Give Em Enough Roupp

Aidan is Back!!  M begins by revisiting both Tuesday's game, which the last pod was about, and Wednesday's, which he attended and helped the Giants  secure a 5-0 victory.  He then moves on to tonight's game in Baltimore, looking over some general team statistics before moving on to tonight's pitching matchup.  He is tilting because of the similarities in both hitting and pitching numbers between the two teams, and has a bit of trepidation about his leans.  Luckily, that's when Aidan steps in to settle things down.  As usual, he has more analytical research, a deeper dive into the numbers and some stats to back up his thoughts.  Finally, he tosses out some possible picks before agreeing with M on a final Safe Bet of the Day™.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Good morning and welcome back to today at AM and the AM, your San Francisco Giants pregame podcast, bringing you previews, projections, and predictions before every Giants game. Good morning and welcome back into the pod. It is Friday morning, April 10th, and we are back after a two-day hiatus. One yesterday because the Giants are traveling east to Baltimore, and on Wednesday there was no pod because I was at the game. And it was a nice game. Giants big win, five to nothing against the Phillies. Three-run banger by Devers. Nice to win the series. I'm sure you all had the Giants money line with me since you knew I would be in attendance. So congratulations on that. It was a really good game to be at a nice sunny day, t-shirt only, rare for Oracle at this time of year. And a good crowd out there, decent size, I was surprised. Probably because it was such a nice day. And we got to see a fine outing from Malley. He only gave up three hits, and the bullpen only gave up one hit, which made for two shutouts in a row from the bullpen, which was a bit shocking. Maybe they're not quite as bad as we thought they were going to be. And it was good to see some action too, a lot of hits. The Giants had nine hits. Arias had a triple, Adamus with another double, Devers with the home run and four RBIs. Let's see, Cost was at second base, which was interesting. Incarnacion in left field, Arias pinch hitting, so it's a little bit different lineup. And the Giants won. So all in all, it was a fine day out there at the ballpark. Let's hope that they let's hope the Giants can keep it going today in Baltimore as they and Landon Roop will be facing the Orioles, who have Shane Baz on the mound. And it looks like it's going to be a little chilly. Kind of San Francisco weather out there, it looks like. And the Orioles are coming off of a road sweep of the White Sox. Although it's kind of weird. They went out on a road trip, they got swept by Pittsburgh. And then right after that, they go to Chicago and sweep the White Sox. So interesting road trip. Now, offensively, their numbers are, they've been kind of struggling too, kind of like the Giants. Their numbers are not much better than the Giants. Their batting team batting average is 242. The Giants is 233. And the Giants have been on the rise recently, if you've noticed. Let's see. The Orioles have scored 45 runs, Giants have scored 41, not too much difference. The Orioles have eight home runs, Giants have five, and that's with most of their games in Oracle. So offensively, the numbers are fairly similar, and pitching wise, they're even more similar. Their team ERA is 4.02, the Giants is 4.03. The batting average against for the Orioles is 239. For the Giants is 242, a little bit, just a touch worse, but our whip is a touch better. They have a 1.39 whip. Ours is 134. So their pitching numbers are even more evenly matched than their offensive. Yeah, their offensive numbers. So it's really a close matchup offensively and defensively. And even the two pitchers going today, Shane Bass has a 4.09 ERA ERA, and Roop has a 4.22, a touch worse. But Shane Bass is with his 1-2-2, and Roops is only 1.1-3, a touch better. So even the starters, two young starters, 26 and 27, evenly matched also. Now, if you look at Shane Baz, he was a first-round pick in 2017, the 12th pick overall. High expectations for him. He's 26 years old now. Let's see, he had Tommy John in 2023, and then only a partial year in 2024. And last year was his first full year back. Yeah, 31 games. But that was with Tampa Bay. He uh he had a 10 and 12 record and a 4.87 ERA, which is not that good. But in the offseason, he was acquired by the Orioles, who gave him a big contract extension. Five years, 68 million, not that much for a starting pitcher, actually, but a lot of big incentives going forward if he does well. And the Orioles, they do expect him to be healthy and to be a major part of their rotation for a while. He has a pretty effective knuckle curve and his fastball averages around 97. So he is a good young pitcher with high hopes. They have high expectations for him. He has had two starts so far this year, no decisions yet. His first outing was not that sharp. He went five and a third, gave up four runs on seven hits. Only went 78 pitches, which is kind of normal for a first outing. They don't usually go too many pitches. His second outing was much better, though. He went five and two thirds, only gave up one run, only four hits. He did give up three walks and threw 98 pitches. So, you know, that's probably about what I'm hoping. I guess I'm just not sure if he has control issues now, because no walks in the first game, three walks in the second game. So not quite sure if he has control issues issues or not. His ERA for the year is 4.09, like I said, and Roops is 4.22. Roop, as you know, he looked great his first game. He gave up no runs against the Padres over six scenes, only two hits. But then his second game, not so good. He came out against the Mets, gave up five earned runs in four and two-thirds, seven hits. I think that's the game he had the three walks. He's only had three walks, but I want to say they might have all been in that game, even though overall his control is usually pretty good. So on Tuesday on the last podcast, I said I finally felt good about a bit because the Giants hadn't been playing well. I hadn't liked some of the pitching matchups, that kind of thing. But on Tuesday, I did feel good about it. It was Christopher Sanchez to be under 18 and a half outs. He only got to 15. It wasn't even a problem. The other picks I had were under three and a half in the first five, that came in. And Robbie Ray over 16 and a half outs, and that came in. So I felt good about that game. I felt good about the picks. Like I said, no asterisk needed for those. Now, today, on the other hand, because it is so evenly matched in so many ways, I felt like I was gonna have to dig deep to try to find an edge. I was struggling. I was, I don't know, I was not sure what to do. I was kind of leaning toward the under eight and a half because neither team has scored that many runs, two good pitchers, a cool evening, Giants on the road, the Orioles coming back after a road trip. So I was kind of leaning toward the under eight and a half, or maybe even the Giants money line. It's plus 108, and getting plus money in an even matchup is kind of nice. I like that. I couldn't find any pitching numbers I really liked. The strikeouts, the outs, the earned runs. They most of them just had bad odds. And so I was kind of struggling. And then last night when I was doing all this, I was like I was kind of struggling. But this morning I got a text from Aiden that said he had time to do his analysis and be ready for today's game. So that was good to hear because you know Aiden does a different kind of analysis. So I'm gonna send him this, what I have so far. He's gonna listen to it and respond to it, and then also include, well, basically tell us what he had come up with independently, and hopefully it will match up with what I'm thinking. If not, maybe he can lead us in a different direction. Hopefully, he might have been able to find an edge of some kind, and he can lead us to a safe bed of the day. Like I said, I don't know beforehand what he has to say. He doesn't know what I'm gonna say until he hears this. So he's just gonna respond and not really change what he has to say because of what I have to say. He tends to be more analytical, deeper dive into the numbers, that kind of thing. So I'm really looking forward to what he has to say, especially for this game. Hopefully, you can help me out. So, with that, I'm just gonna say thank you for tuning in. Tune in tomorrow. It is Chris Bassett and Logan Webb, and Chris Bassett is not what he used to be. So I'm really looking forward to that. Oh my, I think the Giants will have a good matchup tomorrow. So tune in for that tomorrow. Stay safe. Go, Giants, and here's Aiden.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Whoa, good morning. My name is Aiden Gleason. I don't know what the heck I'm doing on this half of the podcast. I think this is our first ever MA in the AM, where I'm doing the second half and dad's leading off at the beginning. Thank you so much, by the way, Dad, for that intro and the starting analysis. I think we're actually on a super similar page, and we'll get into that in just a moment. But obviously, we got tons of energy from the last couple wins. Thank you so much, Dad, for going out to that last one. And I don't think they would have won it if you hadn't gone out there. So great work on Wednesday. So, yeah, we got energy from the wins. We're mixing up the podcast, we're heading on the road to a Baltimore team that's six and six, but as Dad was saying, kind of a weird six and six with three consecutive wins. But before that was three consecutive losses. So they're kind of you know riding high at the moment, too. And hopefully we can put some cold water on that with Landon Roop today, which is a pitcher that I'm always a huge fan of, even though Dad was saying I know he's got one good start and one bad start. I can't help but be a little bit of a homer and focus a little bit too much on that good start. Anyway, before we get into the pitchers too far, I do want to look at kind of an overall hitting comparison between the Orioles and Giants. As we know, uh the Giants are hitting just average on base average or uh batting average as 13th in the league, and the Orioles are a little bit better at 11th, but the big discrepancy comes when we look at their OPSs because the Orioles are 10th in the league, so a little bit above average, and the Giants have been abysmal all the way down at 27th. And that lines up with the Giants' runs, we're 27th in runs, we're 30th in home runs. So really not very good from the hitting side, although that has been getting a little bit better over the last couple games. Meanwhile, the Orioles numbers don't really line up. As I was saying, the Giants were 27th OPS, 27th runs, 30th in home runs. All those are bad numbers. On the other hand, the Orioles are 10th in OPS, but 21st in runs. And that discrepancy comes from the Orioles getting a lot of doubles, getting a lot of walks, but not hitting the home run ball either. They're 26th in home runs. And so they're getting guys on base, hence their good OPS, and they're not really bringing them around, hence their bad runs numbers. So then I was thinking, well, maybe they're getting those guys on base and not hitting home runs because their ballpark at Camden Yards doesn't account for home runs very well. But if we look at their X-Bacon, which is expected batting average on contact, their their ballpark is just fine. They're actually fourth. Sorry, they're tied for first in X-Bacon, but they're overall fourth in park factor behind only course field and chase field in Arizona and Target Field in Minnesota. And so they don't really have a good excuse for not hitting a home run ball, especially with guys like Pete Alonso on their team who should be knocking them out left and right. So I just think that in that this short, small sample size of the beginning of the season, uh, they're just not a team that's going to hit the home run ball, similarly to the Giants. Anyway, that's my analysis of their uh their hitting side. Let's get into the pitchers here. Shane Baz is their third guy in their rotation, and he's really only had one full season, which was last year. He pitched 31 games and did not look that good. As Dad was saying he had that 4.87 ERA. So now he's coming into his second, you know, regular season here, full season, and he's throwing hard. He's always thrown 97. He actually added a little bit to it. He's up to 97.2 so far this year. But uh that's his main weapon, and that hasn't exactly been working because he's been walking more guys than he should be, and he's been giving up far too many barrels. Just hard hit rate is is not good for him. And he hasn't been getting the strikeouts in his first two outings this year either that he used to be getting. So I want to do a little comparison between Baz and Roop because Roop has slightly better numbers this year in pretty much every category. If we look at expected batting average, Roop's is 205 to Baz is 207. Uh the walk rate is uh sorry, actually the walk rate's like exactly the same, 6.6 to 6.7. But if we look at their hard hit percentage, uh Lan and Roop is down at 29.6, Shane Baz is up at 31.3. The uh expected weighted on base average is Roop has a 231, and Shane Baz is all the way up at 285. So all these numbers are pretty similar, but roops are just slightly better until you look at the strikeout percentage, where Roop has been uh putting guys down at 32% so far this year, and Baz is all the way down at 20%, which is actually not good at all. So I like Roop in this matchup. If we're just looking pitcher versus pitcher, I would absolutely take Roop over Baz. I want to go in a little bit more detail into Baz's home run allowance as well, because this has been a huge problem for him. Last year he gave up 1.85 home runs per nine. I know that's kind of a niche metric, and so I always think of it as one being the benchmark. If you've given up more than one home run per nine, not doing very well, under one is very good. And 1.5 is uh the benchmark for this guy gives up a ton of home runs. So the fact that he's given up 1.85 home runs per nine, uh last year, this is, is really bad. And he hasn't given up a single home run this year yet. And so I put that all together as the Giants have been heating up over the last uh couple games. We got a ballpark that gives up home runs historically. Camden Yards should be giving up home runs. Shane Bass gives up home runs historically, and he's due. I know you can't say he's due. You could also say, oh, maybe he's just figured something out and he's not gonna give up as many home runs as here. But I'm gonna say he's due, which is why this is the Aiden ironclad 100%. I have no doubt about it, a guarantee of a home run off of Shane Bass today for the Giants. Which leads me right into safe bet of the day. There's two that I like. The first one is the Giants over one and a half in the first five. Because if we get a home run off of Shane Bass, you gotta imagine that happens in the first five innings, and you gotta hope that it's at least a two-run homer, which would knock it over that 1.5 right then and there. But even still, if it's a solo home run, hopefully we get one run somewhere else and get to that two runs in the first five. I think that's extremely achievable, but unfortunately, so do the books, which is why it's at minus 135. Plus, uh dad, I know you were saying you were feeling good about the unders today, which is something I totally agree with, by the way, with Landon Roop on the mound and the struggles from both offenses. The unders seem good. So let's lay off of that Giants first five over and look towards something that me and dad both have were a big fan of, and that's just a straight up Giants money line. Sometimes you gotta be, you know, simple about it. It's plus money. So you got to feel good about that. And as I was saying earlier, if we just compare Landon Roop to Shane Bass straight across, I absolutely take Landon Roop 10 out of 10 times. And I think the Giants' offense is heating up a little bit. It's not like either offense has really been putting up crazy run numbers. And so I think that this is a game where you can take the Giants at plus 104, and that is going to be my final pick for the day. Anyway, that is all I've got. Boy, I don't even know how to end off with a safe podcast here. Something like as always, stay safe out there, keep your eyes open, your hands ready, and as always, go guys.