Braves Look Fierce on Warpath Against Cardinals
The Cardinals host the Braves tonight at 7:05 ET on Fox. Atlanta opened as a heavy underdog and there is too much value to pass up on them.
Atlanta Braves (46-24) at St. Louis Cardinals (42-38)
MLB Pick: Atlanta ML +136
St Louis’ Luke Weaver (4-6, 4.59 ERA) is heavily favored, even though he’s costing bettors mucho dinero. Weaver is especially troublesome at home, where he’s yielding -6.8 units because St. Louis is 2-5 in his home starts.
Weaver has an arm, the problem is location. He throws his 94 mph fastball over half the time overall and in every scenario. At best, he offers a change-up between 20-30% of the time to avoid being too predictable. He likes to locate it in the lowest parts of the strike zone, but he has a tendency to leave it down the middle. Opponents are slugging 2.000 against this pitch in the two most middle parts of the zone and he has allowed as many homers with this one pitch as he has with all of his other pitches combined. Moreover, he utilizes a curveball 26% of the time as a first-pitch strike to left-handed hitters in order to somewhat mitigate the predictability of his first-pitch fastball. Problematically, his curveball is a weak pitch and opponents are slugging .639 against it.
Despite his reliance on it, his fastball struggles for location. His four most frequent placements of this pitch are in the middle row of the strike zone. Location is critical for a high-velocity fastball because power is met with power. All an opposing batter needs to do against a high-velo fastball is get a barrel on it. He gets away only to a degree with his fastball’s poor location because of its above-average spin rate which makes it deceptive. But even the Royals and Padres have slammed his fastball, even though they rank poorly against this pitch.
In three of his past four starts, Weaver has allowed four runs. He allowed four or five walks in half of those starts and in half he allowed over 50% hard contact and over 30% line drives. These numbers show that Weaver is either trying harder to be precise, but failing, and therefore walking more batters, or he’s simply trying harder to throw strikes, therefore leaving pitches in dangerous locations and getting slammed.
Atlanta boasts a strong selection of left-handed hitters—against which Weaver allows a significantly higher slugging percentage. Freddie Freeman is slugging .771 against the high-velo (92-97 mph) fastball from righties, Ozzie Albies .604.
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Max Fried (0-2, 4.09 ERA) has been called up from Triple A in place of the injured Brandon McCarthy. His career ERA as a starter is 3.09, compared to 5.27 as a reliever.
The southpaw relies on an average-velocity fastball with over 50% frequency. His fastball is a major reason why he has induced over 50% ground balls in every career start. It features very little spin so that it drops more and induces batters to swing on top of it, which creates a ground ball out and tends to prevent extra-base hits. He locates it well, consistently avoiding the middle of the plate with it and instead concentrating its location on the fringe of the zone. Against 93 fastballs thrown by Fried in 2018, opponents have only managed one extra-base hit. The youngster complements his fastball with an elusive sinker that opponents have yet to hit. Although its quality by itself is low because it’s loopy, his curveball plays well off his fastball because of the velocity differential that it creates.
The Cards have mustered only two runs in their past two games. Most of their top right-handed hitters are slumping. Jose Martinez hasn’t managed an extra-base hit in his last nine games. Yadier Molina is batting .217 in his last seven days. Paul DeJong is still injured. Tommy Pham has zero hits in his last 25 at-bats.
The Cardinals host the Braves tonight at 7:05 ET on Fox. Atlanta opened as a heavy underdog and there is too much value to pass up on them.
Atlanta Braves (46-24) at St. Louis Cardinals (42-38)
MLB Pick: Atlanta ML +136
St Louis’ Luke Weaver (4-6, 4.59 ERA) is heavily favored, even though he’s costing bettors mucho dinero. Weaver is especially troublesome at home, where he’s yielding -6.8 units because St. Louis is 2-5 in his home starts.
Weaver has an arm, the problem is location. He throws his 94 mph fastball over half the time overall and in every scenario. At best, he offers a change-up between 20-30% of the time to avoid being too predictable. He likes to locate it in the lowest parts of the strike zone, but he has a tendency to leave it down the middle. Opponents are slugging 2.000 against this pitch in the two most middle parts of the zone and he has allowed as many homers with this one pitch as he has with all of his other pitches combined. Moreover, he utilizes a curveball 26% of the time as a first-pitch strike to left-handed hitters in order to somewhat mitigate the predictability of his first-pitch fastball. Problematically, his curveball is a weak pitch and opponents are slugging .639 against it.
Despite his reliance on it, his fastball struggles for location. His four most frequent placements of this pitch are in the middle row of the strike zone. Location is critical for a high-velocity fastball because power is met with power. All an opposing batter needs to do against a high-velo fastball is get a barrel on it. He gets away only to a degree with his fastball’s poor location because of its above-average spin rate which makes it deceptive. But even the Royals and Padres have slammed his fastball, even though they rank poorly against this pitch.
In three of his past four starts, Weaver has allowed four runs. He allowed four or five walks in half of those starts and in half he allowed over 50% hard contact and over 30% line drives. These numbers show that Weaver is either trying harder to be precise, but failing, and therefore walking more batters, or he’s simply trying harder to throw strikes, therefore leaving pitches in dangerous locations and getting slammed.
Atlanta boasts a strong selection of left-handed hitters—against which Weaver allows a significantly higher slugging percentage. Freddie Freeman is slugging .771 against the high-velo (92-97 mph) fastball from righties, Ozzie Albies .604.
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Max Fried (0-2, 4.09 ERA) has been called up from Triple A in place of the injured Brandon McCarthy. His career ERA as a starter is 3.09, compared to 5.27 as a reliever.
The southpaw relies on an average-velocity fastball with over 50% frequency. His fastball is a major reason why he has induced over 50% ground balls in every career start. It features very little spin so that it drops more and induces batters to swing on top of it, which creates a ground ball out and tends to prevent extra-base hits. He locates it well, consistently avoiding the middle of the plate with it and instead concentrating its location on the fringe of the zone. Against 93 fastballs thrown by Fried in 2018, opponents have only managed one extra-base hit. The youngster complements his fastball with an elusive sinker that opponents have yet to hit. Although its quality by itself is low because it’s loopy, his curveball plays well off his fastball because of the velocity differential that it creates.
The Cards have mustered only two runs in their past two games. Most of their top right-handed hitters are slumping. Jose Martinez hasn’t managed an extra-base hit in his last nine games. Yadier Molina is batting .217 in his last seven days. Paul DeJong is still injured. Tommy Pham has zero hits in his last 25 at-bats.
