Free Picks: Service Plays for Wednesday, October 1

Primetime Insiders

Giants & Over 6

Our system does have a play on the Giants tomorrow and a lean on the over of 6. There is a huge pitching advantage in this matchup per our system. Bumgarner is slightly underrated per our system and has a very impressive 9 K per 9 innings. The Pirates are not a very high strikeout team which should bode well for the Pirates but Bumgarner is still very impressive. Bumgarner is all about three pitches with fastball (43%), slider (35%), and curveball (14%). Bumgarner’s best pitch is by far his fastball but he is going to have to mix it up as the Pirates are the 3rd best fastball hitting team in baseball. Bumgarner should throw his slider frequently as the Pirates are one of the worst slider hitting teams in the nation.

On the other mound is Volquez who is very overrated and might have some difficulty tomorrow against the Giants. Volquez is pitching at home but is on a different level than Bumgarner. Volquez is all about his fastball (55%), curveball (25%), and changeup (18%). Volquez’s best pitch is his curveball but the Giants destroy curveballs and is going to have to throw more change ups to get through the game.

Overall our system loves the Giants on Wednesday night and a slight play on the over as our system thinks the total should be closer to 7 or 7.5.

Jim Feist

Giants at Pirates
Pick: Over

The Pirates get to host this game for the second straight season as San Francisco comes to town for this one game playoff. The Giants will turn to Ace Lefty Madison Bumgarner (18-10) with a stellar resume and the team 6-1 his last seven starts. He is 11-4 on the road this season with a 2.22 ERA and the Giants are 15-5 in his last 20 road starts. Pittsburgh had the remarkable regular season, a young team that stepped up, but do they have the nerves for October baseball? The Pirates will pin their playoffs on 31-year old Edinson Volquez who has always been erratic, and the team is 2-3 his last five starts. In his last three starts he's walked 9 in 21 innings. The last four years against these Giants he is winless with a 4.95 ERA in 43+ innings. And the Pirates are 3-8 in their last 11 games vs. a starter with a WHIP less than 1.15. The Giants have been a good over team when installed as the dog, evidenced by their 9-2-1 O/U record their last 12 in that role. The Giants are also 9-4 O/U in their last 13 playoff games. Very low total here and it won't take much to get us over. I'm sticking with the OVER as the Giant bats should come alive against Volquez.

Vegas Butcher

San Francisco Giants -110

Not all ERA’s are created equally and consequently not all pitchers with the same ERA’s are the ‘same’. This is a scenario in this matchup today. While both Bumgarner and Volquez sport 3.0 and 3.1 ERA’s respectively, their advanced stats tell a different story. Bumgarner has an elite 25% K-rate, only a 5% BB-rate, 5.1 K/BB, and 3.1/3.0/3.0 FxS. His xFIP and SIERA rank 15th each out of 171 qualified starters in my database, indicating that he’s been an elite pitcher this season. By comparison, Volquez has only a 17% K-rate, a pretty high 9% BB-rate, 1.9 K/BB, and 4.2/4.2/4.2 FxS. His xFIP ranks 141st out of 171 qualified starters and his SIERA is 133rd. Bumgarner’s ranking indicates that he’s a middle-tier #1 starter (#16 overall and there’s 30 teams in MLB), while Volquez is a middle-tier #5 starter (#135 ranking divided by 30 = 4.5). Volquez has a -1.1 FIP, which is 6th highest in the league and his .263 BABIP is greatly responsible for keeping the ERA artificially low. Still don’t believe that he’s the same mediocre pitcher he was in the past? Let’s compare Volquez’ numbers for the last 3 seasons:

2012: 22% K%, 13% BB%, .292 BABIP, 4.1/4.2 FIP/xFIP and 4.1 ERA

2013: 18% K%, 10% BB%, .325 BABIP, 4.2/4.1 FIP/xFIP and 5.7 ERA

2014: 17% K%, 9% BB%, .263 BABIP, 4.2/4.2 FIP/xFIP and 3.0 ERA

Looking at these numbers, we see that Volquez’ K-rate has been dropping YoY but at the same time his BB-rate has been getting lower as well. He’s sacrificing strikeouts for better control. Regardless, his FIP/xFIP has been pretty identical for 3 years running and pretty much on pace with his 4.3/4.2 FIP/xFIP career mark. In 2012 his ERA was right where it should have been, at 4.1. Last season, his inflated .325 BABIP inflated his ERA to an unrealistic 5.7 mark while this season his low .263 BABIP deflated it to a just as unrealistic 3.0 number. We can debate the relevance of advanced stats all we want but there just isn’t any difference in Volquez this year from last season. He is still a fastball (55%), curveball (26%), and changeup (19%) pitcher. His fastball velocity is at 93.2 MPH, which is line with his career mark of 93.3. His SwStr% is 8.3% which is much lower than his 9.8% career mark, though as I mentioned earlier he’s sacrificing strike-outs for better control (though of course his control is NOT great regardless). There’s just nothing significantly different from his approach this year than in years past, and his 3.0 ERA has nothing to do with Volquez discovering a “magic pitching pill” at 31 years of age but everything to do with plain old luck. Well, Giants rank 6th offensively in the league and will field about 6 left-handed hitters in the lineup today. Volquez has an 11% BB-rate and 4.8 FIP against lefties this season, compared to 7% BB-rate and 3.7 FIP against right-handers. I like San Fran’s chances of taking advantage of a mediocre pitcher like Volquez.

As far as Bumgarner is concerned he’s facing a Pirates lineup that finished ranking #2 overall in the 2nd half of the year. But fortunately for him, Pirates aren’t as potent offensively against lefties. While they rank #1 against right-handers offensively, have a +111 wRC+ against them with .334 wOBA and 0.158 ISO (#2), Pirates rank only 19th offensively against lefties. Their wRC+ of 97 is 14% lower, their .313 wOBA is lower, as is their .114 ISO which only ranks 26th in the league. Bumgarner tends to give up the long-ball to right-handers at times and Pirates do have excellent power, but that risk is mitigated by them not hitting left-handers as well. Final potential advantage for San Fran is on the defensive end. Pittsburgh is one of the worst defensive teams in the league, ranking 27th on the year. If the game is close, one mistake could be the difference in this one and Pirates are more likely to make it. I’ll back the more dominant starter who is backed by a strong offense and a better defense.

Bob Balfe

Pirates / Giants Under 6.5

Both pitchers are dialed in right now. Volquez is pitching as great as anybody down the stretch and it was 4 years ago in his only postseason start that he only got about 4 outs before he was lifted in an awful outing. Volquez is a totally different pitcher now and is going to make up for that appearance. Bumgarner has a proven track record in the playoffs and I just don’t see this game being anywhere near as close as an exciting game that we saw last night. It is not trendy to take under selections in any sport right now, but I believe both pitchers will go 7 or 8 innings before handing it over to solid bullpens.

LT Profits

San Francisco vs Pittsburgh
Pick: Pittsburgh 1st Half

The San Francisco Giants are starting one of the best southpaws in the National League in this Wild Card Playoff in Madison Bumgarner, but Edinson Volquez has been the hotter pitcher lately and pitches for the hotter team, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bumgarner finished 18-10 with a 2.98 ERA, but it could be that his professional career high 217.1 innings took a toll as he was not sharp his last start in a big game vs. the Dodgers, allowing four earned runs and three home runs while toiling through 116 pitches in 7.1 innings. He also pitched poorly his only start vs. Pittsburgh allowing five earned runs on six hits plus two walks in four innings. Volquez finished with six straight Quality Starts over which he had a 1.10 ERA and 0.95 WHIP in 41 innings! The Pirates are 17-6 in their last 23 games overall, but we are playing the five-inning line to neutralize a Pittsburgh bullpen with a 4.07 ERA the last 10 games.

SPORTS WAGERS

San Francisco @ PITTSBURGH

We're going to break this game down in order to help you with your selection but we're not playing it because we just don't see any value in either side.

The real wild card in this game is Pirates starter Edinson Volquez. Volquez has been on four teams in the last four seasons. One year ago, he was one of the worst pitchers in baseball with a 5.91 ERA pitching for the Padres. The Dodgers picked him up in September of last year for depth but Volquez never threw a pitch when he was surprisingly added to the NLCS roster. One of his biggest problems is control or lack thereof. Volquez has walked 71 batters in 193 innings and he doesn't make up for it with strikeouts. When he joined the Pirates, pitching coach Ray Searage implemented some mechanical changes in an attempt to improve his control and the results have varied. It's not unusual to see Volquez walk five batters in a game or go out there and walk one. In terms of control, you just really never know what you're going to get with Volquez. That said, he will induce a lot of groundballs to get out of the inevitable jams that he gets into. He was the only pitcher on the Pirates to go out there every fifth day and he usually gave the Pirates an excellent chance of winning. The Pirates infield defense has been outstanding and that, too, has helped Volquez avoid disasters. There’s real reasons to believe that Volquez has improved this year, thanks in large part to Searage and the defense that surrounds him. There’s also considerable evidence to say that his outstanding run to end the season was more of a mirage than any real tangible change. There isn't a crystal ball in the world that can predict what type of outing we'll see from Volquez here. He's a high-risk/high reward proposition but it should be noted that the Giants were one of the worst teams in baseball in drawing walks and that should work in Volquez's favor. Furthermore, the Pirates went 51-30 at PNC Park this season, which is another stat that works in their favor.

Ask 30 GM's which pitcher they would rather have going for them in a one and done game and 30 would instantly answer Madison Bumgarner. Bumgarner is the real deal. It was just another 200+ inning season with outstanding skills for Bumgarner. Exciting dominant start/disaster start trend shouts consistency. Bumgarner's BB/K split of 43/219 in 217 innings is more proof that this guy can be trusted with the ball in any situation against any opponent. Bumgarner dominated down the stretch with a 1.11 ERA over his last five starts covering 32 innings. His 15% swing and miss rate and 70% first pitch strike rate since the beginning of August was the second best mark in all of baseball and gave full support to his elite command. In the end, we know what we're getting from Bumbarner and anything other than a solid performance here would be a surprise. Still, we're not crazy about the Giants offense or their bullpen. If this game is tied going into the late innings or the Pirates have the lead, we give a significant edge to the Pirates to close it out. We're also not in favor of spotting a price with the Giants, even though Bumgarner deserves to be favored over Volquez 100% of the time. Other than starting pitching, we give an edge to the Pirates in every other area and when you throw in the home-field edge they have utilized all season, it makes them playable here taking back a tag. With Bumgarner going, the Giants are also playable because they may get out to 3 or 4 run lead and never look back. Frankly, we're not convinced of any scenario here and the price on the Pirates isn't high enough to get us to bite.

Michael Black

Giants at Pirates
Play: Over 6

The Pirates host the Giants for the National League Play In game and we're playing this one to go Over the suggested Total of 6 runs. Pittsburgh starter Edinson Volquez has a 0.43 ERA over his last three starts so it's not making much sense to see this Over open at 6 and jump up to 6.5. The public is hammering this Under so we're going the other way and playing this Over.