Getting back to the homefront after a productive week on the road feels good but Monday means out of the frying pan and into the fire for me. A sweaty Saturday at Fenway transitioned to an easier finish in Kansas City to get our featured handicaps back into the black. The season has been fruitful so far but only 10% of the long haul battle of bankroll attrition is in the books. The clock ticks on with a solo shot in the MLB Morning Breakdown for 4-17-2023. BOL this week!
2023 Featured Handicap Results
PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES @ CHICAGO WHITE SOX (PHI -125, 7.5)
Philadelphia’s boom and bust trip to Cincinnati wraps up and moves on to the Windy City, where it will be cold and gusty for tonight’s series opener against the White Sox. Chicago limps out of the weekend having Eloy Jimenez back from the IL despite missing the services of Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada. Moncada is missed as one of the team’s best weapons against right-handed pitching, though Jake Burger is doing one hell of a job in the interim replacing him at third base.
One key issue is the wide gap between these lineups’ effectiveness against righties so far this season. While Philadelphia is slightly outpacing my outlook in this regard, Chicago is more or less aligned. That adds confidence to my handicap. What takes away from that confidence is Philly’s potential to rest one or two of their key hitters. Any of Brandon Marsh, Alec Bohm, Bryson Stott, Trea Turner, JT Realmuto, and Kyle Schwarber are prime candidates for rest tonight. That’s compared to a White Sox club that had an off day on Thursday and may be better positioned to roll out its full healthy arsenal. That still gets me to a 4-6% advantage for the Phillies offense in this contest.
Z Wheeler (R) vs. L Lynn (R)
As always, the starting pitchers have a lot to say about what to expect from the opposing lineups. Both Zack Wheeler and Lance Lynn have been around the block a few times, giving us solid benchmarks to work with. My main concern with Wheeler is back-to-back 3-walk outings against Miami and Cincinnati. Those two middling lineups pushed his walk rate up to 10.3%, a figure more reflective of his first few major league seasons. Zack’s positives include 34.9% hard contact and continued swing-and-miss effectiveness. Note the early season signs of his ground ball rate (41.9%) continuing to tick downwards from the 2021 & 2022 seasons though.
That said, the brutal unluckiness of Lance Lynn’s first three starts via a .342 BABIP and 31.6% HR/FB rate begs for positive regression. His depressed 29.5% ground ball rate and spiked hard contact has been exaggerated in the last two outings against the Giants and Twins. Cold temps should help mitigate some of the effects of hard contact. Fly balls in the air could be trouble with strong winds though. Plus Guaranteed Rate Field’s swirling wind phenomenon makes this a challenging factor to fully integrate.
Tough To Pin Down
Lance Lynn’s 7.31 ERA is misleading primarily due to his inflated BABIP and home run rates. The 7.07 FIP/4.08 xFIP and 3.83 SIERA speak to that in a way. That’s opposed to Wheeler’s “truer” baseline numbers of 4.02 ERA, 3.20 FIP/4.19 xFIP, and 4.09 SIERA. In other words, Lynn likely has the most room for upside as the season unfolds. Barring a significant swing in one direction or another this evening, I put Wheeler in a range between 1/2 and 1 run to FIP better than Lynn, who has also stumbled with walks in two of his three starts. An equalizing force is temperatures in the 30s and 40s that could pose issues for both pitchers with finding their grips.
WAGER: Phillies First 5 Innings -128 (2u)
This is a situation where my process says to leave the bullpens out of it. The most likely scenario has both starters working through the 5th inning, playing on Philadelphia’s stronger edge against right-handed pitching – barring a major rest day for Rob Thomson’s lineup. Small advantages with lineup, defense, and starting pitcher lead me once again to a slightly chalky position laying a number in the -130 area. When compared to my break-even range for this first 5 inning wager, however, the price is quite right for me.
Heading for Home
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