The Series: CHW +111 vs HOU -131
The Play: None. yet. I made HOU -120 before the series. I don’t see enough here to play anything before Game 1.
The Breakdown:
Run Scoring: By my measures, HOU is the best offense remaining in the playoffs, but CHW is 3rd, so the advantage here is pretty muted. Both teams are marginally better vs LHP, but nothing to cause a significant edge. Two differences I see: K rate, GB rate. HOU is an incredibly low strikeout team. League average was 23% and they were at 19%. That’s a few extra balls in play against a CHW team who has some defensive struggles (see below) and that can be all the difference. CHW were an insane groundball team this season. They had a .86 GB/FB (3rd in MLB) and HOU was at .69 (4th from bottom). Just for context, the 5 teams with the highest GB/FB were WSN, TEX, CHW, MIA, PIT and the 5 teams with the lowest were SFG, LAD, ATL, HOU, TOR. I think you know which list you’d want to be on….
Run Prevention: CHW have arguably the best rotation 1-4 in baseball. Lynn, Giolito, Rodon, and Cease were all solid. HOU is combatting that with McCullers, Valdez, Garcia, Javier and Urquidy in some form or fashion. CHW will expect 6-7 innings from all their guys and hand it over to a pen of Crochet, Kopech, Bummer, and Hendricks. HOU will approach it from the other direction - hoping for 5 innings and then bringing in a Garcia, Javier or Urquidy to hand it to Pressly. If it were me, I would work to avoid any other pen arms. I think HOU can do ok vs the CHW bats. It won’t be pretty or conventional or perfect, but they can probably hold them to 2-4 runs per game with those arms. The big question here is if CHW can keep HOU off the board. CHW were not a great defensive team. Anderson is middling at SS, Abreu is poor at 1B, and a Jimenez-Robert-Vaughn/Engel/Garcia outfield is trouble. The problem is that if HOU doesn’t strike out, then CHW is going to need to convert batted balls into outs. Lynn and Giolito both had a 27.5% K rate this season. If HOU is able to cut that down to under 20%, then how many of those extra balls in play are turning into hits? The pen arms have even higher K-rates, if HOU can cut those in half, what comes of those bullpen innings? I’m not saying this is decisive; I’m not betting the series yet, but it’s what I’m watching.
Managers: yeah, I’ll take Dusty, but man, there’s no telling what could go down in this series managerially.
Umpires: Nothing of significance here.
I’ll have previews/plays on these games throughout the series, but if HOU can take down G1, then I’m pretty optimistic on their chances to win this. If CHW takes G1, I might want to take HOU for the series, but we’ll see how G1 looks.
Exact Prediction: HOU in 4