Tuesday, April 24, 2012

PHI@ARI 4.24.2012

4.24.2012 Philadelphia Phillies @ Arizona Diamondbacks
Pitching Matchup: Vance Worley vs. Josh Collmenter
LV Money Line Open: ARI +105
LV Over / Under Open: 9.0

I regrettably indicated you might well witness Phillies runs yesterday, but I'm guessing for all most of you on the East Coast that wasn't true. I certainly didn't, deciding sleep was a better option when the score was 8-0 Arizona. Now the Phils did end up scoring five runs, though they were more stat padders than anything (I can't help but think of Bobby Abreu) as the Phils were never really a threat to win the game.

Tonight it is Vance Worley's turn to try to end the losing streak when he faces Josh "Wizard" Collmenter. The Wiz, as I like to call him, somehow manages to be effective despite mediocre/bad stuff (K/9 2011: 5.83) and the inability to induce ground balls (GB% 2011: 33.3). His ERA last year (3.38) outpaced his peripherals (FIP: 3.8, SIERA: 4.14), but he was still better than league average almost any way you look at it. That is largely due to his ability (skill?) to get his fly balls to stay in the park; 14.9% of batted balls were of the popup variety, and his HR per fly ball rate was only 7.7%. Both of those are way better than league average, though they're most likely unsustainable over the long term: this year his HR/FB rate is 24%, though that's probably also unsustainable just in the opposite direction. The Wiz seems somewhat comparable to Ted Lilly in a few areas, albeit with fewer Ks. I imagine Arizona would be perfectly fine if Collmenter had a similar career to Lilly.

Vanimal, Worley Bird, Vance Vance Revolution, [insert inane nickname here] continues to strike out a very high percentage of batters he faces, despite posting an extremely low swinging strike percentage. His K/9 rate is up this year to nearly 10 from 8.1 in 2011 despite actually inducing swinging strikes less often. Maybe Vance is the true Wizard, using Obi Wan's mindtrick to get helpless batters to simply watch strike three on the outside corner: 

Vance: You will not swing at borderline strikes.
Helpless Moron: I will not swing at borderline strikes. I like your glasses.

Getting a consistent Vegas line for this game was difficult today. Depending on where I looked, I saw both the Phils and Dbacks favored when it opened. Personally I think the DBacks should be the favorite in this game, probably somewhere around ARI -105 to -110. The simulation puts it at ARI -101, but I think that's off. I've been working on more accurately modeling splits lately (pretty easy to get historical splits, not so much projected splits), and this is obviously subjective, but I don't think the model is properly accounting for what I see as a heavy platoon advantage in this game for the DBacks. Arizona has some serious mashers in their lineup against right handed pitching (whereas the Phils are somewhat anemic against righties as currently constructed), and with the 90+ degree heat the roof will be open so the ball will be flying. I fully expect Paul Goldschmidt to hit a ball that won't land until Utley is back in the lineup.

The simulation has the game going under 9.0 runs 48% of the time (over 42%). Again, I think the sim is probably somewhat wrong here, as I would have put the O/U at 9.5.

Go Phils!

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