Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
The best value picks around the MLB are back in action after a quick hiatus. Wednesday is loaded with a full 15-game slate with games starting at the top of almost every hour beginning at 1:15 p.m. ET. Action all day long means value is bound to be hidden in the board somewhere, so let’s jump in and see what Wednesday has to offer.
Philadelphia Phillies @ Los Angeles Dodgers
The Phillies and Dodgers will end their three-game series WEdnesday with Philadelphia looking to salvage the final game. In a matchup of aces, Zack Wheeler will toe the rubber for Philadelphia, while Los Angeles will counter with southpaw Clayton Kershaw.
Philadelphia comes into this game with one of the hotter offenses over the past two weeks. Their .347 wOBA and 120 wRC+ both rank sixth in the league, while their 0.42 BB/K figure is good for a top-10 mark. Los Angeles holds a sizeable .328-.306 wOBA advantage over Philadelphia, but mainly because Philadelphia’s K% is much higher than Los Angeles’s (PHI sixth-highest 26%; LAD sixth-lowest 22.8%). Stripping out strikeouts and looking at wOBAcon (wOBA on contact), Philadelphia and Los Angeles are essentially equal with Los Angeles holding a slight .376-.374 lead. Normally stripping out strikeout numbers — especially when one team whiffs a lot — could be misleading, but over the past two weeks Philadelphia has drastically reduced their K% to under 20%, checking in at the third-lowest in the majors. If Philadelphia can continue to stay hot while limiting the strikeouts, we could see two offenses that are more similar than their wOBAs suggest.
This game may feature two of the better lineups in the majors, but the pitching matchup here is truly what steals the show. Facing guys like Wheeler and Kershaw for seven innings will make any lineup look mundane, meaning this game will be won and lost on the mound. Wheeler has gotten off to the best start of his career so far, putting up a 2.29 ERA and 2.38 FIP through 13 starts and 90 innings. He’s added over four K/9 to last year’s mark while cutting back on walks and limiting hard contact. So far in 2021, he ranks in the top 5% of pitchers in xWOBA and xERA and in the top 15% in average exit velocity, hard hit%, xBA, xSLG, K% and BB%. Wheeler has been missing bats, missing barrels, and limiting his free passes this year making him one of the most intimidating starters in the league thus far.
On the other side of the ball, Kershaw has been no slouch either. He has started off the year with a 3.39 ERA and a sub-3.00 FIP of his own at 2.73. Wheeler does rank slightly better than Kershaw in all of the aforementioned stat categories, but Kershaw still checks in in the top 25% of the league in xwOBA, xERA, barrel%, K%, BB%, and whiff%. If there is any knock at all on Kershaw, over his last 250 plate appearances against his xwOBA is actually slightly increasing. Wheeler’s, on the other hand, has been in a steady decline.
The pick
I’m never a fan of fading Kershaw at home, but the recent performances from Philadelphia gives me some faith in them. If they can keep their strikeout numbers down and make more contact, as they have over the past two weeks, then they’ll have enough firepower to hang around with Los Angeles’s offense. While both pitchers have been tremendous to start the year, Wheeler has been the better pitcher no matter which way you look at it and will now get a lineup that just lost Cody Bellinger again. I project Philadelphia closer to +110 road dogs and in a game where both sides seem more equal than what originally meets the eye, I’ll be taking the dog here too. Philadelphia +145
