It’s been a while since I’ve done a Substack write up in general, but this is going to be my first in the MLB this season! Hopefully the first of many. Work schedule and life has been getting in the way of my doing these on a regular basis, but I will try and become more active with the write ups here on Substack!
Let’s get into it, I’m going to keep it as short as I can, and hopefully convince you to tail this play, as quickly as I convinced my self.
We’re going to go straight into the offensive side in the ball game today. San Diego Padres have not had the start to the season they would have wanted, liked, or hoped. Before the first pitch of the season was thrown, they were ranked as the 3rd best team in MLB, and you can’t argue against why. On paper, their line-up is lethal. The likes of Machado, Soto, Bogaerts & Tatis JR alone make this a scary team to pitch against. But once again, that’s all on paper, as they haven’t lived up to the hype... YET. I don’t expect that to continue throughout the season, but I don’t expect that turn around to start today.
These two teams see each other a lot over the course of the season, and this is a series the padres were and are expected to take, pretty easily. While the padres ranked as the 3rd best team in MLB before the season started, the Diamondbacks were way back in 19th. Both teams entered the season with 2 separate goals, the Padres with hopes of a World Series, and the Diamondbacks... not so much. But early on, we have seen the Diamondbacks claim the top spot in the NL West, with the Padres sitting 2.5 games behind in 3rd place. I know, I know... Divisions aren’t won after only 20 games played, but it just goes to show that early projections aren’t always correct.
Padres offence has not been clicking. They average 3.65 runs per game to start the year, (ranking 25th) and only average 0.67 runs per game over the last 3 games, scoring only one run. Taking this into consideration, the team total like for San Diego today was O/U 5.5. Padres have had 6 or more runs in only 1 of their last 10 games, and only 5 in the first 20 games to start the season. The Padres don’t get better while facing a right-handed-pitchers either, with a record of 5-7, and only having 6 or more runs in 3 of those 12 games. The Diamondbacks also rank higher than the Padres In batting average, slugging percentage, and OPS against right-handed pitchers (which is a huge negative for the padres, as they were expected to be a far better team than Arizona this season.) To add to this, San Diego rank in the bottom 5 for runs from the 6th inning to the 9th inning, averaging 1.25 runs, and only 0.33 in their last 3 games. In fact, Arizona have allowed teams 6 or more runs in 4 of their last 10 games and 8 of their total 19 games. 4 of those 8 games in which they allowed 6 or more runs, were to the dodgers who rank 6th for runs per game - significantly higher than Padres.
And with pros, there are cons.
On average to start the season, the Diamondbacks allow an average of 5 runs per game, which is joint 10th worst in the league. While that is still under the Padres Team Total line of 5.5, Arizona have allowed an average of 8 runs per game during the last series against the Cardinals, which is 4th most in the MLB – although, that average would be lower if they didn’t allow 14 runs in last night’s game. The Diamondbacks allow the 7th most runs between the 6th & 9th innings, with an average of 2.16. This would mean we need a solid outing from Nelson (which he is capable of) to relieve pressure from the Diamondbacks bullpen. Enter Nelson. Nelson has started the season hotter than Wacha. With an ERA of 3.71 (which is nearly half of Wacha’s 6.06 ERA) he looks the better pitcher in this matchup, even though he did allow the Padres 3 earned runs when they last faced a few weeks ago. And lastly, there is the scary threat from the Padres bats. As I mention earlier the first 4 in the batting order for San Diego is insane... on paper. Without sounding like a broken record, they haven’t lived up to their preseason expectations, but they do have a positive in today’s matchup. Fernando Tatis JR returns to the lineup. The Padres fans and organisation will be hoping Tatis JR can be the missing piece of their offensive woes, and with the firepower on display from San Diego, it wouldn’t take much to make this pick messy... but, I on the other hand – am not. I am hoping for a little bit of rust tonight as the offence continues to struggle to score runs. If Tatis JR was out again today, this would be a 2 Unit play, but while he could be eager to get off to a good start, I’ll stick to the 1 unit on this play for today.