Welcome to the inaugural postseason of this article series. In this article series, I am going to break down each playoff game on the slate based purely on pitch profile match-ups. The goal of this series is to locate the gems for our smaller slate/single-game slate contests that can provide an edge and lead us to some GPP takedowns! My name is Eric aka @Razzle11Grinds on Twitter, make sure to give me a follow as I’ll occasionally make updates to the advice in the article out on Twitter as well as inside our coaching forums. With that said, let’s get it started!
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Before I get started. Let’s take a look at the colors that you will see below. When you see numbers highlighted in red, they are numbers that benefit the pitcher. Numbers highlighted in blue are ones that benefit the hitter, while the ones that are left white are in a middling range that might give a very slight edge to the hitters.
Tampa Bay Rays @ Los Angeles Dodgers
Welcome to the LAST series of the MLB season, THE World Series! We get the teams who were the best in their respective leagues this season, facing off for the championship. Julio Urias takes the mound for the Dodgers as a -163 favorite. For the Rays, we get Ryan Yarbrough and the total is sitting at just 8 runs.
The Rays bats struck out more than anybody in baseball this season. That is something we are going to reference every game. The issue above is we see plenty with no data or very little data. This is a great match-up for Urias, as long as his change-up can get through Renfroe and Adames. Hunter Renfroe has the best match-up from a pitch profile standpoint. With that said, he’s definitely not a lock as he has trouble making contact a lot of the time but he should be in the middle of the lineup. Brosseau is somebody we generally target when he faces an LHP but he’s also struggled since his HR off of Chapman. Brandon Lowe could surprise a bit in a LvL match-up. I like the way Adames is battling at the plate so he is somebody I will look to be overweight on.
The key for Urias will be his fastball-change combination. If he’s able to locate those two pitches, he’s going to have a lot of success here. The Rays are going to want him to throw his slider-curve combo as he has struggled against RHBs with those two pitches.
The Dodgers look extremely comfortable at the plate right now. We see that Turner, Pollock, Taylor, and Betts have excellent profiles against Yarbrough. Muncy has a pretty solid profile against the LHP, while Seager is always going to be in play at this point. I wish Turner wouldn’t have HR’d last night as I want to be all over him tonight. I also think the bottom of the Dodgers lineup could be where we try to be different.
Yarbrough HAS to find a way to keep the offense off-balance. The Dodgers have an ISO of .250 with 12 HRs against LHPs in the postseason. He HAS to find a way to get ahead and not have to rely on his sinker-slider combo. He allows a lot of hard contact to his sinkers and the Dodgers are not the type to pound it into the ground over and over again.
There you have it ladies and gentlemen, the debut of the Pitch Profile Breakdown article! If you have any questions make sure you tag me in the chat. We can discuss thoughts on individual match-ups! As you can see, there are paths to success for each team playing today!