MLB Best Bets for Thursday, May 16th
Welcome to my semi-weekly first five inning article! Twice a week throughout baseball season I’ll write up some of the more intriguing first five inning plays of the day. Handicapping pitchers is such a big part of betting baseball, and betting first fives is something I have gravitated to as a bettor.
As always, make sure to keep an eye out for Adam Burke’s columns which will appear daily. Adam is our primary baseball mind, and will be so once again throughout this season.
Throughout the season I will be keeping track of the results of this article, which you can view here.
MLB Best Bets
New York Mets at Philadelphia Phillies
Jose Quintana vs Taijuan Walker
If both pitchers live up to their statistical profiles we should get some fireworks at Citizens Bank Park tonight.
Jose Quintana takes the mound after a pair of dreadful starts against Atlanta and Tampa Bay. The journeyman pitched just 7.2 innings over the two outings, allowed 16 hits and 12 earned runs while striking out just five hitters. You could just chalk it up to two bad outings – one against one of the best lineups in baseball – but Quintana’s profile shows no positives.
His swing-and-miss numbers are the worst of his career. Quintana ranks in 8th percentile in whiff rate (18.1%) and 10th percentile in strikeout rate (15.1%). He has walked 9.7% of the hitters he’s faced to this point, and 46.0% of the batted balls he’s allowed are considered hard-hit.
Philadelphia is on an incredible heater right now, and this lineup is primed to jump all over Quintana.
The Phillies are up to fourth in both wRC+ (116) and wOBA (.335) for the season. They are seventh in wRC+ against left-handed pitching. They continued their first five dominance yesterday by plating four runs in the bottom of the fifth, and they are now 30-11-3 in first five inning wagers this season.
However, as tempting as it is to blindly back Philadelphia here, I’m not sure Taijuan Walker can hold up his end of the bargain.
Walker comes into this start with a 4.82 ERA and 5.25 FIP. His command is elite – he ranks in the 83rd percentile in walk rate at 5.2% – but that is the only real positive in his game. Walker owns a 41.1% hard-hit rate this season, and only 26.8% of those are groundballs. He’s in the 8th percentile of pitchers in whiff rate (18.0%) and striking out hitters at a 19.5% clip.
New York isn’t the best lineup in the world by any stretch – 18th in wRC+ (99) and 19th in wOBA (.302) – but a pitcher like Walker raises the floor of any lineup he faces.
With all of that in mind, I’ll go over the total in the first five innings today. We get two pitchers with extremely poor statistical profiles, and a lineup that is among the best in baseball. Philadelphia has also started this games strong, and are tied for second in runs per game in the first five innings (3.2). There’s a light wind blowing in, but that won’t stop us.
Play: F5 OVER 4.5 (-105)
