Young Pitchers Will Dominate Soft Hitting Teams

Pirates vs. Giants, 10:15 ET

It can be super interesting seeing the ebbs and flows of a betting year. I watch each one of my bets that I place and try to identify trends. It is easy to look and see that I won four in a row and a good portion of 20 bets, but then you look at losing two straight bets and it seems like the world is crashing down on you. Luckily that was Wednesday and I won both plays Tuesday so it balanced out. I have said this before, if you can’t weather the storms, just stop betting. I can weather the storm and know that there will be sunshine ahead as well. The sun will shine on us tonight as we play the Pirates vs. Giants. 

The Pirates are a team that got the best of me yesterday as I expected much more from Brewers starter Freddy Peralta. The thing is that the Pirates are a sneaky good club and have potential to really make an impact in the next few years if things go right. For now, the team is hitting around .240 which isn’t great, but it is manageable. They aren’t a squad that is going to over power you, they are a team that will play station to station baseball and take the homers when they come/ They have a decent on-base percentage and can potentially make you pay if you issue free passes. Their pitching is what will lead them (provided they keep all their starters) over the next few years. They have one of their youngsters, Quinn Priester, taking the ball tonight. Priester has struggled early in his career, but certainly has the stuff to make for a longer career. He was only able to go 4.1 innings in his first outing this season as he allowed three home runs and four earned runs. Jorge Soler is the only Giant with experience against Priester and he is 2-for-2 against him. 

Apr 20, 2024; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants pitcher Kyle Harrison (45) throws a pitch against the Arizona Diamondbacks during the first inning at Oracle Park. Mandatory Credit: Darren Yamashita-USA TODAY Sports

The Giants are a team that I won a bet on recently. Most of their success will come from their starting pitching, and if the Pirates are looking for a blueprint of how to manage a team, San Francisco would be a good spot to start looking. The team has built around pitching and then hitters that are mostly contact hitters. That’s a decent approach as the pitching in the playoffs gets hard and homers are harder to come by. This team is somewhat built like that. The aforementioned Soler is a power hitter, but most of the rest of the team are more contact hitters. Tonight they will send out Kyle Harrison to the mound. He has a 5.00 ERA and a 1.33 WHIP which somewhat indicates that he might be the victim of bad luck instead of poor performance. He’s put up three quality starts out of his five starts as well. Harrison has allowed at least two earned runs in each game, and at least one home run in all but one game. 

The Pirates aren’t a great hitting team, and I think that the Giants being more of a contact hitting team plays into the benefit of Priester here. I didn’t mention this either, but the Pirates are coming from the East Coast for this game. When this game starts, it will be at 10 PM, that will likely throw off their hitting. I think the Giants win the game, and I also think we probably see an under. 

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