The MLB Morning Breakdown for 4-18-2021 comes to you fresh off of what turned out to be a near push on Saturday. Oh, my Cincinnati Reds – they sure looked like the 2020 version yesterday afternoon. Granted, tons of credit goes to Triston McKenzie for working his way out of three jams early in that one. Fortunately, Tampa followed through on my two-piece position that netted enough to cover the Reds’ shortcoming plus a few bucks. Literally, a few bucks. So let’s hit this full Sunday slate of baseball hard with a side of NASCAR action at Richmond Raceway.
Arizona Diamondbacks @ Washington Nationals (-205)
The Sunday slate presents a number of tempting plays this morning. It includes Miami behind Pablo Lopez, the Mets’ offense in Colorado, and Baltimore going for the sweep at Texas. Then I uncovered multple counterpoints to what appeared to be good betting opportunities. But I continued to come back to this Nationals club against a very hittable lefty in Madison Bumgarner. The matchup appears to be so obviously skewed towards the Washington offense that there couldn’t possibly be value, right?
Washington’s offense has found fluidity as the team put up 5+ runs in four of their last six games. Additionally, the Nationals have scored 6+ runs in four of their six home games including two of the three in this series against Arizona. The D-backs Taylor Widener stymied the home team Friday night, however, Washington popped Merrill Kelly for a pair of homers and 6 runs in Thursday’s loss and abruptly ended Luke Weaver’s outing with 4 runs on 8 hits. These recent offensive outbursts came against right-handed starting pitching and Arizona’s mid-pack bullpen. Guess what? This club hits lefties quite well and they face a struggling MadBum this afternoon in D.C.
This group must be licking their chops to see their first southpaw starter since squaring off against Clayton Kershaw last Sunday. Kershaw was dominant in the Dodgers’ 3-0 victory, going 6 innings while yielding just 5 hits and fanning 6. Prior to being stifled by the filthy veteran, Washington fared quite well against three other left-handed starters this season:
Nationals vs. Left-Handed Starters in 2021
| SP | R | H | K | BB | HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kershaw (4/11) | 0 | 5 | 6 | 0 | 0 |
| Urias (4/10) | 3 | 9 | 3 | 1 | 1 (Soto) |
| Fried (4/7) | 5 | 8 | 3 | 1 | 1 (Turner) |
| Smyly (4/6) | 4 | 4 | 8 | 1 | 1 (Turner) |
Furthermore, the Nats’ proficiency against lefties this season is a continuation of similar success in 2020. Last year, they put up a strong 121 wRC+ by slashing .341/.505/.845 despite walking in just 6.8% of their plate appearances. Skip ahead to the first dozen games of this season and it is business as usual with a 123 wRC+ and a slash line of .367/.459/.826 despite an ugly 0.29 BB/K rate. One caution to note pertains to the availability of Josh Harrison after sitting out Saturday’s game with back stiffness. Harrison has a 1.378 OPS against lefties in 20 tries without a single strikeout. That said, Ryan Zimmerman, Juan Soto, and Trea Turner are absolutely feasting while Kyle Schwarber is doing his boom-or-bust thing with a 22.2% strikeout rate and a hefty .231 ISO.
M. Bumgarner (L) vs. S. Strasburg (R)
There are two key reasons why I am focused primarily on one particular aspect of this matchup – price, and variance with today’s starters. Stephen Strasburg completely melted down against the Cardinals last week – killing my first 5 inning under, BTW – after starting the season with a gem against Atlanta. The 2019 World Series MVP played the back-and-forth game in the first half of that career-defining season, yielding 4+ runs in three of his first four starts. That was nearly identical to the start of his 2018 campaign as well. Now Strasburg faces an Arizona team that has not been great against righties so far this year. Then again, the Cardinals were also sluggish in that department before they blew him up for 8 runs on 3 homers on April 13th. So that’s a hard pass for me laying that much juice with a guy who I don’t have a ton of confidence with.
Strike While the Iron Is Hot
His counterpart, Madison Bumgarner, has been downright sickening for the Diamondbacks faithful. As if last year’s Arizona debut wasn’t bad enough (7.18 FIP/5.85 xFIP, 31.9% GB rate, 2.81 HR/9 innings), MadBum’s kickoff to 2021 has been just as bad. Sure, he finished last year on a high note with two 5-inning starts with no runs – but 2021’s body of work is giving no indication of the run barrage letting up. That’s where you have to be careful. However, the tail risk of a solid 5+ inning outing with just a couple runs given up is the type of outlier that gets lumped in with an implosion on the other side of the ledger. Bumgarner essentially provides a one standard deviation probability that it will be business as usual in D.C. this afternoon.
MadBum’s base-case scenario checks plenty of boxes that indicates a Washington hit parade. Keep your eye on our guy @TekMuNNee and his brilliant approach to isolating key indicators affectionately known as the Tekmunnee Trifecta. And Bumgarner is damn near a prototypical pitcher under this lens, yielding too many walks (5.27 BB/9) and hard contact (46.8%) with just 28.3% of contact in the form of ground balls. Sure, the Nationals may not be an ideal team to take advantage of a high-walk pitcher but they can sure punish his mistakes. Madison is serving up a sub-90s fastball and a slider that has been anything but effective this season.
WAGER: Nationals Team Total Over 4.5 Runs -125
For starters, laying -200 is a no-go for me. Especially with Stephen Strasburg on the mound after he really got me good last week. The traditional -1.5 run line is tempting at -105 but you’d have to look at manufacturing a -1 run line around -150 on the home team to play it safe. So for me, this matchup is about isolating a key strength against a key weakness by backing the Nationals’ bats against a struggling lefty in Madison Bumgarner.
Around the Horn
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