Tuesday brings us a full 15 game slate with quite a few potentially lopsided match-ups. For my Free Play today I am looking at the Padres visiting the Reds at 5:40 CT.
Joe Musgrove takes the hill for the Friars and looks to build on his continued success. Musgrove came up as a highly touted arm, who while having pinpoint control was unable to consistently miss bats. That all changed in 2020 when he made a tweak to his curve ball, and upped his cutter usage. The Curve is now one of the top 3 curves in baseball and when mixed with his slider gives him two different elite breaking pitches to set guys down with. He comes into today’s contest with a 1.89 ERA and a 1.83 xFIP. The only two Reds who have had any semblance of success off of Joe are Votto and Moustakas, as the rest of the lineup has struggled or hasn’t seen him.
Reiver Sanmartin is a 26 year old lefty making his third start of the year. He has a +Fastball, but hasn’t been able to develop his secondary offerings into effective pitches just yet. He was solid coming up in the minors so I do believe it is only a matter of time before he enjoys success at the big league level. He has a 7.11 ERA and a 4.14 xFIP coming into this matchup.
Early on this year the Padres are doing most of their damage vs left handed pitching. They have a .728 OPS vs lefties and 9 of their 13 Home Runs are off of Southpaws. On the flip side the Reds are dead last in hitting vs Right handed pitching with a .530 OPS and have struck out 30% of their ABs.
For me the Reds inability to put up runs with 43 so far in 16 games doesn’t bode well for them against Musgrove, and while the Padres aren’t tearing the cover off the ball they probably only need 3-4 runs to cover the Run Line here.
Play the Friars -1.5 +100 for 2 Units
