PHI@NYM 5.30.2012

5.30.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (26-25) @ New York Mets (28-22)
Pitching Matchup: Cliff Lee (0-2, 2.82 ERA) vs. Dillon Gee (4-3, 4.92 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: NYM +132
LV Over / Under Open: 7.5

PHI@NYM 5.29.2012

5.29.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (26-24) @ New York Mets (27-22)
Pitching Matchup: Joe Blanton (4-4, 4.55 ERA) vs. Jeremy Hefner (0-2, 6.17 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: NYM +102
LV Over / Under Open: 8.5

The New York Mets lost another shortstop yesterday when Justin Turner was injured during an abbreviated run-down between first and second base. Omar Quintanilla was recalled to start in his place. Yes, that Omar Quintanilla. The guy who has failed to post a WAR above 0.0 in six major league seasons. The guy who last season in 23 plate appearances with the Rangers put up an incredible -75 wRC+. That is not a typo. Almost as incredible? The win projection for the game barely changed when swapping Quintanilla for Turner.


Despite what the projection indicates, I think this will be a fairly high scoring game. Probably very similar to yesterday's game, so maybe 8-5 or 9-6 type of game. Who will win is anyone's guess, but the sim tends to think PHI -108 is a good play if you can still get it at that. Most places though are showing NYM +109 (PHI -116), which is within a single unit of where the simulator puts it (for reference: NYM +108, PHI -115).


The sim thinks under 9.0 (the line moved to 9.0 after opening at 8.5) is a good play, but as I mentioned earlier subjectively this game seems primed to be high scoring.


Go Phils!

PHI@STL 5.25.2012

5.25.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (23-23) @ St. Louis Cardinals (25-20)
Pitching Matchup: Cliff Lee (0-2, 2.66 ERA) vs. Kyle Lohse (5-1, 2.91 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: STL +111
LV Over / Under Open: 7.0

The simulator puts the fair price line at STL +107, so if you can still get STL +111 you are possibly getting some value. However, I haven't seen anywhere that you can still get STL +111; instead the lines I've seen put it somewhere between STL +106 and STL +109. Too close to the simulation to identify either side as a good play.

The O/U started at 7.0, but the sim thought that was too low and so did the betting markets. The line is now up to 7.5, which seems right.

Go Phils!

PHI@STL 5.24.2012

5.24.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (22-23) @ St. Louis Cardinals (25-19)
Pitching Matchup: Joe Blanton (4-4, 3.74 ERA) vs. Jake Westbrook (4-3, 2.41 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: STL -143
LV Over / Under Open: 8.0

Early money has been on the Phillies, moving the line by about 10 units depending where you look. Based on the simulation, that movement makes sense, just not by the amount that it moved. The Cardinals are clearly the better team, and with surprisingly similar pitchers going tonight (see graphs below courtesy of FanGraphs), my money would be on the Cards.

Go Phils!

WAS@PHI 5.22.2012

5.22.2012 Washington National (25-17) @ Philadelphia Phillies (21-22)
Pitching Matchup: Jordan Zimmermann (2-4, 2.58 ERA) vs. Roy Halladay (4-3, 3.22 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: PHI -160
LV Over / Under Open: 6.5

The simulator really likes the Nationals tonight and fully endorses the line movement we've seen so far today. The Phillies opened as a pretty big favorite at -160, but that quickly dropped and they are now sitting somewhere around -140. The simulator thinks that is still too high, putting the fair odds closer to PHI -120 to -125. But I'm going against the simulator tonight and the 7% expected ROI taking WAS +133. No good reason other than a gut feeling. It's sometimes hard for me to give advice on these games like a portfolio manager, which if you're interested in making money, should be the mindset. But even though I'm passing doesn't mean you have to.

Go Phils!

Extra Innings: HOU -119 looks like a really good play tonight. Good luck!

WAS@PHI 5.21.2012

5.21.2012 Washington National (24-17) @ Philadelphia Phillies (21-21)
Pitching Matchup: Gio Gonzalez (5-1, 2.22 ERA) vs. Kyle Kendrick (0-3, 5.96 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: PHI +110
LV Over / Under Open: 8.0

PHI@CHC 5.17.2012

5.17.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (19-19) @ Chicago Cubs (15-22)
Pitching Matchup: Roy Halladay (3-3, 3.20 ERA) vs. Chris Volstad (0-5, 6.92 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: CHC +165
LV Over / Under Open: 7.0

No time for a lengthy post tonight, but that's fine because the line looks to be dead on where it is now at CHC +155 (or PHI -165). If you got it at open when it was CHC +165, there was probably some value there in betting on the Cubs, but I don't see it now.

Go Phils!

PHI@CHC 5.16.2012

5.16.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (18-19) @ Chicago Cubs (15-21)
Pitching Matchup: Kyle Kendrick (0-3, 7.32 ERA) vs. Matt Garza (2-1, 2.56 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: CHC -145
LV Over / Under Open: 7.5

Human beings love to create post hoc explanatory narratives. Sports pundits are especially keen on doing this. One of my favorites involves when a team gets a long layoff after winning a playoff series quickly, because analysts like to use it as either a positive or negative depending on how the team plays in the first game of the next series. It's either "the long layoff got them out of their groove" in the event of a bad game or "the long layoff let them get rested to come out stronger" when the team plays great to start off the next series. This isn't to suggest that these narratives fail to touch upon the truth from time to time. Rather, it is to demonstrate that narrative is nice, but it is more a reflection on the human evolutionary need to idenitfy cause and effect than a statement on the realities of the world.

If this seems like a digression, it is. But only slightly. Kyle Kendrick has never been one of my favorite pitchers. I've always felt he parlayed his luck aided rookie season into his incredulous continued existence in the major leagues, a sentiment crystallized beautifully by a Matt Schwartz tweet back in April. However, his performance this year is unlike anything we've seen from him over the last several. Some like to point to the fact that Kyle finally "got paid" and that he no longer feels the need to try hard. This idea is often linked to the contract year phenomenon: the theory that a player will outperform expectations in the final year of his contract in order to cash in on that performance when he signs a new contract. This is a topic which has been consistently debated, yet it has been mostly debunked by those who have analyzed it. Here again we see the need for explanatory narrative, especially when you consider a bad season during a contract year is typically explained as the player "wilting under the pressure to perform." So is Kyle Kendrick indifferent to his performance now because he signed a 2 year, $7+ million contract in the off season? I doubt it.

Can we find anything in the last two years that would have predicted Kyle's performance would drop precipitously in 2012? Interestingly in 2010 and 2011, Kyle was basically the exact same pitcher according to his peripherals available at Fangraphs:

Only a few things look substantially different between 2010 and 2011: Kyle's innings pitched, K rate, and his ERA. His IP went down in 2011 because about 50% of his appearances were in a relief role, whereas he was almost entirely used as a starter in 2010. But why was his ERA so different? Could a 1% change in K rate really produce that big of a difference? Not likely.

A good place to look is his Left on Base percentage (LOB%), which calculates the percentage of runners who fail to score upon reaching base. In 2010, his LOB% was 69%, but in 2011 it jumped to 76%. That might not seem like a lot, but think of it this way: in 2010 Kyle allowed about 225 runners to reach base (hits in play [hits - home runs] + walks + hbp, but ignoring runners reaching on error for simplicity). If he allowed 31% of those runners to score (1 - LOB%), then that is about 70 runs. If he allowed 24% of those runners to score (using the 2011 LOB%), then that is about 54 runs. If you were to subtract 16 runs from the 95 earned runs Kyle surrendered in 2010, his ERA would go from 4.73 to 3.95. Now I've dumbed down this analysis quite a bit, but the difference in LOB% helps to account for nearly a full run on his ERA.

The reason this is important is that LOB% can be somewhat random from year to year. In the past it was actually believed pitchers had no control of their LOB%, but the analysis behind SIERA helped show that wasn't actually true. Instead of regressing a pitcher's LOB% to a league average, it probably makes more sense to regress it to the pitcher's career average. Kendrick's career LOB% is about 72%. Do you know what it is this year? 63.5%. As I showed using the 7% difference between 2010 and 2011, that is a humongous big difference. It helps to explain a good portion of why Kyle is sporting a 7.32 ERA this year as opposed to something closer to his 4.50 career ERA (4.86 career SIERA). It also helps to explain why his ERA estimators like FIP, xFIP and SIERA aren't nearly as down on Kyle as his ERA would suggest we should be.

In fact, lets regress Kyle's 2010 and 2011 LOB% to his career norm of 72% to see what happens. As I said, he allowed 225 runners to reach base in 2010, and if 28% of those runners had scored - as opposed to 31% - he would have allowed 7 fewer runs. This equates to 88 earned runs and an ERA of 4.40. Kyle's 24% strand rate - another name for LOB% - in 2011 was better than his career average, so we know his 3.22 ERA is going to get worse. Kyle allowed 133 runners to reach base in 2011. With a strand rate of 24%, that is 32 runs, but at 28% Kyle would have allowed an extra 5 runs. This change raises his ERA to 3.63, a little less than half a run per nine innings, and now the 1.5 run difference between his 2010 and 2011 ERA has been halved. The rest of the difference came mostly from Kyle giving up less home runs, almost entirely due to the drop in fly ball rate since when he did give up fly balls they left the park at a very similar rate in both years.

So we have established that Kyle's 2010 and 2011 were actually quite similar, despite the difference in ERA, and that there didn't appear to be any trending that would suggest a blow up in 2012. So what gives? There are some other differences in 2012 compared to 2011, particularly a higher walk rate (9% from 6% in 2011) and a change in his batted ball numbers: a much higher line drive rate (26% from 19% in 2011) and a much lower ground ball rate (36% from 45% in 2011). Since line drives fall in for hits at a very high frequency, especially as compared to ground balls, that is bad news over the long term. But since Kyle has faced fewer than 100 batters this season (less than 75 of those have put the ball in play), the numbers are not yet very reliable. In fact, considering Kyle's age and the lack of any injury news/concern, we should assume moving forward his performances will resemble his career numbers a lot more than what we've seen from him so far this year, which is what ZiPS and other projection systems have told us. Granted it is the career stats of a 5th starter, a grossly overpaid one at that, but not the complete train wreck he's been early this season.

And to bring this full circle and provide a nice wrapper on it, you can come up with whatever narrative you want about Kyle Kendrick's performance. And depending what happens tonight, you'll have a new performance you can rhapsodize with purported causality. The truth is though that whatever randomness happens tonight or during Kyle's next start, his entire season will probably be pretty predictable, convenient narrative or not.

Oh right, that wrapper I mentioned. So all things considered, you'd probably think Kyle Kendrick vs. Matt Garza would be a matchup of David vs. Goliath proportions, or at least maybe Boom Goes the Dynamite guy vs. the teleprompter. I'm not usually someone who uses the old "the line is telling me something" trick, but isn't the CHC -145 line telling you something?!? That line equates to an approximate 59% probability of the Cubs winning, which superficially speaking seems way too low when KK is going up against one of the better, more underrated pitchers in the NL. And the Cubs are at home! But the simulator puts the fair price money line at closer to around CHC -120, which means there should actually be some value in betting on the Phils. Does it make me feel good recommending betting on the Phils? Yes. Does it make me feel good recommending betting on Kyle Kendrick? Not especially. In Bill Simmon's NFL playoffs betting manifesto the first rule is you never back a crappy QB on the road. Not a direct comparison, but I can't help feeling that at around 11:00pm tonight I'm going to be shaking my fist to the sky, lamenting that I actually recommended placing money on Kyle Kendrick. There are surely worse things I've done in my life...

Go Phils!

O/U note: it started at 7.5, but is now down to 7.0. The simulator puts it at a pretty even split when at 7.0: under the total 46% of the time and over 43%.

HOU@PHI 5.15.2012

5.15.2012 Houston Astros (15-20) @ Philadelphia Phillies (17-19)
Pitching Matchup: Jordan Lyles (0-0, 4.50 ERA) vs. Cliff Lee (0-1, 2.17 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: PHI -195
LV Over / Under Open: 7.0

Whenever there is a day game following a night game, I like to wait for the lineups to be posted to run the simulation. There are some lineup changes you can expect - like a change in catcher, for example - but some you won't be able to predict. Enter Brad Mills, who apparently doesn't follow the Charlie Manuel philosophy of posting his lineup card several hours before the game. Or at least he didn't today. I actually did a reasonable job of guessing who Mills would play today when I ran my pre-sims, but rarely will I get everything correct.

Anyway, not a lot of time today to provide a thorough examination of the game and line, but as you'll notice the simulator thinks the Astros are a really good play today. I mentioned last week when the line is this different than what your model/intuition/Ouija board says it should be, you are probably wrong. My intuition says the simulator is wrong and that the Phils win handily, but even so I would recommend playing the Astros today. Terrible weather in Philly today so maybe a wet field causes some shenanigans. Anything can happen.

Go Phils!

HOU@PHI 5.14.2012

5.14.2012 Houston Astros (15-19) @ Philadelphia Phillies (16-19)

Pitching Matchup: Lucas Harrell (2-2, 4.58 ERA) vs. Joe Blanton (3-3, 3.24 ERA)

LV Money Line Open: PHI -165

LV Over / Under Open: 8.5

I am not going to do much of a write-up today, so I've posted the betting predictions table  under the forecasted boxscore. If you've been reading frequently, you may remember I said I was making updates to the model and that I hoped they were improvements. So far it is hard to tell whether the money lines are more accurate, but I can say I feel the O/U odds the simulator is producing seem to be skewed low. I'm not quite sure why yet, but I'm looking into. The positive though is that it does not appear to be assymetrically biasing the teams, though it most certainly could be. I'll hopefully have it fixed - if necessary - in the next week.

Note: in the betting predictions table, "FP" stands for Fair Price, which is set based on the simulator forecast.

Go Phils!

SDG@PHI 5.11.2012

5.11.2012 San Diego Padres (11-21) @ Philadelphia Phillies (14-18)
Pitching Matchup: Clayton Richard (1-4, 4.89 ERA) vs. Vance Worley (2-2, 2.84 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: PHI -165
LV Over / Under Open: 8.5

I don't know about you, but I felt pretty good yesterday not having a Phillies game to fret over. We're contemplating a new rule in my household that Phillies games only last as long as the starting pitcher is still in. Probably won't get the votes to pass, but it's on the floor for argument.

I spent the off day loading the new player forecasts into the model, and lamenting the good statistics which refuse to set the entire Phillies bullpen probabilities at replacement level. My logical and mathematically minded self understands that a few games are mostly meaningless against hundreds or thousands of innings pitched in a career, but doesn't it just feel like the Phillies bullpen situation is different? When you have a forecast which shows Kyle Kendrick is slightly more likely to give up 0 runs in an inning than 1 or more, doesn't that just feel intrinsically wrong deep in your bones?

On one hand I feel I can't responsibly recommend to anyone that they bet on the Phils until the bullpen stops pitching like they're in the SALLY league. But on the other hand you almost have to assume regression at some point and still try to play them when the price is right.

Well at least tonight doesn't appear to be one of those nights, so I can delay having to make a tough decision. In fact, tonight's money line is set in such a way that your expected return is -1.4% when betting on either SDG +145 or PHI -153. The O/U was a really strong play at 8.5, but it dropped an entire run down to 7.5. The simulator still sees that as a little high, but I don't trust the Phillies bullpen to hold the Padres to 7.5 in their 2 or 3 innings of work. That is of course a subjective opinion, which according to my disclaimer at the top of the page is apt to occur around here from time to time. It also says that subjective opinion is uneducated, so there is always that to consider.

Go Phils!

NYM@PHI 5.9.2012 UPDATE

So I haven't been able to find tonight's lineup posted anywhere yet, but three of the players I had starting in the original simulation (Ty Wigginton, Laynce Nix, and Carlos Ruiz) are not, but they are available for pinch hitting if necessary. This changes somewhat significantly the win projection. I don't want to flip-flop on this, but I think the biggest issue is Cliff not having Ruiz. Lee likes to work very quickly, and doesn't usually shake off Ruiz often. Working with Schneider will likely not go as smoothly. Though Lee did pitch to Schneider during the March 27th "On Deck Series" game against the Pirates, the last regular season game Schneider caught for Lee was an August 17th game last season. Coincidence or not, it was the only game in all of August that Cliff Lee gave up any runs.

I still think (hope) the Phils win tonight, but at the 66% win projection based on the latest simulation, a PHI -186 play would net you an expected return of only 1.8%. Not exactly stellar, especially with some of the unknowns.

Go Phils!

NYM@PHI 5.9.2012

5.9.2012 New York Mets (17-13) @ Philadelphia Phillies (14-17)
Pitching Matchup: Dillon Gee (2-2, 4.50 ERA) vs. Cliff Lee (0-1, 1.96 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: PHI -195
LV Over / Under Open: 7.0

It has not been a particularly enjoyable week following Phillies baseball. Though the frustrating losses had nothing to do with my lack of posting, it was nice taking a break from blogging predictions. I spent some of the week making updates to the model, which hopefully will be improvements.

One of the benefits of simulation models over power ratings is that you can more easily adjust for injuries. Trying to back out a single individual's contribution to a team's power rating is very difficult if your rating is simply an opponent adjusted scoring margin calculated from points scored data. A model such as this allows for just such an adjustment, but how about when the opposite is true: How does the model account for players coming back from injury? The short answer is that it doesn't, not implicitly anyhow. The individual player statistical projections might account for them, but not typically in the case of a short DL stint. You might have realized what (rather whom) I'm referring to with this whole line of discussion: Clifton Phifer Lee. Tonight Cliff Lee is activated from the 15 day DL and will start against Dillon Gee. A big question is whether he will be his typically dominant self. Another question is whether he'll be on a diminshed pitch count. Regardless of what Charlie says prior to the game, do you really think he's pulling Cliff Lee if it's the 8th inning of a one run game because he's just over the 80 pitch limit he wanted to keep him to? After all the struggles of the bullpen, I don't think there is any way Charlie's pulling him in that situation. So back to the intial question: how is the model accounting for all this? I'll say again, it's not, though it could. I could manually (forgive the pun) adjust downward Cliff Lee's batters faced limit so that the model will pull him from the game earlier than normal. I could also attempt to analyze the first start off the DL of a pool of similar pitchers coming back from a similar injury. I could compare their performance in this first start versus their prior performance and use this change to adjust the outcome probabilities for Cliff Lee tonight. Unfortunately I don't have a data set readily available to do this, and even if I did it might be limited by a variety of factors.

All that being said, for my own purposes in evaluating this game I'm going to assume that Cliff Lee is going to be his normal self and Charlie is going to evaluate whether or not to keep him in the game as if he didn't just come off the DL. Those may be bad assumptions, especially with the model showing Cliff averaging 7+ limit on a supposed pitch limit, so if you think they are faulty feel free to ignore my following opinion on the game (go the other way on the game if you want for exactly those reasons). And my opinion is the Phillies are a good play tonight at -195, with an estimated ROI of between 5-6%. Some of the early betting at a few sports books I looked at indicates that there some crowd agreement that the Mets are a good play, though yesterday's line moved big toward the Phillies and we know how that turned out (you're going to have to trust me that the model thought Mets at +175 last night was an amazing play).

The model sees the O/U of 7.0 as pretty high, with 58% of simulations going under 7.0 (30% going over). Normally I would say that makes the under a really good play, but I'm going to say pass on it and instead take whatever you might have wagedered on the total and put it on PHI -195.

Go Phils!

PHI@ATL 5.3.2012

5.3.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (12-13) @ Atlanta Braves (15-10)
Pitching Matchup: Joe Blanton (2-3, 3.81 ERA) vs. Randall Delgado (2-2, 6.30 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: ATL -125
LV Over / Under Open: 8.0

Let's agree not to talk about last night's game, OK?

So moving on... Sometimes there are lines posted that are so enticing you wonder what you're missing. I've found that most of the time if the line seems too good to be true, it probably is. Vegas doesn't make its money by posting inefficient lines, so if the line seems grossly off to you then you are the one who is likely wrong. As you can see above, the simulation has the Braves winning nearly 60% of the time, which equates to a money line of somewhere around ATL -145 to -150. As you can also see above, that is no where close to where the money line opened. So what gives? The short answer is Randall Delgado. His predicted line would be so far from what we've seen from him this year that you might ask to check his ID after the game if he pitches anything like the simulation predicts. Delgado has labored through all four of his starts, throwing at least 89 pitches in each game despite never making it out of the 6th inning. Needless to say it is a small sample, but he has never pitched more than 6.0 innings in his short career, and the simulation has him getting to that benchmark fairly often. Delgado has also gotten progressively worse pretty much every start in 2012, so there's that. Frankly I think the pre-season forecasts were probably too bullish on Delgado, so until the model catches up, we need to mentally adjust.

Additionally it is probably the absolute worst case scenario for Atlanta to have Delgado on the mound today. Their bullpen was busy in the 11 innings last night (crap, we agreed not to mention it, error! error!) when Hanson couldn't make it out of the 4th, so with an early afternoon game, the prospects of Delgado pulling his short-outing routine could be really bad for the Braves. So with the mental adjustment downward of Delgado's and the bullpen's lines, I can see how the money line momentum was on the Phillies side. It is difficult for me to subjectively price how big of an adjustment to make from ATL -145, so I'll defer to Vegas in saying that the 20 units downward made sense. The betting market has further reduced the line to ATL -118, which again, I can't really comment on because of some of the unknowns.

If we're expecting Delgado and the bullpen to have worse outings than the simulation predicts, then we have to logically assume the total should go up. According to the simulation, the game goes under 8.0 52.2% of the time. I'm going to again defer to Vegas on this, becuase the model puts the total closer to 7.0 than to 8.0.

If you're lucky, you ignored my irrational fear of betting against Halladay in three straight games and you cleaned up last night (seriously, I'm done) as the simulator said you would.

Go Phils!

PHI@ATL 5.2.2012

5.2.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (12-12) @ Atlanta Braves (14-10)
Pitching Matchup: Roy Halladay (3-2, 1.95 ERA) vs. Tommy Hanson (3-2, 3.00 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: ATL +105
LV Over / Under Open: 6.5*

As expected, yesterday featured two very good pitching performances from Cole Hamels and Brandon Beachy. Luckily for the Phils they were able to get a couple runs off of Venters and win the game. And when I said "luckily", that's truly what I mean, as the Phillies scored a run on a past ball strike out. We cannot say with any certainty what would have happened during Hunter Pence's at bat with Mayberry on third and Rollins on first - despite Tom McCarthy's proclivity to make those kinds of assertions - but it is possible there is a much different ending had that ball not gotten past McCann.

Tonight should feature another excellent pitching matchup, with Roy Halladay facing off against Tommy Hanson. I've always felt that the media overrates Tommy Hanson, but he is still a good pitcher who has been above average nearly every year according to ERA and pretty much all of the ERA estimators. In fact, the most interesting thing about Tommy Hanson might be how his actual results (ERA) mirror so closely his expected defense independent results (FIP). In 2010 his ERA was 3.33 and his FIP was 3.31. In 2011 his ERA was 3.60 and his FIP was 3.67. And so far this year his ERA is 3.00 and his FIP is 3.14. Pretty interesting if you ask me.

Roy Halladay on the other hand has shown a knack for finishing with an ERA better than his FIP, sporting an ERA more than 0.2 runs better than his FIP in 3 of the last 4 seasons. That one exception year was 2011, and that the "trend" has continued this season. The biggest reason being that strike out rate has a significant influence on the ERA estimators, and as you're probably aware despite the relative lack of coverage (here, here, here, here, and here), Halladay has shown a decline in K rate (and fast ball velocity) in 2012.** What does all this mean for tonight? It probably doesn't mean anything more than what has already been factored into Halladay's forecast for the rest of the year. And it seems the model has already done a decent job of accounting for Halladay's performance changes, with his expected K/9 at just under 7.0 for the game tonight (down from 9+ values in the prior 2 games, though part of that is due to the competition).

For those of you who have been reading regularly, you know the model has indicated you should bet against Halladay in his last two starts. The game against the Padres was too close to call a "recommended" play, but the Cubs game was a strong recommend. As you probably know, the Phils lost both of those games. Could they possibly lose a third consecutive Halladay start? I bet it would suprise you to know that if we were to go back to the day of the Padres game and estimate the probability the Phillies would lose Halladay's next three starts, it's somewhere around 15%. I'm sure that sounds very wrong; in fact, you're most likely thinking that Halladay's team has almost certainly never lost three consecutive games he started, so the probability is 0% (or close to it). But I assure you that it's true (approximately speaking). Tonight the sim puts the probability at 52.1% that the Phillies lose, and with a current line of ATL +105, you're expected almost a 7% return in betting on the Braves. We've talked before about the premium bettors pay to bet on Halladay; I've noticed it is somewhere around a $10 swing in the line. This premium holds true tonight. So can I really be recommending you put your money against Halladay again? Three times in a row? Nah....I can't do it.

Go Phils!

*Pass on the O/U tonight, as its very close to a 50/50 proposition (51.6% under to be exact)
**I recognize the irony of discussing Halladay's early season "struggles" while cheekily inferring it's overblown

PHI@ATL 5.1.2012 UPDATE

There were two lineup changes of note: for the Phillies Freddy Galvis will start at 2B instead of Pete Orr and Eric Hinske will start in LF for the Braves in place of Jason Heyward who is resting a right oblique strain. These changes did adjust the simulation a bit: the Braves now win 54.3% of simulations (was 56.9%) and the game goes under 6.5 about 53.9% of the time (was 51.6%). A 54.3% win rate equates to a money line of ATL -119, so your expected return is somewhere around 3.5% taking ATL -111. In my full post earlier today I didn't make a definitive play recommendation, though I said ATL -118 was reasonable. That was when your expected return was around 5% though. With even less expected return now, I have to label this game a pass, even though subjectively I still see some value to taking Atlanta.

Go Phils!

PHI@ATL 5.1.2012

5.1.2012 Philadelphia Phillies (11-12) @ Atlanta Braves (14-9)
Pitching Matchup: Cole Hamels (3-1, 2.73 ERA) vs. Brandon Beachy (2-1, 1.05 ERA)
LV Money Line Open: ATL -123
LV Over / Under Open: 6.5

I keep hearing pundits say that starting with this three game series in Atlanta we'll finally get a better idea of what the Phillies actually are this year. The contrarian in me likes to point out that any early season three game series is just as representative of what the Phillies are as this series will be. Now I'm afforded the luxury of not having to come up with things to say over the air, most of which is unscripted, so it is easy for me from my couch (no armchair for me) to critique the nonsense that comes out of Sarge's mouth. Regardless of whether this series makes a good statement on the quality of the Phillies, it can help them move up in the NL East standings.

With Cole Hamels going tonight the Phils have a good opportunity to start the series off with a win. The simulator shows a ncie line for Cole tonight, having him scatter 6 hits over nearly 7 innings of work, with a projected ERA of 3.44. Unfortunately, the sim likes the very underrated Brandon Beachy even better. Maybe it's because he was never considered one of the Braves' top pitching prospects: ranking below Teheran, Minor, Vizcaino, Kimbrel, Delgado and Perez in Baseball America's 2011 list despite striking out 12+ batters per 9IP in AA in 2010 (9.5 K/9 in AAA in 2010).* Whatever the reason, Beachy's excellent pitching success has gone mostly unnoticed. And in case you are one of those same people I'm talking about who don't know anything about Beachy, let me drop some knowledge on you. Last year in 141 2/3 IP, he struck out nearly 11 batters per nine innings, which would have ranked best (yes, best!) in baseball had he pitched another 29 innings to qualify and maintained the same rate. He had an ERA of 3.68, but even more amazing was that his FIP (3.19), xFIP (3.16), and SIERA (2.94) all suggested he pitched much better than his ERA reflected. His SIERA would have ranked him 5th in baseball, even better than the reigning AL Cy Young and MVP winner.

I needed to break paragraph or I might have gone on talking about Brandon Beachy for a while longer. Too much longer and you might have started to question whether this really is a Phillies blog. I assure you it is, but all of that talk had a purpose. I think it helps explain that despite his success, bettors are still doubting Beachy and going for the big name in Cole Hamels. The line tonight opened at ATL -123 and dropped across the board to around -117/-118. The simulator has the money line at ATL -132, which would suggest a return of just over 5% if you decide to bet the game at -118 (a little better return if you can get it at -117). That's decent value, though potentially the one monkey wrench in all of this - besides trying to predict whether a couple of players on the Braves are going to play - is evaluating the relevance of Beachy's middling performance against the Phils. He just wasn't his dominant self against them last year with an ERA basically a run higher and 3.5 fewer Ks per 9IP. Surprisingly one of the players that hit Beachy the hardest was Raul Ibanez, who obviously isn't on the Phils anymore. Howard also had some success off of Beachy, hitting a 3-run HR off him on May 13th last year, but overall his performance against Beachy wasn't spectacular. Besides Ibanez and Howard, much of the lineup tonight is the same as last year's, since Utley also missed two of the four games in 2011 when Beachy pitched (and didn't have success off of him when he was in the lineup). I'm sure it sounds like I'm flip-flopping on which way to play this, especially after telling you to stay away from yesterday's game. I guess what I'll say is that if the chance for a 5% expected return gets you excited, then go ahead and bet on Atlanta. There were much better plays I gave you in the last several days - the April 27th Cubs play and the April 28th Phillies play to name two - but this one is decent enough that I wouldn't call you crazy if you played it.

The O/U of 6.5 seems almost perfect, with the game going under 51.6% of the time. I don't have a subjective opinion on the total tonight, so do whatever tickles your fancy, but I'd stay away.

Go Phils!

*BA went as far as to say that in his most rosiest projection, it was hard to see him as much better than a back of the rotation starter. Look, I'm not trying to lambast Baseball America for their evaluation; their thoughts on Beachy echoed the consensus at the time. The guy was an undrafted free agent out of Indiana Wesleyan who scouts said had three decent pitches but nothing that wowed you. Scouting is a tough business, and there are other reasons beyond talent for why a guy succeeds or fail.