Colorado Rockies: 2021 regular-season bets, odds, props, and more

Charlie Blackmon Batting Average – .284 (-115)

On the surface, this feels like an easy line to take. Blackmon has never had a batting average under .284 when he’s played a full season and he was just flirting with .400 early in 2020. But, as we started to allude to in the breakdown on his home runs line, there may be some cause for concern here.

The significant drop in Hard Hit Percentage and Barrel Percentage concern me the most. It points towards the idea that he’s probably not seeing the ball as well as he used to. Some of those minute things that players pick up on in their prime may be starting to slip past him. His overall approach isn’t changing, but his batted ball profile points toward him potentially regressing.

We also need to consider how he got to his .303 average last season. While the first half was amazing, he went cold in the second half of the season hitting only .200 in the final 31 games. We also saw his K% increase from 14.2% to 21.3% in the second half of the season, surely a large contributor to this drop in average. It hasn’t looked so hot for him in Spring Training either as evidenced by our friend Luke Hall on Twitter:

In terms of projections, FanGraphs’ multiple models have him pegged between .285 and .290 for the most part. While that skews towards the over, I just have a gut feeling that some of the regression we saw late last season is going to kick in more. Never mind the fact that Chuck will soon be the only longtime veteran in the lineup and trying to uplift it may start to wear on him. I am unfortunately not hopeful for the over here.

I am recommending Charlie Blackmon Batting Average Under .284 (-115)