It has been a tough series and a tough stretch for the Cincinnati Reds of late. They fell 7-5 yesterday in a game that was marred by rain delays and actually called in the sixth inning because of Mother Nature’s hellfire with a big thunderstorm and a lot of rain. The Reds have actually lost eight of their last 12 now, failing to gain any ground in a really weak NL Central Division.
The Padres are definitely on a heater right now. They’ve won 11 of their last 12 and are looking for a sweep tonight at GABP with Ryan Weathers on the mound. The Reds will counter with Luis Castillo. The Padres will head to Philadelphia and the Reds will stay home and host the Cubs.
In looking at this one, this is going to be a handicap predicated on signs with the starting pitchers. It seems counterintuitive to want to go against a team playing as well as the Padres are and maybe it will end up being a mistake, but the Reds appear to have a noticeable advantage in the starting pitcher department here based on recent returns.
Weathers is back with the Padres because Dinelson Lamet is not. It wasn’t like Weathers did anything to get himself sent down. Far from it, actually. Weathers had a 2.47 ERA in his 47.1 innings of work. He went down to Triple-A El Paso and allowed four runs over 10 innings in two starts.
The concerns I have about Weathers here are due to several negative regression signs. The first is that he has a 2.47 ERA with a 4.24 FIP. The second is that he has a .223 BABIP against to go with a 43.4% Hard Hit%. That means that over 43% of balls in play have been hit at least 95 mph. That doesn’t usually translate to a BABIP that low. The third is his 88.7% LOB%, which is why his ERA is nearly two runs lower than his FIP.
The fourth is that he’s pitching against a quality Reds offense in a really good hitter’s park. Cincinnati is a top-five offense overall by wOBA and a unit that has really swung the bats well at home to this point, trailing only Toronto in home wOBA.
I definitely do have my concerns about Weathers, especially as he returns to MLB with the spin rate crackdown. He’s been a pitch-to-contact guy with a really low K% at the MLB level in the outings that we’ve seen so far. Maybe that changes long-term, but for now, he’s definitely allowing a lot of balls in play.
Luis Castillo had a season from hell for two months before getting on track in June. The right-hander still has a 5.14 ERA for the season, but his FIP is over a run lower at 4.04. The biggest issue all season long for Castillo was his LOB%. He’s sitting at 61.5% for the season. April yielded a 58.8% LOB% and May had a 51.2% LOB%. It is hard to post good numbers with that sort of sequencing and Cluster Luck.
In June, Castillo posted a 1.71 ERA. He had an 81.7% LOB%, so things got better in that department and he allowed just a .231 wOBA after consecutive months in the .380s.
I felt like Castillo was a Cy Young Award candidate coming into the season, so I was as shocked as anybody to see the returns from April and May. I’m not surprised to see that he and the Reds figured it out and that he experienced some of the clear positive regression signs that were there.
While I don’t want to get involved with the two bullpens here, seeing as how Cincinnati’s is not good and San Diego’s ranks in the top five, I do want a piece of Castillo vs. Weathers. Weathers shows all sorts of regression signs and it feels like Castillo has finally found a nice groove. Admittedly, it could be related to the opponents he has faced, as he caught St. Louis twice and Milwaukee once, but he also more than held his own with San Diego and Atlanta in his two most recent starts.
It is always an important decision whether to take the full game or 1st 5 based on price. In this instance, I’ll pay a little extra for the privilege of avoiding the Cincinnati bullpen.
Pick: Cincinnati Reds 1st 5
Other games: St. Louis Cardinals at Colorado Rockies; San Francisco Giants at Arizona Diamondbacks