Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
The third month of the MLB season is coming to a close Wednesday, with nearly all 30 teams in action. A few afternoon games in the schedule means some getaway days for a few teams, and getaway days can certainly lead to some hidden value.
As always, let dive right in to find any mispriced teams to take advantage of.
Tampa Bay Rays @ Washington Nationals
Tampa Bay and Washington will wrap up their quick two-game series after Washington took Game 1 Tuesday by a score of 4-3. Drew Rasmussen will get the start for Tampa Bay, while Jon Lester will toe the rubber for Washington.
For a team with World Series aspirations, Tampa Bay is actually pretty terrible against lefties. As a team, the Rays have put up bottom-10 marks with a .298 wOBA and a below-average 91 wRC+ so far on the year. Normally you’d think this is a team to fade when facing a southpaw, but stopping at the surface stats in this matchup could get you in trouble. Digging a little deeper, it seems Tampa Bay’s left-handed batters are actually the main cause of their offensive woes against southpaws overall. As lefties vs. lefties, Tampa Bay has the league’s fourth-lowest .240 wOBA and just a 53 wRC+, absolutely awful numbers. Luckily for Tampa Bay, six of their eight position players projected to start today are right-handed batters. From the right side of the plate facing left-handed pitchers, Tampa Bay’s splits are much more favorable as they are putting up a top-10 .333 wOBA and the sixth-highest 115 wRC+ in the majors. They have borderline top-10 marks across the board in terms of OBP, SLG, OPS and ISO and have the second-highest BB% in the league. Facing a struggling southpaw who walks over three batters per nine could end up being a great matchup for this offense.
Washington has been as average against right-handed pitching as physically possible this year. Their .311 wOBA and 95 wRC+ against righties both rank 15th to go along with their 14th-ranked OBP, SLG and OPS. They don’t walk a lot with just a, 8.1% BB% (23rd), but they also don’t strikeout a ton either with a 22.9% K%, resulting in an average BB/K mark (0.35 BB/K; 18th). Turning to their home splits for salvation actually paints an even darker picture. Their .316 home wOBA ranks 17th while their 96 wRC+ ranks 21st, a discrepancy caused by how favorable of a hitters’ park Nationals Park is. Their OBP, SLG, OPS and ISO marks are also pretty mundane at home, ranking no higher than 14th in any stat, but no lower than 19th. With BABIP marks right around .300 and a HR/FB% close to league average no matter which split you look at, it’s hard to get overly excited about this lineup; what you see is what you get.
Moving to the starters, we have an unproven Drew Rasmussen making his first start of his career. He’s shown success as a reliver thus far, checking in with a respectable and consistent 3.48 ERA, 3.34 FIP, and 3.36 xFIP. He strikes out a lot of batters, 13.94 K/9, but also walks a ton at 6.1 BB/9, an interesting combination facing an offense that doesn’t do a lot of either. He has extremely impressive stats on the road this year, albeit in just 10 innings, with a 2.11 FIP while holding opposing hitters to just a .198 wOBA. Rasmussen hasn’t gone more than 2 innings in any outing this year, so there is a chance that Tampa Bay goes to a bullpen game here, which, in my mind, should actually favor them as their bullpen has the second-lowest 3.48 FIP in the entire league. No matter which way you spin this it looks like runs might be hard to come by for Washington.
On the other side of the matchup, we have Jon Lester, who, by all accounts, appears to be on the back nine of his career. Through 11 starts this season, he’s managed just a 4.99 ERA with a 5.15 FIP. His xERA, xwOBA, and xSLG are all withing the bottom 35% of major league pitchers, xBA within the bottom 25%, and this whiff% and K% within the bottom 15%. Righties have absolutely shelled him so far on the year, putting up a wOBA bordering .400 and getting to him for a 5.91 FIP, notable in this matchup with Tampa Bay projected to start six righties as previously noted. With Lester’s strikeout numbers decreasing over past couple years coupled with his walks per nine increasing, this might be a very vulnerable spot against Tampa Bay.
The pick
I’m leaning toward the favorite in this matchup as I really don’t have a lot of faith in Lester. The way to attack Tampa Bay’s lineup is via the strikeout and if Lester can’t strike out batters anymore, but instead helps them out even further by walking more batters, then I don’t see how he could sneak away with a win. On top of that, Tampa Bay’s righties are great against southpaws while Lester just happens to be terrible against righties. This seems like a great spot for Tampa Bay’s offense to click. Tampa Bay F5 -115 & F5RL (-.5) +115.
