FINNs AMERICAN LEAGUE PRIVATE PLAY - Guardians at Red Sox Total Over 8.0 | List Bibee and Whitlock | The umpire rotation has been confirmed and the over-under position in Boston tonight is good Over 8 runs with juice of -125 or less.
4% game rating
Starting Pitchers: List Bibee and Whitlock
Home Plate Umpire: Mark Ripperger has a lean, or bias, in relationship to his KZone that benefits a hitter before a pitcher. Rip grades out as a neutral umpire when working home plate but is stingy giving a pitcher a called third strike save the obvious that is a strike regardless of angle or dimension.
Venue: Fenway Park in Boston, MA
Weather: Clear skies with the first-pitch temperature at or near 60 degrees. A light wind blows from home plate to the right-centerfield between 5-10 mph.
As the world’s top elite runners made their final push toward Boylston Street during Monday's Boston Marathon, the Red Sox were taking the field at Fenway Park and doing everything they could to lose the tradition-rich Monday Marathon event.
The Red Sox’ Patriots Day game against the Cleveland Guardians resulted in a Will Brennan pinch-hit, two-run homer in the seventh inning allowing the visiting Cleveland Guardians to earn a 6-0 dub over the Red Sox on Monday in Boston’s Patriots’ Day game.
Patriots Day at Fenway Park has traditionally morphed into an early start time allowing fans to catch a ballgame, leave Fenway, and watch marathoners stream through Kenmore Square for the rest of the afternoon.
The X-Man, Curry, a 25-year-old righty was lights out on Monday in his debut. Curry was isolated in the team’s hotel in spring training for days and lost 15 pounds to a viral illness. He looked ready to go for the 11:13 a.m. first pitch after a pair of minor-league rehab starts.
As good as Curry was on Monday, , the Patriots Day start .... this Boston rotation .. and bullpen have been as good.. no better in fact than any staff in baseball.
Seriously, the Sox lead MLB in starting and relief pitching fWAR, this is heading into the Boston Marathon Patriots Day contest. Boston owned the lowest team ERA in the league, a ridiculous 2.08.
It is early, and the sample size, again at this time of the season, is small, but it is damn good to see the Red Sox behaving like a contender again despite their issues with bunching hits, going yard, and completing routine batted ball into what they are supposed to be... outs.
This same staff was awful on the mound last season, the only offseason move that Boston made was adding Giolitto .. and he blew his arm out during Spring Training and won't pitch this year
The Red Sox never had a hitting problem.
The lineup scored last year and will likely score again this season.
Andrew Breslow was hired in the front office ... he was hired to fix the pitching staff-- something he did in Chicago.
Breslow brought Andrew Bailey, a former All-Star and Rookie of the Year -- into the Fenway Family from San Francisco, where he helped Logan Webb, Kevin Gausman, Carlos Rodón, and others with the art of surviving Major League bats.
Tanner Bibee has a control problem. Yes, he always has and likely always will, but not to the degree his first three turns in the rotation have played out. Bibee will make his fourth start of the season tonight in Boston. The Guardians have won all three of Bibee's starts with Bibee being the pitcher of record in one, the April 4th victory at Target Field over the Minnesota Twins. However, the wins that the Guardians have recorded in his starts have more to do with the offense than Bibee.
Bibee was off his game and was not the 2023 Rookie of the Year runner-up in his first start .. in which he issued five walks in four innings.
The right-handed Bibee was less than stellar against the White Sox on Wednesday evening, his last start, surrendering 5 runs on 6 hits and 3 walks while striking out just 2 over 4.1 IP.
While Bibee’s 4.37 xFIP and 9.9 K/9 are both solid, his 5.93 ERA and 5.3 BB/9 through his first three starts (13.2 IP) will not allow him or the Guardians to be successful moving forward.
Bibee's command is a problem - and it needs to be addressed. Tonight will be a good test of how Bibee makes adjustments to his four-seamer. Home plate umpire Mark Rip will not offer him any relief from being a pedestrian tonight… Bibee is either going to cut the mustard or fail miserably tonight in Fenway against an average offensive lineup, the 2024 Red Sox.
Just one season ago Bibee posted a pedestrian but acceptable 2.9 BB/9 - this year, albeit a small sample size, he has nearly doubled the 2.9 and checks in with a 5.2 ratio for tonight vs the Sox… again Bibee's fourth start of the young season.
Garrett Whitlock also takes a fourth turn as the Red Sox starter. Whitlock has a 1-0 mark on the season with that victory coming in his season debut in Seattle. He tossed five strong innings (three hits, one run, no walks, eight strikeouts) to help manager Alex Cora’s team salvage a season-opening, four-game split in the season-opening series
Whitlock's three hits allowed, a pair of singles, and a double over 5 innings were executed with command of the strike zone.
I state/write the following with certainty before I even watched the tape of his performance. Whitlock's command has been elite.
Why?
Eight strikeouts with only seven swinging strikes in five innings of work is not just unusual... it is rare. Whitlock is not dynamic enough to push eight punchouts to the boxscore with only seven swinging strikes in five innings.
Whitlock threw 5 clean innings of one-run baseball on Thursday against an uber-talented Baltimore Orioles lineup. The Boston righthander walked two and punched out four. The one run allowed came via a solo homer.
Whitlock now has three “quality” starts (my measure of a quality start is not formal, or the form that MLB measures quality) having allowed one or fewer runs in a least four innings and surrendering four or fewer hits.
Whitlock has allowed two earned runs across 14.1 frames.
The caveat .. or more appropriately caveat emptor ... his .427 xwOBACON, expected weighted on-base average and .254 xBA are ok.. call it solid if you are looking for something more quantified than Okay .. but it isn't over-the-top or close to elite..
Bibee has a slash line of .214/.214/.286, a small sample size that isn't reliable but that Bibee struck out only two of the 14 plate appearances versus Boston and walked two in an appearance he threw 90 pitches tells us that the Red Sox were comfortable with the rookie on the mound a season ago.
Veteran MLB umpire Mark Ripperger is scheduled to work home plate in this matchup and Ripperger is neutral when executing his home plate assignments.. he isn't going to aid either starting pitcher tonight with strike calls outside the Kzone .. the pitcher in better form is the likely the pitcher of record.. the winner in Game 2 of this series but the most likely is the bullpen that holds up and holds down the opposing offense on a spring night in tradition-rich Fenway.
Confidence and even a cocky posture are what Whitlock has carried with him through his first three starts. He will walk to the mound with that same certainty tonight but … will he walk off the mound when it is time for him to be relieved?
Runs are not at a premium tonight and the flat 8 that the current total rests at is over-the-top value-packed.
Guardians at Red Sox Total Over 8.0 | List Bibee and Whitlock