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+145  +140   +140

Posted at 12:30 PM EST and are subject to change.

Oakland +145 over Texas

8:05 PM EST. Adam Oller (RHP - OAK) is not having a good year. He’s appeared in 14 games with nine of those coming as a starter and has only thrown a combined 48 innings. He has a weak BB/K split of 27/31 over said 48 innings, which is ugly no matter how you break it down. His 7.26 ERA is also very ugly, as is his 6.50 xERA.  

Here’s the thing though…..Oller made the A's team initially as their #5 starter out of spring. He had a nice spring showing, striking out nine of the 31 batters he faced and walking just two. He was with the Mets' organization in 2021 where he split his time between Double-A and Triple-A, showing solid command and good strikeout ability. He has a three-pitch mix, all decent but none a plus pitch. He throws a low-90s four-seam fastball with ride up in the zone. He has a mid-80s slider with good command of the pitch. His mid-80s changeup has some arm-side fade that he throws low in the zone.

Moneyball (Oakland) is an organization that uisually doesn’t grasp at straws. They do their homework and go after undervalued starters/players that never got a fair shake and were not given time to develop properly. We’ll overlook all those walks because Oller has displayed good control for a long time. Maybe he’s trying too hard or maybe it’s something mechanical but Oakland has been fixing mentally broken players for more than a decade. Oller has shown good command in a much larger sample size than the poor command he’s shown in a small sample size. Regardless, Texas’ starter, regardless of who is pitching for Oakland, or any team in the majors for that matter, cannot be priced in this range. 

Cole Ragans (LHP - TEX) is a 24-year old rookie with two starts under his belt covering a lousy nine innings and today he’s priced like he’s Matt Scherzer. It’s f**king absurd. It’s not like Ragans is some hot-shot prospect either. He may have been way back in 2016 when Texas took him 30th overall in 2016 and it initially looked like a steal after he led the Northwest League with 87 K’s in 57.1 IP in 2017 but that was then. Subsequently he went down with Tommy John surgery in March 2018 and again in May 2019. He then lost the 2020 season due to the pandemic. He's now been back for about a season and a half and the drag of those missed seasons has knocked his profile grade way down. 

In nine innings at this level, Ragans has walked seven batters and struck out four. His swing and miss rate is a weak 7.4%. Also weak is his 33% groundball rate, 7.53 xERA, 1.71 WHIP and the list goes on and on. To be fair, Ragans was having a very good year at Round Rock of the Pacific Coast League prior to being called up but this isn’t the minors and right now, this kid does not warrant being favored like he’s 6-2 with a 3.50 ERA.