MLB Handicapping
The MLB baseball handicapping season is nearing the stretch, and with the pressure starting to pick up, the players are showing their true colors.
Players are settling into form, and with enough raw data after better than one hundred games this year, it’s getting to the point where we can see trends emerge.
With some teams loading up at the trade deadline, the talent gap between the haves and the have-nots is as great as it’s been all season, making the need to find trends to discover value all the more important.
Buy Razor Ray’s MLB Picks in 2014. You won’t regret it!! —–>
Here is a look at some stats and trends worth keeping an eye on when breaking down the board this week, and in the weeks ahead.
Brandon McCarthy is 4-1 with a 2.21 ERA as a Yankee
McCarthy’s tenure in Arizona ended with a whimper, as the veteran righty just could not figure out a way to help the team to win ball games. The Diamondbacks went 5-14 in McCarthy’s starts in 2014, and won only nine times in his final 30 starts with the team.
[dfads params=’groups=10&limit=1&return_javascript=0′]
The trade that sent McCarthy to the Bronx has been a breath of fresh air, as McCarthy has turned things around in a big way in pinstripes. Through six starts with the team, McCarthy has looked every bit the part of a pitcher for a contending team.
He took a tough-luck loss in his last outing, but that’s no reason to jump off the bandwagon. McCarthy has allowed two earned runs or fewer in five of his six starts with the Yankees. In his most recent outing, he allowed two runs on seven hits over 6 1/3 innings of work, striking out eight and not walking a batter, but he took the loss in a game in which the team’s bats failed to produce a run.
McCarthy has 36 strikeouts in 36 2/3 innings since joining the Yankees, and he’ll look to continue missing bats on Friday when he takes to the mound against the Tampa Bay Rays.
The Phillies are 0-2 in Cole Hamels’s two starts in August.
That’s interesting, because the team had gone 11-4 in his August starts over the previous three seasons, good for one of the best records in baseball in that span. Hamels entered the month going posing a 1.77 ERA in 10 starts.
He’s been even better in August, allowing only one earned run in 14 innings of work, but getting only one run of support in two starts. That could mean another low-scoring contest in his next outing on Friday in the San Francisco Giants and Madison Bumgarner.
The Phillies’ lefty-heavy lineup likely won’t have much luck turning things around against one of the game’s best southpaws.
