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Pick: Salvador Perez to drive in 1+ run
Hello and welcome to the last Sunday slate of August! According to NBC’s model, Salvador Perez has the highest projected HR and RBI totals across MLB today with an estimated .52 home runs at +160 odds, and 1.53 RBIs at -120 odds. On the season, Perez is slashing .275/.314/.538 with 37 home runs and 92 RBIs. His HR/FB percentage of 27.4% is the highest mark of his career and his hard-hit percentage of 55% represents the highest since Statcast data became available in 2015.
In addition to having a huge and potentially record-breaking season, he has been absolutely red-hot at the plate in August. Perez has a home run in five of his last six games and is currently riding a four-game home run streak. In his last 10 games, he has driven in 15 runs and has at least one RBI in seven of the 10 games. According to Baseball Savant, Perez’s xwOBA, which primarily factors in exit velocity and launch angle, has increased significantly over his last 50 plate appearances.
Matchup
Perez and the Royals are facing off in Seattle against the left-handed Marco Gonzales. Gonzales is 5-5 on the season with a 4.13 ERA and has pitched at least 5.1 innings in all five of his August starts. He has surrendered 20 home runs through 18 starts this season.
Perez has posted an impressive .324/.359/.691 slash line against southpaws this season. Against lefties, he has 16 home runs in 136 at bats (11.8%), as compared to righties where he has 21 homers in 358 at-bats (5.9%). Perez has not faced Gonzales since 2018 and is 0-for-4 in their matchups. Given that Gonzales tends to pitch deep into ball games, this should give Perez several cracks at feasting off of left-handed pitching.
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The Royals have been scoring at a good pace recently, so this should give Perez more opportunities to bat with runners in scoring position. The Royals have scored 52 runs over their past 10 games for an average of 5.2 runs/game. For perspective, 5.2 runs/game would put the Royals as third in MLB in team scoring if they maintained this clip over the course of the season.
Pick: Salvador Perez to drive in 1+ run
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