We will have to stay up a little later for this one, but Ohtani is must see TV at this point so we might as well get some action.
While I like Ohtani pretty much every game to go over, Houston was a bit too tough of a matchup to write about. Instead, I will look to his opponent Cristian Javier. When you look into his game log, you won’t see a very good hit rate. Cristian was a reliever for a large portion of last season, and has 4 appearances out of the pen this season. I will note he only has 12 starts, and several of them were used to stretch him out.
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Now fully stretched out, we are beginning to see the potential. He has 13, 14, and 7 K in his last 3 starts. The 13 K game was a 7 inning gem vs the Yanks that resulted in a no hitter vs the best offense in baseball. He followed that up with a 14 K game, vs this Angels squad on July 1st. The sky’s the limit for Cristian and he gets a terrific opportunity to show it off tonight.
Now 230.1 innings into his career, Cristian is establishing himself as one of the top swing and miss guys in the league. He has accumulated 286 K so far in those innings, and has 102 in 74.2 innings so far in 2022.
He is in the 95th percentile in K per inning at 1.37, 82nd percentile in swinging strike percentage, 95th percentile in K rate, and 82nd percentile in whiff rate. He does have a 4 pitch arsenal but relies on his fastball/ slider duo 88.2% of his pitches.
His fastball has a 27.8% whiff rate, and his slider has a 39.1% whiff rate. Despite relying so heavily on 2 pitches, opponents are only batting .159 vs the fastball and .182 vs the slider.
The Angels are the absolute best matchup in the league. They lead the league in K per game at 9.67, and have struck out 31 times in the last 3 games. They have the worst K rate vs righties for the season, and it has just gotten uglier over the last 30 days where they have a 29.5% K rate.
They have the worst contact % on pitches in the zone, the 5th worst contact percentage on pitches out of the zone, and overall swing and miss at the 3rd most pitches.
This may very well be the only matchup in the league where I would feel comfortable playing Javier to get 8 K, but I have 0 hesitations doing it.
