Bob's MLB Tuesday *** 6.28.16 ***

Through Sunday June 26th, MLB teams have averaged approximately 75 games this season, almost 50% of their schedule. For much of this season, including through May, home teams were winning less than 50% of the games. Their fortunes have changed in June, with the record now standing 595-538 for 52.5%. That is a result of the success of American League home teams, which are now 312-256 (54.9%). Home teams are still languishing at 283-282 (50%) in the National League. 

In the last two weeks, I examined home/road dichotomies for the best and worst pitchers in each league. Last Thursday, I authored an article suggesting BUY and SELL ratings for all teams of MLB based on batting and pitching OPS numbers after 70 games. Today’s article is a combination of those two lines of thinking. 

Much like last week’s BUY and SELL article, I will list each of the teams by their strength of HOME FIELD. I will then place a separate column of ranking for each their OPS batting numbers, and their inverted OPS home pitching numbers. We invert these numbers, because unlike batting numbers where higher is better, in pitching numbers, the lower number is better. Finally, I combine these two groups of batting and pitching numbers, then rank them from best to worst. When that combined rating is 7 positions or more better or worse than the home ranking W/L number, you have a BUY or SELL rating on the team. 

Quite simply, this means that the BUY teams figure to improve their record for the year to date at home, while the home record of the SELL teams is projected to decline in the near future. At the conclusion of the chart, I will point out specifically which of the teams have flashed their BUY and SELL ratings.

BUY teams:

St Louis (+20)
Last week, I issued an overall BUY sign on St Louis, asking the question, for how long is the 15-21 home record of a team who has won 50 or more home games forever going to last? With the #11 home OPS batting number of .760 and #6 OPS home pitching rating of .326, the Cardinals have the overall home rating of #6 at 1.096. Yet they have only the 26th best home record at 15-21. A major adjustment is about to occur.

Boston (+9)
The Red Sox have a solid home record of 23-18, but they are in a bit of a funk on a 12-17 slide after a 29-17 start. With the #2 ranked home batting OPS at .839 and the #14 ranked pitching OPS at home of .278, their 1.117 combined rating is the third best home ranking in MLB odds. Yet their 12^th ranked home record implies there is plenty of room for improvement, which can be expected to soon come.

Seattle (+8)
Much like the Seattle once best in MLB road record has begun to even out, so should we expect that their 17-19 home record will begin to surge. That’s good for only 20th in MLB, while their combined numbers of 14 in batting and 13 in pitching have them at a #12 rank of 1.038, 8 positions above their current record. Mariner numbers are good enough that they should be a winning team. Expect much of that success for MLB pick to come at home.

SELL teams:

Texas Rangers
The Rangers lead the MLB in one run games at 17-4. That’s a major reason in and of itself that there will be an adjustment. They enter their game on Friday on a recent 15-3 surge; yet another reason to expect an adjustment. With the #11 batting rank and #17 pitching rank, their combined OPS is just 1.014, 13th best in MLB. But as a whopping 11 positions worse than the #2 record in baseball at 46-26, the above factors are a clear SELL sign for the Rangers.

San Francisco Giants
The Giants are obviously the hottest team in MLB betting, as after Thursday’s 5-3 win vs the Pirates their recent surge is now 30-9, including 11-1 recently in which they’ve averaged nearly 6 RPG. Atop of the rotation with three great starters makes them tough to play against, but the batting is just 17^th in MLB for the course of the season, and their overall rank is #10, 7 positions higher than their #3 ranking. It is an even numbered year, so San Francisco may well go on to capture the World Series, but for right now they are a definite fade, as a short term adjustment is about to happen.