College Football Best Bets of the Week: Week 9
Walter Waddell
Wednesday brings us an action-packed afternoon of games as most teams are scheduled for a getaway day. The mid-day lull will be filled with six games starting with the Chicago White Sox at the Pittsburgh Pirates kicking the slate off at 12:35 p.m. ET. With over 13 straight hours of baseball, value is sure to be trying to hide somewhere on this board, so let’s take a deeper look and see which game lights up the model Wednesday.
Boston Red Sox @ Tampa Bay Rays
After taking Tuesday night’s game in 11 innings, Boston will look to build on a 1.5-game lead in the AL East over Tampa Bay. Garrett Richards will be on the bump for Boston squaring off against Tampa Bay southpaw Rich Hill.
Boston has been one of the best teams on the road this season, going 24-12 with a .326 wOBA and 108 wRC+, both good for top-five marks in the majors. From a betting aspect, they’ve been the league’s most profitable team and it really isn’t even close. Their moneyline road profit so far on the year just eclipsed $1,300 (for $100 bettors) with a ridiculous 32% ROI. To put that into perspective, Oakland, the league’s second-most profitable road team, sits over $500 and 10% behind Boston in both marks. Away from Fenway, their slash line sits at .253 (third)/.310 (T-10th)/.450 (second) resulting in the league’s third-highest OPS to go along with and MLB-leading .197 ISO. They’ve had the second-highest hard-hit rate on the road and have been putting up these eye-opening stats with a fairly normalized .305 BABIP; this offense is the real deal.
Tampa Bay, on the other hand, is a team that appears to be going in a different direction. They’re 8-11 so far in the month of June and have lost seven straight after Tuesday’s extra inning affair. They’re a below-average offense at home, scraping across just a .301 wOBA and 99 wRC+, ranking 22nd and 18th in the league respectively. They have an alarmingly high strikeout rate of 28.5% at home, the highest in baseball, in addition to bottom-10 marks in OBP (.314), SLG (.367), OPS (.681), and ISO (.144). The regression monster also won’t be coming to save Tampa Bay anytime soon as their BABIP is almost exactly at .300 and their hard-hit rate in the middle of the pack.
On the mound we’ll have a matchup of Rich Hill against Garrett Richards, two starters with fairly similar surface stats across the board. Hill owns a 3.64 ERA to go along with a 4.16 FIP on the year, while Richards checks in with a higher 4.36 ERA, but a lower 4.03 FIP. Hill has been knocked around lately by a couple of unsuspecting teams (Baltimore and Seattle) in his last two starts resulting in a 7.45 ERA and 6.37 FIP over that span. Richards’ career in Boston got off to a fairly rocky start, but has really settled down since April 27 and pitched to the tune of a 3.75 ERA and 3.51 FIP despite his extremely unlucky .368 BABIP over that 10-start span. Comparatively, Hill’s BABIP of .237 on the year is almost 70 points lower than what you could reasonably expect and over 100 points lower than Richards’, making both of these pitchers primed for some regression back to the mean. With Hill’s barrel rate almost touching double digits, this could be a good spot to fade him against of one the league’s best road offenses.
The pick
You have to love when the stars align and the best value bet on the board happens to be your hometown team. Boston on the road has been a force to be reckoned with this year and I’m looking for the Red Sox to keep their road success going. Hill appears to be going through a little bit of a rough patch over his last couple of starts and facing Boston certainly won’t help. Tampa Bay also used one of its best bullpen arms, Pete Fairbanks, for an extended outing Tuesday, meaning the Rays will certainly be without him Wednesday. I was pretty surprised to see Boston priced as +130 dogs, but I will gladly hop all over that. I have them projected to be closer to about +105 road dogs in this one and will be scooping up about a quarter in value. Boston +130.
