Back the Phillies first five inning run line in series opener against Pirates

The MLB is back in action following the All-Star break with 14 games on the Friday card. One of those games features the Philadelphia Phillies traveling to Pittsburgh to play the Pirates in a weekend series.

The season series is currently knotted up at two games apiece, with each team alternating wins and losses. Pittsburgh won the last meeting 9-2 behind seven solid innings and two earned runs from starting pitcher Mitch Keller.

Outfielder Jack Suwinski had the game’s biggest hit when he launched a 402-foot grand slam in the top of the sixth inning.The loss dropped the Phillies to (8-8), which was also the last time they were at the .500 mark.

Philadelphia now has the best record in the majors (62-34), which all but confirms that these are two completely different teams from the last time they faced one another back in April.

Aaron Nola will make his 20th start of the season as the Phillies right-hander is in the midst of another quality campaign.

While Nola has been a good pitcher for most of his career, he doesn’t have to be quite as perfect, considering the talent in the Phillies lineup.

Nola’s strikeouts per nine innings is down to 8.72—the second lowest of his career.

However, he’s pitching to more contact, given that his ground ball rate is up to 45%, the highest in his last four seasons.

According to FanGraphs, he’s throwing fewer four-seam fastballs (26.4%) while mixing in more of his cutter (10.2%) and sinker (21.1%).

This change in approach allows Nola to pitch more down in the zone to induce more ground balls.

Martin Perez will oppose Nola on the mound and he’s by far been Pittsburgh’s worst starting pitcher.

In 14 starts, the southpaw is just 1-5 with a 5.15 ERA.

His command (career mark of 3.23 walks per nine innings) has primarily been an issue since reaching majors, but this season, he doesn’t appear to have “the stuff” to get himself out of jams.

Baseball is constantly evolving in terms of advanced analytics, and the recently introduced Stuff+ metric examines the nonlinear relationships that exist across release points, velocities, pitch movement, and more.

In other words, the model evaluates pitches on a scale like Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), with 100 being average.

Based on the Stuff+ model, Perez has a rating of 71, suggesting that his pitches offer little deception to opposing hitters.

At 48-48, the Pirates are only 1.5 games out of a wild-card spot in the National League. If they have any legitimate aspirations for postseason baseball, they might need to decide on Perez’s role as a starter sooner rather than later.

The Phillies have been bet up as high as -178 on the moneyline after opening at -134. While I agree with the move, I’ve never been a fan of laying -150 or higher in an MLB game.

A better option would be to target the Phillies on the first five runline (-0.5) with -115 odds at BetMGM.

This option allows us to isolate the Phillies’ bats against Perez for the first five innings.

According to Baseball Savant, in 90 plate appearances, this current Phillies roster has a .472 Expected Slugging percentage (xSLG) against Perez with a .301 Expected Batting Average (xBA).

In comparison, the Pirates have a .366 xSLG and .195 xBA in 107 plate appearances against Nola.

Those head-to-head numbers drastically tilt the scales in favor of the Phillies, making the first five runline our best bet for this matchup.

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