Games of the Day

It appears to be Cy Young contender Wednesday. Clayton Kershaw faces Patrick Corbin in an afternoon game between the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks. Kershaw opened up a huge lead in Tom Tango Cy Young Tracker points, ten ahead of Jake Arrieta. To accumulate a high score, the pitcher needs to allow few runs, pitch a lot of innings, strikeout a ton of batters, and win. Kershaw is doing all that and more, keeping his walks and home runs very low. Corbin, with 46 runs allowed in 78 2/3 innings is pretty much doing the opposite.

The Brewers send Jimmy Nelson against one of the Giants aces, Johnny Cueto. Nelson limits the damage against him to bases empty situations. Twenty one of the twenty 26 extra-base hits against him came with no one on. Cueto shares Kershaw’s 9-1 record, and only allowed three home runs. The big difference is that Cueto walked 19 to Kershaw’s six.

A few minutes later the Cubs and Nationals play the rubber game of their series as Jason Hammel takes on the undefeated Stephen Strasburg. Hamel’s 2.36 ERA owes a bit to his six home runs allowed in 68 2/3 innings. He’s holding opponents to a .343 slugging percentage. Strasburg is 5-0 both at home and the road, but allowed seven of his nine homers at home.

The Orioles and Red Sox continue to battle for the AL East title with Kevin Gausman facing AL Cy Young points leader Steven Wright. Gausman is 0-3 despite a 3.45 ERA and the Orioles third in the AL in runs per game. They scored three runs or less seven times in Gausman’s ten starts. Wright’s strength this season is keeping the ball in the park. He allowed just three home runs in 82 innings, impressive for a knuckle ball pitcher. What that pitch doesn’t break, batters can cream it.

Finally, Mike Pelfrey takes on Chris Sale as the Tigers play the White Sox. Pelfrey owns both a low walk rate and a low strikeout rate. That means a lot of balls are put in play against him, and with a .333 BABIP, a lot of those fall for hits. Sale is just a hair behind Wright in the Cy Young track points race. He’s holding opponents to a .217 BA and a .264 OBP. It’s tough to score when no one is on base.

Enjoy!

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/1PttIoz