Oakland’s pitching suffers from a lack of investment by its front office.
If you look a bit closer into its advanced metrics, you’ll find there is more strength on the island of misfit toys than its 23rd-ranked ERA suggests.
The A’s have surrendered the fourth-fewest home runs in baseball while residing in the top-three in expected weighted on-base average contact (xwOBAcon).
This reveals that the batted balls the A’s are relinquishing aren’t consistently at optimal launch angles or high exit velocities — something the Mets use to post runs when they are in fact in their groove.
Joey Estes is a fine example of a pitcher the A’s are squeezing some value out of in his sophomore season. He’s settled into the rotation comfortably, having raised his strikeout percentage by four percent while shaving his expected ERA by 3.50 since his rookie campaign.
Estes isn’t the strongest strikeout pitcher, but his deep six-pitch arsenal has showcased promising command by eliciting chases on his outside pitches and not walking batters; Estes lends a jog to first base at a 6.1 percent rate.
The Mets’ David Peterson is susceptible to hard-hit balls; 43.3 percent of batted balls hit are 95 mph or above.
Peterson is in the bottom six percent of pitchers in expected ERA (5.43) and strikes out only 7.2 batters per nine innings.
The southpaw’s success is contingent on what kind of run support the Mets decide to lend on any given night — something I have little trust in lately.
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Oakland brings fair upside to Citi Field on Wednesday as a power-hitting lineup that quietly cranks out a top-five exit velocity while owning the fifth-most home runs in baseball, exposing Peterson’s largest vulnerabilities.
THE PLAY: Athletics (+140, FanDuel)