3 MLB Teams Who are About to Get Cold (Look to Fade Mets, Rockies, White Sox)

Memorial Day is almost here and the year is flying by.

We're already a quarter of the way done with the MLB regular season, as some teams separate themselves from the pack while others are desperately clinging to hope while their aspirations slip away.

I love baseball for many reasons, but chief among them is the overwhelming amount of available data to analyze. With around 115 games left for each team, eons of time remain for early outliers to regress to the norm. That means we can find value moving forward by identifying what teams have been unsustainably good or bad. Baseball is a crazy game, lucky things happen all the time. So why not profit from a larger sample size?

You can check out which three teams are poised to get hot here, but now I want to look at three teams that are likely to take a step back in the coming weeks. Maybe these are clubs with winning records that are overvalued in the market, or maybe these are bottom-feeders about to fall even farther down the well.

As you check out the futures market over at WynnBET Sportsbook, be sure to leave these teams off your bet slip.

3 MLB Teams Who are About to Get Cold

New York Mets

Despite having the best record in the National League at 29-15, the New York Mets are a prime regression candidate in the second quarter of the season. WynnBET has the Mets listed at +400 to win the National League and +800 to win the World Series, but I expect us to get better value on them later in the year.

It all starts with the health of their rotation. Jacob deGrom, Max Scherzer, and Tylor McGill are all on the shelf, leaving them perilously thin. Their backup arms have pitched well, but continued excellence is a lot to ask of so many players. It's one thing if someone like Taijuan Walker reemerges or David Peterson shows improvement, but to repeatedly ask an entire group to step up leaves you vulnerable.

The Mets are batting a ridiculous .303 on balls in play, the second-highest mark in the league (more on that team with the highest mark in a moment). They're even better on the road, as their .311 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) has helped carry them to a 16-7 road record.

But BABIP isn't sustainable, and over the course of a season you're more likely to regress closer to league average. If their offense takes a step back and their injury-riddled rotation takes a step back, you can quickly see how New York is likely to fall off their current 107-win pace.

Their division should improve moving forward, as well. Ronald Acuna Jr. is back from injury for the Braves, and Zack Wheeler is regaining his form to bolster a potentially dominant Phillies rotation. Both Miami and Washington have proven capable of stretches of strong play, and in total the NL East should be a difficult division for the rest of 2022.

Let me be clear, I do believe the Mets could win the World Series with a healthy rotation. But their next 30 games are against the Giants, Phillies, Nationals, Dodgers, Padres, Angels, Brewers, Marlins, and Astros. That's a brutal stretch, with most of those teams being among the best in baseball.

Give it a month or two, then the Mets' odds to win the World Series should be much more manageable.

Colorado Rockies

Remember how I said we'd talk more about the team with the highest BABIP? Well, let's talk about them.

WynnBET has the 19-22 Rockies listed at +7500 to win the NL Pennant and +15000 to win the World Series, so this isn't a club anyone is rushing to put a futures bet down on. Instead, we should look to fade Colorado as often as possible moving forward, because their profile might as well be a giant billboard that says "WE'RE DUE FOR NEGATIVE REGRESSION."

In addition to leading MLB with a .311 BABIP, their lineup doesn't draw many walks. Meaning, they're overly reliant on that unsustainable luck as they aren't finding other ways to get on base.

A pitching staff that looked promising to open the year has started to fall apart, as well. Out of their whole rotation, only Chad Kuhl ranks better than the 25th percentile in expected ERA. Even Kuhl is only in the 42nd percentile and has an ERA over six this month.

Their bullpen is the worst in all of baseball and their defense is in the bottom-10 in defensive runs saved. A terrible bullpen backing up a struggling pitching staff with a poor defense behind them is a bad problem to have when you play half of your games at Coors Field.

To make matters worse, the Rockies have had the sixth-easiest schedule in MLB to this point but have the hardest remaining strength-of-schedule of any team moving forward, per TeamRankings. They have difficult series with the Marlins, Braves, Giants, Padres, Dodgers, and Guardians coming up, all of whom possess lineups capable of wrecking havoc on Colorado's pitching staff.

With so many factors conspiring against them, I'll be looking to fade the Rockies as much as possible in the second quarter of the season.

Chicago White Sox

There's a lot of players on the White Sox I really enjoy. Dylan Cease is one of my favorite pitchers in the league, Tim Anderson and Jose Abreu are monsters, and Andrew Vaughn looks like a future star in left field. But to have Chicago listed at +800 to win the American League and +1500 to win the World Series is a reach.

Other than a certain manager who frequently makes questionable decisions, there are a lot of reasons to have concerns about the White Sox. Their lineup has been mediocre at best, ranking 27th in OPS against right-handed pitchers on the year and struggling in May against left-handed ones. While they avoid strikeouts, Chicago takes walks at the worst rate in MLB, getting only 2.2 free passes a game.

It's possible the White Sox have the worst defense in the American League. FieldingBible has them responsible for -12 defensive runs saved. Of the rest of the AL, only the Athletics (-6) and Royals (-4) don't have a positive number of runs saved, and even those two clubs are much better than Chicago.

So if the White Sox are going to be at a defensive disadvantage in almost every game they play and their offense is going to be bad, then they better have one heck of a pitching staff. But while Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech are tremendous, the rest of the arms leave a lot to be desire.

Lucas Giolito's underlying metrics are concerning, Vince Velasquez is among the worst starters in the sport, and the rotation is so thin they had to sign Johnny Cueto off the street. Their bullpen has the fourth-worst ERA in the American League too as Liam Hendricks has struggled.

The only area of this team that you can point to and say "that's better than I thought it'd be" is the front of the rotation. But two good pitchers can only take you so far, and I'll be looking to fade the White Sox for the rest of the year.

Follow all of Joe Summers' betting picks here.