Rich Hill and Joe Ross are listed for Tuesday night at Nationals Park when the Tampa Bay Rays and Washington Nationals get together. This was a late line posting with no overnight number, as there must have been some level of confusion about the starting pitchers.
I have no confusion about my desire to go against Rich Hill. Hill has seen some enormous spin rate drops over his last few starts and has not generated swings and misses as a result. The numbers don’t look too terrible with nine runs allowed on 15 hits in his last 19.2 innings, but he has 18 strikeouts against 10 walks. The reason why the numbers don’t look that bad is because Hill has faced Texas, Baltimore, Seattle, and Boston and two of those starts were in Texas and Seattle, two rather favorable parks for pitchers.
Hill’s four lowest spin rate starts with the fastball have all come in June and you can see how big of a decrease we are actually talking about.
Hill peaked at 2423 in back-to-back starts on May 20 and May 25. He was down to 2189 in his most recent start.
Hill is primarily a two-pitch pitcher, so the signs with his fastball are very discouraging, but we’re also seeing similar stuff with the curveball.
Hill’s CB is down nearly 250 rpm from when it peaked in late April. His spin rate on that pitch has actually been pretty steadily dropping since May.
I don’t really expect Hill to be effective here. For starters, the spin rates. For another thing, it’s going to be about a million degrees in Washington D.C. on Tuesday. With a breeze blowing out a little bit, the temperatures will be in the upper 80s with heat indices in the mid-90s. As it is, the Washington Kyle Schwarbers are on a bit of a heater offensively right now. Add in Hill’s spin rate issues and recent returns in the command and control departments and we have some big red flags here.
We all know that the Rays offense is different on the road than at home. Most teams struggle to hit at Tropicana Field. When we look at the away split for the Rays, we see a team that ranks 10th in wOBA. The Rays haven’t been quite as potent on the road in recent games as they were earlier in the season, when they were up near the top of the league, but they are still a better offense on the road.
Joe Ross has pitched better than I expected this season, but Ross has a 4.12 ERA with a 4.75 FIP, so there are some regression signs. He has allowed 13 home runs this season in his 74.1 innings of work and it seems like the weather conditions could negatively impact him as well.
Ross threw seven scoreless innings against the Marlins last time out down in Miami, but had the lowest spin rate of the season on his sinker. His slider spin rate also took another tumble and he throws those two pitches about 90% of the time.
I’m expecting runs in this game. To be safe, I’ll go with the 1st 5 over, but I don’t really like the Nationals bullpen, so I think we could see the full-game over get there as well.
Pick: 1st 5 Over 4.5
Other games: Padres at Reds; Diamondbacks at Cardinals; Rangers at Athletics