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Posted at 12:30 PM EST.

7:05 PM EST. Cole Hamels (LHP - CHC) has been on a roll lately, with a 2.25 ERA over his last six games, though his xERA during that stretch is 3.90, right in line with his overall skills for the season. Hamels has benefited greatly from three things; 1), an 80% strand rate, 2), a BABIP of .280 and 3), pitching a bunch of games at Wrigley with the wind blowing in. Don’t get us wrong, as Hamels is still a very decent pitcher but he’s the second the best pitcher in this matchup and he has the second best bullpen in this matchup behind him. 

Sonny Gray has a groundball/line-drive/fly-ball split of 55%/17%/28%. That’s an elite batted ball profile and not a bad place to start when discussing a pitcher at Great American Ballpark. Gray also has 85 K’s in 76 innings. Furthermore, Cincinnati has won six of Gray’s last seven starts and the Red scored a combined 43 in support of Gray over those six wins. Some pitchers are just slotted in the right spot, meaning they get run support all year and right now that slot belongs to Gray. Look, we all know the Reds are better than their record so figure them to return some nice profits until a market correction occurs.

Finally, it’s worth mentioning that Joey Votto is starting to come around again and that’s huge for the Reds lineup. Votto became synonymous with the ability to dictate the course of an at bat more than any other player in baseball but suddenly looked uncomfortable and lost at the plate up until the past couple of weeks. Between every pitch, Votto took his trademark practice half-swings with the expression of a player who knew that doing this used to feel right, but without any earthly idea of how to get that feeling back again.

Something drastic needed to change in order to pull Votto back from the abyss of late career Pujolsdom. And over the course of the next two weeks, something did. It started with two hits against the Cubs on May 24 and blossomed into a 13-for-22 performance through the end of the month. On the surface, it looked like a normal hot streak from a player who’s had a career’s worth of them. Over the next 12 games, Votto batted .412. In order to get out of the morass of the first two months, it appeared that Votto had switched his focus from putting the power back in his swing to making solid line drive contact with as many pitches as possible. And over that stretch, his BABIP was an absurd .465. The change was working. It remains to be seen if this hot streak eventually leads to a more typical Votto performance over the rest of the season but since May 24, he’s hit .365/.429/.541 with two homers and seven doubles, while bringing his season OPS up nearly 100 points. Wrong side favored.

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