course of
the past few seasons anyways, And it's baseball, I mean
throwing and basically not a natural motion. And a lot
of these guys, because they're throwing so often, it's such
(22:28):
a high velocity, there's gonna be issues. But some of
these young guys who haven't been through it before and
just rushed their bodies, I think I agree with you
that those are gonna be some of the injuries. And
just as a side note, did you hear that Walker Bueller? Uh?
The interview within the other day might be one of
the worst interviews in all of major sports. Look, I
I love baseball, Ricky, these dudes suck. These dudes are
(22:51):
not good interviews. I I I watched probably more baseball
this last weekend than I have ever watched. My My
girlfriend was out of town, so it's just me and
the dogs and baseball on all day. I heard so
many player interviews I remembered basically nothing that any of
them said. I I do got to give a shout
out to the one guy who was good though. Max
Scherzer was on ESPN one night. I don't remember which
(23:14):
night it was, but he was. He was really really good. Yeah,
given up to Max. But Walker Bueler, I mean three
word Walker I think should be his new nickname because
I don't think he answered any questions more than like
three words, and the announcers were like, all right, and
they basically had to like go between them coming up
with more questions because they thought it would take more
(23:34):
time than it did. Yeah. I actually I also would
say Clayton Kershaw has been a good interview in the past.
I haven't heard one from him in a long time,
but he's pretty funny. And then shout out to my
boy Brandon McCarthy, who is one of the hilarious, most
long term I I I really wish that he was
involved with baseball this season because he would have some
(23:57):
very good player safety and UH COVID related takes. Definitely,
uh no doubt. So in terms of other pitching injuries,
we actually haven't even talked about the biggest one, which
is Justin Verlander. So he was reported that Verlander initially
was out for the season. Then I think Verlander tweeted,
He's like, uh, this, this is not true. I'm only
(24:19):
out for a month. However, if I was a betting man,
I would actually think that either he doesn't come back
this year, or he comes back, pitches once or twice
and gets injured again. Uh. You know, Verlander is now
thirty eight years old. Like he is, he is definitely
pushing it in terms of how long you can be
as dominant as he has been. And also, my assumption
(24:40):
is anytime something like that is reported, it probably was
the thought at first that like, oh, this is serious
enough to be limited, and then Verlanders like, well, you know,
I I want to play, I want to get paid,
I want to help my teammates and everything. My My
guess is, though, if you drafted Justin Verlander in the
first round of your fantasy league, like you're bummed out
right now? Okay, he has almost three thousand innings under
(25:03):
his belt. When there's four arm issues, that usually means
there could be something with the ulnar nerve, which is
Tommy John related. Uh. Four arm issues are never good
for a picture, so I assume they want to be
on the careful end here. We'll see if there ends
up being a playoffs, but I would guess they don't
want to rush him back. I would think he misses
(25:23):
over a month. I would just take the over there
and I think maybe he pitches down the stretch a
little bit, but if anything, they get him ready for
playoffs and that's it. Otherwise I think there is a
possibility that he's just shut down. Uh. Yeah, I think
I think that is definitely. I think that is definitely
a real possibility. Uh, in terms of pitching. Uh, you know,
(25:45):
in terms of injuries, we have Steven Strasburg with the
nerve issue on his hand. Now. He told the media
on Monday that he threw lightly off of the mound
and that he felt good. But I mean, we know
the history with Steven Strasburg and injuries. It tends to
be not the best, He tends to not be the
quickest healer. Or what ends up happening is he just
(26:06):
pitches injured a lot. You know, he just basically is
going to pitch the rest of the season with his
nerve issue and just not be full of Steven Strasburg. Yeah,
I think that's the main concern for fantasy And I
mean bad Stephen Strasburg. You look at two thousand eighteen
his career highs A three seven four e r A,
So it certainly can get worse than that. But Stephen
(26:26):
Strasburg that year, that was the only year he was
over a one home run per nine rates. Uh. It
was a year that he was given up a ton
of fly balls. His babit was up because he wasn't
able to miss batts with the same fury. So I mean,
Steven Strasberg, as long as he's good to go, I
think you're playing him. You just temper your expectations a
bit because we've seen it before. Like you said, yep,
(26:48):
we have Corey Kluberg shut down for a month with
a Grade two strain of a muscle in the back
of his pitching shoulder. Uh. Any chance that the Rangers
had to compete for or the division, though, I guess
the expanded playoffs, you can't really you can't really write
anyone off. But this, this injury is huge for the
Rangers basically because Klueber was Though he was not good
(27:11):
last season, it was one of the more brutal seasons.
Actually was the most brutal season of his career for Cleveland.
Last year. He was signed to be the ace of
this pitching staff, and they are really gonna miss uh,
you know, the twelve starts he was expected to throw.
He really looked good in spring. I'm you know, for
for personal reasons. I'm happy I missed on him at
fantasy leagues. I felt I was high on him, and
(27:34):
I think the masses who were watching Spring were even higher.
I'm Tory Cluber even though I had him as like
an SP two and a half. But man, this sucks
because Corey Glueber. I mean, I think he was due
for a bounce back year. I think everyone's expecting Texas
to play a lot more hit or friendly than I
think it's gonna play. I think it's gonna be closer
to like a league average stadium with the fences moved
(27:56):
back compared to the old Globe life. So I really
had hopes for him, But I just don't think he's
gonna be back anytime soon. He's old, He's got no
real reason. I think the Rangers will be an iffy
team by the time he's back, So probably a legit
threat to miss the rest of the year. So, uh,
do we think that Otani is injured? So basically, for
(28:18):
those who don't know, Otani pitched his first game in
two years now in Major League Baseball, did not record
an out, has an e r A of affinity as
we as we sit here, an infinity e r A
as he was not able to record. Now I think
he I think he walked. Yeah, so he through only
fifteen of thirty pitches for strikes and walked three guys
(28:41):
before he was pulled. Do we think he's injured? Do
we think this is mental? And are you worried about Otani?
I think he's gonna be okay, which I feel like
is an under reaction, but you know, an infinity start
is always rutal. It's his first start in two seasons.
(29:03):
I thought the velocity looked okay. I mean, he's down
from where he was, but still over ninety is fine. Um.
I don't know what to make of Otani. I think
I'm a wait and see approach with him. He's obviously
had some arm issues which caused him to shut down,
But at worst, I hope he could just continue to
be a hitter and maybe they'll ditch this pitching experiment
(29:26):
if it turns out that this you know, four mile
an hour dropping velocity is not just the fact that
he hasn't gotten ready enough. It's there's something with the arm.
So at least Otani should be in the big leagues
and most scenarios. But I'm not sure what to make
it is. I want to say, like, yeah, sure, I'm
overly concerned, but it's one start and it's his first
start in quite a while, so I want to take
(29:46):
a wait and see approach here. What made me, what
made me bummed out, is that it seems to be
like a mental issue, and I don't, you know, I
don't know if that's something you fix start to start basically,
But we are going to go ahead and head into
our final break here on the daily Road to hour
on sports Grid TV. When we returned, we were going
to talk some closers and some overall league wide trends
(30:08):
that we are seeing early on in the league baseball season.
So see you guys in just a few minutes for
a continuation of going around the Diamond sports grid dot
com betting insights and entertainment at your fingertips as our
team covers the most important topics in sports wagering, real
time odds, predictive betting, models, expert picks, and more want
(30:30):
the edge than get on the grid sports grid dot Com.
Mhm mhmm, you're watching sports Grid get the Hello everyone,
(30:54):
and welcome back to the daily road of our teater
on sports gred TV. I am David Mannick joined by
Ricky Sanders. Today on the show, we are going around
the diving around the diamond, covering lots of news and
notes for all thirty Major League Baseball teams, though maybe
by the end of the season they were only twenty
nine of them playing. Thanks to the Miami Marlins and uh, Ricky,
(31:14):
the closer carousel has been on fire through a week
of the MLB season, just as just as we predicted.
Really yeah, I really thought it was strange around the
industry seeing like the National Fantasy Baseball Championships, seeing all
the ADPs skyrocket of these closers, right, I mean, you
would see these high stakes players have multiple closers on
(31:37):
the roster by round six, and I could not understand it,
being a guy who's always been like fade the top
closers kind of way to play year to year fantasy
baseball because saves are so volatile, so in a year
where health is even more volatile than usual. I didn't
understand why people would would then be like, Okay, I
gotta just get the top closers. We've seen a roll
(32:00):
this Chapman get hurt. We've seen Leave Hendrick struggle, We've
seen Craig Kimberal struggle. I mean, you could go situation
the situation when Edwin Diaz gave up some home runs,
like it's been nuts. It's I mean, this is the
prime year to have punted saves, prime year to have
punted saves. I mean just everything that's happened has been
(32:21):
so crazy. And we took it upon ourselves in the
preseason to go over shows like saying you'd hear the
low end bullpens here or where you can get the
saves from these guys. And we've been proven right because
a lot of these high end bullpen situations have not
looked great. A bunch of these closures have looked ugly,
and I again, I think that was a market miss
(32:44):
price there. I don't understand what these high stakes guys
were doing, and I often don't say that I trust
these guys. I believe in them. They're they're putting up
real money, So you would think they know what they're doing,
but I think they totally totally totally screwed that aspect
up of draft this year. Yeah, I mean, it just
it just did not make sense over sixty games to
(33:04):
treat the most volatile position far and away closer closer
in fantasy baseball. It's more volatile than I mean, just
thinking of all positions across fantasy sports, I can't I mean,
maybe kickers and defenses in seasonal fantasy football or something,
but it it is. It's it's absolutely nuts to think
of how volatile the reliever position is in fantasy baseball,
(33:26):
and you know, guys can get replaced at the drop
of a hat. Guys can just have really bad performance,
like over a sixty game season. If you drafted Chapman
as your closer and he gets blown up twice, that's
gonna be damaged to your ratios that you literally cannot
recover over a sixty game season like that, That's just it.
It's dusted off. I mean, here are your major league
(33:48):
leaders in saves through the three days. Wade Davis, who
was the most volatile closer in the league. I think
of the ones who were drafted Colorado, Trevor got which
was a guy that I was on. And by the way,
even towards the end of draft season, he was the
third San Francisco Giants reliever being drafted, meaning that there
(34:09):
were two guys who people felt were the closer ahead
of him. One of those guys was Tyler Rodgers, who
was Taylor Rogers brother, who was the opener for one
of their first games, or maybe it was the last
spring training game, but anyways, And Joejamenez, the closer on
Detroit So Colorado. San Francisco, Detroit are your leaders in
sages this year, And not only that, we're already starting
(34:32):
to see guys get injured. Ken Giles, the closer for
the Toronto Blue Jays, has been diagnosed with right elbow
sore nous. Basically, it's expected that he is going to
head to the at least the ten d A I
l you know, wouldn't be surprising to nazi him back
for you know, a month or something like that. Who
do you who do you like there as the replacement closer?
(34:53):
I think Anthony bass is the guy. He's the guy
they named. He already locked down a save, which is
weird because he's a former like long reliever uh, turned
into a closer. Maybe he's one of those guys who
just needed, you know, the shorter amount of innings we
saw it with Ian Kennedy was able to crank up
his velocity moving to that relieving role. So maybe he's
one of those guys. But man, it has been strange
(35:16):
looking at this save leaderboard. You talk about like injuries.
Ian Kennedy was used in the fifth inning of a
competitive game without an injury, and Greg Holland was the
guy who got who has the Royals loan save Jokin
Suria after Liam Hendricks looked brutal has a save. Cole
Sulzer was the guy who got the save for the Orioles,
(35:36):
Seth Lugo for the Mats. You mentioned that you know
Diaz had looked bad. Brandon Kinseler, he was the expected closer.
How about Jeremy Jeffris having to save on the Cubs.
I mean, this is just unbelievable the names of guys
who have saved. Like of the top you know, I
guess there's a bunch of guys tied at one, but
of the guys who are in the top twenty, there's
like five guys who were expected to be the closer
(35:57):
up there at the top. So how do you how
do you proceed forward in you know, these high stakes
fantasy baseball leagues? Are you just putting in claims on why?
Like kind of like zero RB teams in fantasy football?
Are you just are you like, every guy who gets
a save opportunity are they getting, you know, five bucks
of FAB every single week. I wouldn't say every, but
(36:19):
I would definitely say nearly all of them. I mean,
I think this is the closest thing to zero RB,
no question. I think if you see a guy pitching
the ninth and he looks relatively good, you throw five
bucks on him. It's that simple. I think of the
guys who have gotten saved so far, maybe my lowest
interest guy is Taylor Williams of the Mariners, even though
(36:42):
they said that bullpen is going to be congested, and
it was interesting to see McGill pitching the seventh, who
basically was their only remaining reliever who we thought had
a chance to factor into saves because Herondo's on the
I L and Austin Adams is on the I L
and then boom, the guy we think is their clothes
are not pitching in the high leverage situation, so maybe
(37:04):
Williams is even worth five bucks. But looking at some
of these other guys, like I think Craig Kimberroll looks horrible,
So Jeremy Jeffers is definitely a guy I have some
interest in. Liam Hendrix looks like he's kind of doesn't
have it right now. I think Joachims Soria, who's one
of the active leaders and Saves obviously has proven he
can get it done. Quank Young Kim. I mean, we
(37:25):
haven't seen Diegos healthy. Oh my, you go up and
down this board, and I don't see how you wouldn't
have interest in some of these guys who have gotten
the safe so far. Just seeing how the season is gone. Yeah,
the first couple of weeks of FAB in these high
stakes fantasy baseball leagues are gonna be really interesting. Of course,
made all that much more competitive by I mean, the
(37:47):
the starting pitching market is insane too. You know, guys
who are crushing early on, who have been great, right
and then also guys you know, the we have injuries,
we have guys who are getting called up. You know,
we have the fact that you know, guys were probably
going to be counting on Caleb Smith and Jose Urina
for the Marlins. Who knows when you're gonna be able
to get those starts again? We had Dylan Bundy with
(38:09):
a strong start for the Angels in his in his
first outing. Like the market is crazy right now? Yeah,
but in a way I feel vindicated with the what
we told people preseason. Not only were we telling people
not to buy saves, but we were telling people to
stack against the bad teams. Have you seen the strikeout
leaderboard at this point you have? So here are the
(38:30):
guys with double digit strikeouts, and tell me if you
notice a trend here. I'll just name a few of them.
Shane Bieber and Carlos Carrasco they do pitch on the
same team, and Trevor Bauer and Luis Castillo are amongst
the guys with double digit strikeouts. The only other guy
is Max Scherzer. What did we tell people about the
betting market? Davis go against the Royals and Tigers. Guess
(38:53):
with two teams these guys have faced. You were stone
cold crushing Shane Bieber with fourteen ks against the Royals,
as well as Carlos Carrasco and Trevor Bauer and Luis
Castillo double digit ks against the Tigers. So in a way,
I feel like, you know, the stacking. We talked about
how Jose Ramirez and Francisco Lindoor and the offenses were
(39:13):
good guys to use and draft and season leaks because
they'd be playing so many games against them, we might
have overlooked the pitching because if you just get all
these series against these strikeout prone teams, we've seen in
multiple pitchers kicked frush. Yeah, we have. We we have
seen that there is definitely a divide between the haves
and the have nots in baseball, which definitely we expect.
(39:35):
And by the way, that is something to really be
paying attention to. As you know, we expect they're going
to be a lot more injuries. We expect that they're
going to be guys who are testing positive for COVID
nineteen and have to quarantine for a couple of weeks
or have to take a bunch of tests, you know,
like they're just gonna be teams that are fielding triple
A quality rosters. Uh, you know, and and there are
(39:56):
some teams who early on we thought they were going
to be bad, you know, not just the Tigers and
the Royals, But the Giants were a team that, you know,
we thought they were gonna be bad. They've been really bad.
We thought that. But then on the other hand, we
thought that the Rangers were gonna be good. Right now,
Ricky uh. Through the first week of the season, the
Rangers have scored five runs, the Rockies have scored eight.
(40:19):
That series between those two teams in Arlington somehow turned
into nothing but pitchers duels. Yeah, it's so weird. I mean,
not that Harmon Marquez and John Gray are talented pitchers.
Mike Miner had a great year last year, but I mean,
we know that the Rockies have struggled away from home.
Last year, they were dead last in w r C
(40:39):
plus against right handed pitching away from home, so we
knew that they struggled there, and they were a little
better against lefties, but they were still mostly based on power.
I think that series has been a lot of people
are going to have to adjust to global life being
the way it is. It's not quite as power favorable.
I think the gaps are gonna be fine. I mean,
because you've act up the basically the center field walls
(41:01):
on both sides, and I think it's still slightly more
power favorable to the left side of the plate, meaning
the right side of the ballpark. So like Joey Gallo
road Nan Outdoor, if you're worried about how their home
run rate's gonna be affected, I think you you shouldn't
really worry about that. But there was a reason to
like the Rangers pitchers more than you know, basically usual,
(41:22):
because the Rangers in previous years were from two thousand
eighteen to two thousand nineteen, they had the worst home
road e r A splits of their starting pitchers, even
over course field. I don't think that's gonna be the
case anymore. So the fact that you can play Rangers
pictures at home more so than ever before. Like, I
(41:43):
think this is something that the masses are gonna have
to get used to. I'm not saying, you know, playing
in Texas in the heat, especially on days where the
roof is open, it's not going to be favorable. I
just don't think this is gonna be a top five
hitting ballpark anymore. I think it's gonna be slightly below that. Yeah,
I mean I think you are. I think you are
almost certain to be correct about that. I think that's
what the I think that's what are our early returns are.
(42:06):
I think that's what our early returns are showing us.
What what other things have surprised you or that you
you know that we've kind of learned. I guess one
of the things that I that I we should note
this is the Astros turns out, even without cheating, still
pretty good baseball team. They can still smack the cover
off the ball. That which is I mean, some people
were questioning it. That's an important thing to know early on. Yeah,
(42:29):
I mean, I think the talk of their demise was
probably overstated in the sense that even knowing when a
fastball is coming, it's still a major league quality fastball.
Knowing when a breaking ball is coming, you still have
to have the ability to hit it. So obviously, like
guys like jose L to May, Alex Bregman, they they
were good in the minors before they had, you know,
(42:52):
cow bells. They were good in the majors likely before
they had cow bells. So I think, you know, just
thinking that this whole team was gonna fall apart was surprising,
But maybe the most surprising single player was on the
other side of that first Astro series. How about Kyle Lewis. Man,
this guy can hit the living crap out of the ball,
and he did it against some of the best. I mean,
(43:14):
Lance mccohler is the guy who I think looks really good.
He crushed one off him Justin Verlander. I didn't think
he looked hurt in that first start he had. He
had over a strikeout a inning in that start, so
he still had nasty stuff. Kyle Lewis hit one. I
think it was well over for thirty against Justin Verlander.
Kyle Lewis hitting third on a team of Seattle, that's
probably gonna be just utter frustration this year. Looks like
(43:37):
a guy who you want to own in all formats.
We were talking about the betting markets for like under
the radar, you know leaders and homers. A lot of
people like fran mill Reyes, a lot of people liked
Joey Gallo, a lot of people liked etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
I think Kyle Lewis might be your dark horse major
league home run leader. I like the call. You know
(43:57):
anyone who first of all, anyone who gets that head
start right hitting a couple of home runs on the
first week of the season. That's gonna that's gonna give
you a nice little uh, that's gonna give you a
nice little head start. I I gotta say, though, I'm
gonna go with Nelson Cruz to lead the home runs
and the rest of the way. Guy looks as stocky
in his built as ever, and he is going up
(44:18):
to the plate with one thing in mind every game
for sixty games, and that is I want to hit dingers.
I don't care about hitting singles. Literally, all I wanna
do is I want to put the ball over the fence,
which is, you know, an attitude that I think that
we can all respect. But we are going to head
into our final break here on the Daily Road to
hour on sports Crede TV. We've been going all around
(44:39):
the diamond, getting you guys caught up with everything going
on in professional baseball right now, see you guys in
just a few moments to go ahead and close out
the show. Sports grid dot Com betting insights and entertainment
at your fingertips as our team covers the most important
topics in sports wagering, real time odds, predictive betting, model,
(45:00):
expert picks, and more want the edge than get on
the Grid Sports grid dot Com. M hm hm this
is Sports Crede. Hello everyone, and welcome back to our
(45:25):
final segment here on the Daily Road Hour on Sports
Screen TV. I am David Maddick joined by Ricky Sanders.
We've been going all around the diamond getting you caught
up with all the news and notes that you need
to be betting on and playing daily fantasy in the
Major League Baseball. Right now, Uh, kind of close our
show with two bold predictions based off of some of
(45:45):
the information that we have grinded out here so far
through the first week of the season. And Ricky, I
have a a bold prediction for most strikeouts in Major
League Baseball, or at at least top five. And that
is a guy we both really liked preseason. We were, me,
you and Pacheco were all really high on the Cincinnati Reds.
And I'm gonna I'm gonna keep it writing, not with
(46:07):
Trevor Bauer, but with Louise Castillo, who I actually think
has better raw stuff than Trevor Bauer. And you know,
it's just gonna be a little bit better at run
prevention to so gonna keep him in games a little
bit longer. Yeah, Louise Castio, the ground baller along with
the ability to miss bats. And I saw a stat
strikeouts on changeups last year. He had a hundred and
(46:29):
fifty five. Second in baseball was seventy six, So he
was like double the amount of strikeouts on his change
up alone. It's just a crazy good pitch. Plus he's
got that two steamer. I can't hate on you there.
I've got a dark horse for top five in the
league in e r A. I'm not sure specifically strikeouts
is the way for for me to go here, But
Garrett Richards as a picture who looks back to me.
(46:52):
And I mean even in a limited sample size. Last year,
you look at spin rate on his slider, he was
number one in the major leagues amongst darting pitchers by
a wide margin. There was no one even close. And
you looked at that slider in the first game and
it looked just nasty. He did not give up a run,
six k's And I know they're pitching with a designated
(47:13):
hitter now in the National League, but I think Garrett
Richards is back to being a SP one slash SP
two in fantasy. If you drafted Garrett Richards late if
you can just get the health to be there. I
think this is a picture who is going to give
you fantastic numbers pitching in San Diego, which is not
a great power park at all for lefties, and you've
got that out pitch that is just absolutely elite. I
(47:36):
think his home run rate is gonna be way down
from last year, and if he could do that, I
think he's gonna be one of the least e r
A leaders, and I think people aren't talking about him enough.
There we go, Garrett Richards, Louis Castido, two guys to
be keeping an eye on for Fantasy Baseball for dfs
and especially when they take the mound for betting purposes.
You know, I don't think that it can be overstated
(47:57):
just how much these markets are going to be in
flux early in the year for Major League Baseball. Gonna
reward people who are sharp, who have their their nose
to the grindstone, and are you know, trying to find
those small edges. That's gonna do it for us here
today at the Daily road to Hour on Sports Grid TV.
Thank you very much for going around the diamond with
Ricky and I and we will continue the show and
(48:18):
see you guys soon. Sports grid dot Com betting insights
and entertainment at your fingertips as our team covers the
most important topics in sports wagering, real time odds, predictive
betting models, expert picks, and more. Want the edge than
get on the grid. Sports grid dot Com
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