The lone baseball game on Tuesday night will pit both teams' Aces against each other in a game where weather may play a part. I don't have a perfect weather forecast this far out, but it'll likely be in the 50s with another double digit wind. Adding to that, Gabe Morales leans slightly pitcher friendly. Both pitchers will be working on a standard four day rest schedule.
LEGEND
Opp wRC+ Opposing offense’s wRC+ against L/RHP this season
DEF Team Runs Prevented/projected lineup(Roster Resource) Fielding Run Value
B30 Bullpen SIERA/xFIP/FIP average this post-season (this is new)
BSR: Projected Lineup Base Running Runs
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Guardians @ Yankees
Tanner Bibee sees his first post-season action coming off a 20.1 K-BB% in his second major league season. This, along with 7.0% Barrels/BBE and a 36.9 HardHit% produces estimators all above, but within half a run of his 3.47 ERA. There is some caution with his 34.6 GB%. Bibee finished the season with 19.2 innings of six run ball over his last three start and had a long layoff (Sept 24th – Oct 5th) between starts. Normally, he’s be the only Cleveland pitcher afforded any kind of leash, but that hasn’t necessarily been the case for any Cleveland pitcher this post-season. Bibee’s split (LHBs .336 wOBA, .318 xwOBA – RHBs .252, .289) is a bit of a concern against this Yankee offense, which will likely deploy five LHBs.
He faced just 19 Tigers, striking out six with a walk and four hits. He also hit one, but did not allow a run in Game One. Of the 76 pitches thrown, 33 were fastaballs, averaging just 0.3 mph over his season mark. He did well to avoid the absolute center of the plate and generated more swings (39) than takes (37). Detroit swung and missed 11 of Bibee’s pitches, fouling 17 off and reaching a 95 mph EV on five of 11 balls put into play, which was apparently too many for Vogt’s liking. I was surprised to see him exit so early in that outing.
Bibee’s second outing was even shorter (16 batters, 64 pitches), but there was more at stake later in the series. He struck out just three with two walks and a home run over four innings (two runs). His fastball was up 0.5 mph over his season average here, but got just one of his six total whiffs with the changeup the better bat missing pitch (three of five swings). Bibee did a solid job of avoiding the middle of the plate, though some of that was because he was missing the plate completely (38 pitches), which is why batters did not offer on 39 of his pitches. Two of his five hard hit batted balls were on the ground.
Opp wRC+: 120 (116 Home)
DEF: 5/27
B30: 2.91
BSR: -9
Gerrit Cole’s 17.9 K-BB% is not just his lowest mark since Pittsburgh, but the first time he’s been below 21% (last year) and second time he’s been below 25% since leaving the steel city. Once certainly wonders if there’s been a decline in pitch quality, but Cole did reach a 25 K-BB% or better in 10 of his 17 starts. Four of the seven times he failed to do so were against either playoff offenses (Mets 2x, Orioles, Guardians) or other tough offenses (Red Sox, Blue Jays). None the less, his Bot ERA (3.76) was a quarter run above last year, which was a half run above the year before, while his Stuff+ has dropped from 139 to 121 to 111 over the last three seasons. Cole is still a quality pitcher and a top end of the rotation one, but estimators all exceeding his 3.41 ERA without reaching five do say something.
It appears those concerns were warranted, as Cole lasted 23 batters and five innings in Game One, striking out just four with two walks and a home run. Four runners crossed the plate, three earned. The velocity was actually up more than half a mph from his season average and tied for his best effort of the season, but unlike other pitchers I’ve mentioned this post-season, Cole was much more down the middle of the plate and rarely on the corner. Maybe the problem is that his stuff doesn't play well enough for him to get away with that anymore, but batters swung and missed at just six of his 80 pitches, though with 20 foul balls. The real killer was 11 of his 17 batted balls at 95 mph or harder off the bat and only ONE of those on the ground. That’s a disastrous outing for Cole and it all came down to command. Or lack thereof.
Redemption in Game Four of the series, as Cole threw seven one-run innings without a walk, though he still struck out only four. On 87 pitches, he fired 46 fastballs at 0.9 mph above his season average. He generated just six whiffs, five of them with another four called strikes on the heater. He again got away with some poorly located pitches. Cole allowed another 12 hard hit batted balls (more than half his contact) with only five of them on the ground. The Guardians are similar to the Royals in that they’re a marginal offense against RHP that does not strike out. It’ll be interesting to see if they go with Fry and Noel against Cole’s reverse split, but for all the accolades he received for coming back to shut the Royals down, it wasn’t that well a pitched game. He was fortunate to turn a lot of hard contact into outs in a power suppressing park. Note that I bolded the Guardians above, as an outing were Cole had a K-BB not only below 25%, but he walked five with just two strikeouts. The cutter (16.3%, 55 PB grade) and curve (18.7%, 62 PB grade) are pitches the Guardians struggled against post-trade deadline, though they were third best against fastballs (0.56 wFA/C).
Opp wRC+: 95 (20 K%, 92 Road, 80 Post-Season)
DEF: 6/17
B30: 2.76
BSR: 3
No active line on this game as Game One hasn’t even started yet, but my feeling is that Cole might end up being overvalued here. Unless he's less aggressive with the fastball and leans more on secondary pitches the Guardians have trouble with. I don't know if that particular approach is in his nature, though it was a data heavily Houston organization that turned his career around, so maybe he'll be into it. Not that I think Bibee will have an easy time with the Yankees, but I’d rather not tussle with either of these bullpens right now. My initial thought might be to consider a F5 over, but we may have weather and umpiring conspiring against us. Let’s wait for the actual line to come out and then update.
Update:
We have a line. It opened at CLE +164, but I couldn't even get it in until it dropped to +158. Could still look for some F5 if the price is appropriate.
Update:
Weather forecast exactly as expected. Gain of 2.38% on CLE moneyline. It's rare for Yankee lines to drop this much. Added another half unit on CLE +160 (F5). With a DK boost, you can push it above +200.
Update #2:
Guardians going with eight LHBs against Cole's reverse split, but Brennan over Noel does lower the strikeout rate.
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