Welcome to my biweekly 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.
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Throughout the season I will be keeping track of the results of this article, which you can view here.
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First Five Best Bets
Kansas City Royals at Toronto Blue Jays
Cole Ragans vs Jose Berrios
Jose Berrios is off to the best start of his career, but there are plenty of signs that the Blue Jays starter is due for regression at some point.
The first sign is the delta between his ERA (1.23) and FIP (3.84). That is the first thing I look for when handicapping these matchups, and the fact that Berrios has that stark contrast between the two signifies something is worth investigating. A quick look over Berrios’ profile turns up some troubling statistics.
Through six starts Berrios has been very lucky on balls in play. Opponents are hitting just .232 on balls in play against him despite him ranking 9th percentile of pitchers in hard hit rate (48.5%) and only the 53rd percentile in barrel rate (6.9%). Those are not figures that jive with one another, and sooner rather than later Berrios should be burned for allowing such a high rate of hard contact.
Berrios is also having one of the worst seasons of his career when it comes to generating strikeouts. He has only struck out 19.4% of opposing hitters – the lowest mark of his career since his rookie season – and he ranks in the 24th percentile in whiff rate (21.1%). He has also walked 8.3% of the hitters he has faced this season, which is the highest walk rate he has posted since 2020.
Kansas City’s lineup is good enough to make Berrios pay for these issues. The Royals do not strike out – they are second in strikeout rate this season (18.6%) – and they are the fifth-best team in making contact outside the zone (66.8%).
This isn’t just a fade of Berrios though. It is also a play on Cole Ragans.
Ragans is the antithesis of Berrios in a way. Ragans owns a 3.90 ERA but his 2.22 FIP would suggest some bad luck has found him. Unlike Berrios, opponents are hitting at an unsustainable rate on balls in play (.381). An example is two starts ago when Baltimore went 9-of-10 on batted balls and chased Ragans after just 1.2 innings of work.
Ragans has what you’re looking for in a starter. His fastball is his strongest pitch which averaged 96.1 miles per hour. He ranks in the 72nd percentile in chase rate (30.7%), the 75th percentile in strikeout rate (27.8%) and the 80th percentile in whiff rate (31.1%). He faced this Blue Jays lineup in his last start and allowed just a single earned run in 5.0 innings pitched. His profile suggests he is more in line with that performance than the nightmare against the Orioles two weeks ago.
Play: Royals F5 ML (+115)
Cleveland Guardians at Houston Astros
Carlos Carrasco vs Hunter Brown
This isn’t the best pitching matchup in the world, but both Carlos Carrasco and Hunter Brown should provide some excitement for bettors tonight.
Brown has settled down somewhat since his atrocious start to the season which peaked in a start at Kauffman Stadium that saw him allow 9 earned runs in 0.2 innings of work. In his last two starts he’s allowed 5 earned runs over 10.0 innings which is a massive improvement. Still, Brown is a below average pitcher who is prone to allow opponents to score.
Hard contact is the name of the game for Brown. He ranks in the 19th percentile in hard hit rate this season. A whopping 45.3% of batted balls he allows are considered hard hit. One might think a .475 BABIP would be considered bad luck, but when you give up hard contact at that rate hitters are going to reach at an extremely high rate when balls are put into play.
Brown also does not have great swing-and-miss stuff this season. He ranks in the 31st percentile or lower in whiff rate (22.5%), strikeout rate (18.3%) and chase rate (23.0%). The command issues are apparent as well, as he has walked 12.9% of hitters he has faced to this point.
Having said that, it’s not like Carrasco is mowing down opponents like he used to. Carrasco ranks in the 38th percentile or lower in the three key swing-and-miss categories tracked by Statcast. He has also walked 12.3% of hitters faced this season, a career-worst mark to this point for him.
Houston’s pitching has been abysmal, but their lineup – outside of Alex Bregman – has not been. The Astros are fifth in wRC+ (116) and sixth in wOBA (.331). They do not walk at a high rate, but they lead the league in strikeout rate (16.4%) by a decent margin. I trust that they will be able to get to Corrasco here.
Cleveland is an above average lineup as well. It comes into this contest 10th in wRC+ (106) and 14th in wOBA (.315). The Guardians do not strike out at a high rate either (19.3%) and their floor is raised by facing a pitcher like Brown. Both teams should have success early which should get us over this total.
Play: F5 OVER 5 (-110)
