MLB Best Bets for Sunday (9/12)

This may be the first Sunday of the NFL season, but let’s not forget there’s still plenty of MLB betting left for us in 2021. The column is up 17.29 units on the year and is on another hot streak as we just cashed our seventh straight MLB Best Bet with Cincinnati and Chicago securing the under in their game on 9/8. We’ll look to Sunday’s full-15 game slate as one last chance to get some profits to reinvest into the NFL season before the games are fully underway and dive right into Sunday’s best bet.

San Francisco Giants @ Chicago Cubs

San Francisco -196 FanDuel, Chicago +193 Caesars Sportsbook

San Francisco and Chicago will wrap up their three-game weekend series today as San Francisco will try to secure the sweep. Right-hander Logan Webb will get the ball for the opposing team to take on Chicago southpaw Justin Steele.

Not only has San Francisco been the surprise team in the majors so far this year, but Logan Webb has to be one of, if not the, biggest surprises from a player standpoint. I talked a little bit about Webb with Greg Peterson on his Baseball Betting podcast for today’s slate, but what he’s been able to do this season has been nothing short of remarkable. Through 22 appearances (21 starts), he’s compiled a 2.64 ERA, a 2.81 FIP, only allows .6 HR/9, and all of this is with perfectly normal BABIP (.304) and HR/FB marks (14%). He has been wracking up the strikeouts a little more than previous years with a K% up to 26.6% (compared to his career 23.4% mark), but what really stands out to me are his groundball and flyball rates. Webb’s been throwing his sinker 37.1%, a very high clip compared to previous years, and it’s resulted in an astonishingly high 62.1% groundball rate. What may be even more impressive than that, is that his fly ball rate is one of the lowest I’ve ever seen, settling in at just 11.8%. He lives in the bottom of the zone and has been pitching to his strengths this year, which have been that devastating sinker and a slider/changeup combination that he also throws at about knee height. Webb’s had essentially equal splits, dominating at home and on the road, while also being tough on both right-handers (.261 wOBA against) and left-handers (.284 wOBA against). He’s only allowed more than three earned runs in one start so far this year, all the way back on 5/5 at Colorado, but since then he’s been on a 15-start stretch going a perfect 8-0 with a 1.65 ERA and a 2.44 FIP. The groundball and flyball ratios in combination with his normal BABIP and HR/FB marks lead me to believe that Webb is no fluke and I fully expect him to continue his success in today’s game.

For as good as San Francisco has been on the pitching side of things, they’ve been arguably just as impressive on the offensive side. They have the fifth-best offense overall, checking in with a .328 wOBA and 107 wRC+, and have been able to get 10+ homers from ten different position players. Ten homers may not seem like a ton, but when you take into consideration that typically National League teams only start eight position players, this number starts to hold more weight, and having at least two guys off the bench with that much power can drastically improve your team’s depth. Splits-wise, they have done most of their damage at home and against right-handed pitching, but their splits aren’t nearly as dramatic as a team like Cincinnati as they are still within the top-10 on the road and facing lefties, checking in just slightly above average in both splits. What does make me a little weary of their offensive production lately, is their BABIP. San Francisco has been a top-5 team over the last 14 days with a .348 wOBA and 121 wRC+ and has actually been the best team in the majors over the last week with a scorching .432 wOBA and 175 wRC+, 16% better than the 2nd-ranked Toronto team during that span. What these numbers fail to show you is that they’ve been getting extremely lucky. At .325, San Francisco has had the fourth-highest BABIP over the last 14 days and a completely unsustainable .395 BABIP over the last seven, leading the 2nd-ranked team by 38 points in the BABIP department. San Francisco is a good offense overall, I’m not discrediting what they’ve done and I fully expect them to be a force into the final stretch of the season, but the regression monster fears nobody and with such good luck coming their way over the last week or two, it’s hard not to think those numbers will certainly fall back down to .300 fast.

From a results-based standpoint, Justin Steele has had a very successful start to his career with a 3.75 ERA over the course of 16 appearances (five starts) and 36 innings pitched. His FIP, however, is at an inflated 5.08, but I’m almost willing to look past that when taking his other stats into consideration. He’s been helped out by a low .239 BABIP, but whatever good luck he’s gotten there has been completely erased by his 24% HR/FB ratio. On top of that, while not as drastic as Webb, Steele has shown the ability to keep the ball on the ground with a 57.4% groundball rate to go along with a flyball rate just over 21%. Great ratios and exactly what you’d like to see from a young starter, but the low fly ball rate should go to show you just how unlucky he has been in terms of homers – the rare times he has allowed fly balls, they’ve been getting hit out of the park at a ridiculously high rate. The peripherals have all been good for Steele as well this season, showing the ability to miss barrels with just a 4.3% barrel%, limits hard contact to just a 34% rate, and his average exit velocity is just 86.7mph on the year. Steele has been affected a little more by bad luck than one would think, but I’m willing to bet his HR/FB rate will dip down to normal levels while he keeps up his above-average advanced metrics.

I feel like I’ve been writing about Chicago for weeks now just waiting for their good luck to run out and it seems like the time has finally come. For a while, they were actually one of the better offenses over the last 30, 14, and seven days, but with those good numbers came a BABIP in the .330 range and an MLB-leading HR/FB ratio, marks unsustainable for anyone let alone the biggest sellers at the trade deadline. Their splits to have to be taken with a grain of salt since their roster looks completely different than how it did to begin the year, but on the season, they’ve been average at best at home (.317 wOBA and 99 wRC+), while checking in as a bottom-10 team facing righties (.300 wOBA and 87 wRC+). You can see by their last 30 numbers that the BABIP good luck is still holding their numbers over the time period in the upper half of the league, .317 BABIP over that span), but as their BABIP dipped down over the last 14 and seven days, they saw their rankings fall from about 12th in the league down to 20th. Chicago was a fun offensive story while it lasts, but it appears as though they’re making their way back towards the bottom of the league.

The Pick

I feel like I’ve been writing about Chicago for seven straight articles now, but we’ve been profitable, and as boring as the Cubs might be, winning money certainly is not. The wind isn’t blowing in here, so this isn’t your typical Wrigley Field wind under, but I am still expecting a low-scoring game here regardless. On one hand, Webb is having a phenomenal and legitimate season and he gets to take on a Chicago offense that looks like it’s in the midst of some negative regression. On the other hand, we have two regression candidates, with Steele hoping for some positive regression in his bad 24% HR/FB ratio and San Francisco looking like a candidate for negative regression with a monstrous .395 BABIP of their last seven games. I’d usually stay away from an under at Wrigley with the wind blowing out, but both of these pitchers have outstanding groundball/flyball rates with borderline top-10 defenses on the year behind them. F5 u4.5 +100 BetMGM, u9 +100 BetMGM.

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