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Hey lads. I'm not too happy with the job that the editor did on my article for today. But hey i'm sure they know what they're doing. So I am posting my cmplete work here. So no I didn't copy from the article posted on SBR--that's me. But a very shortened version of me My article does a good job of being informative. If you want to make a play on the game, I believe that you will find all the info you need here. BOL!




In a battle of youth vs experience, 23 year-old rookie Jacob Faria starts for the upstart Tampa Bay Rays against Boston’s Veteran Ace Chris Sale. Faria has been a positive surprise so far. Can he outperform one of the best starting pitchers?


The Red Sox come into the series vs Tampa Bay after failing to complete the sweep against Texas, who snapped their six-game winning streak. They came up completely flat last night in Texas: their starter Doug Fister got shelled while Texas’ Andrew Casher took a no-hitter into the sixth inning en route to an 8-2 win. The Rays, meanwhile, have been very up-and-down. Their starting pitching has been crucial for them, as their lineup has often been inconsistent and their bullpen has been unreliable. Yesterday, their bullpen blew a 3-0 lead against the Cubs and then some, in a 7-3 defeat. Red Sox batters have never faced Faria before. But watch out for Andrew Benintendi. He is third in Boston’s lineup with a .286 BA and he is a left-handed batter. Lefties have had the most success so far against Faria, batting .233 in 31 attempts, while righties are hitting only .189. Left-handed batters also tend to succeed in Tampa Bay’s ballpark, which is why Tampa Bay’s own lineup is stacked with left-handed hitters. Tampa Bay’s lineup is very familiar with Sale. Overall, their hitters have only mustered a .200 BA and .494 OPS (on-base plus slugging; an average number is .730) in 125 career ABs against Boston’s southpaw. One bright spot has been Trevor Plouffe, who is batting .326, with all (two) of Tampa Bay’s doubles, in 43 career ABs vs Sale.


Probable Pitchers


Chris Sale (11-3 2.61 ERA) takes the mound for Boston. The potential Cy Young candidate is having a career year: his K/9 rate is up from 9.25 last season to 12.38 this season, his BB/9 rate is down from 1.79 to 1.64, and his HR/9 rate is down from 1.07 to 0.67. His stuff has gotten nastier: opposing batters are chasing his pitches outside of the zone at a higher rate, but they are also making contact with his pitches at a lower rate. Part of the reason for his improvement is the command and location of his pitches, which is also why he is walking fewer batters. But part of it is the pitches themselves. He is more comfortable with his breaking pitches this year, as he is throwing fewer fastballs but more changeups and sliders. His changeup is enjoying vertical movement like it almost never has in his career. And opponents are batting just .181 against his slider. Sale has allowed just five hits in 14 innings pitched against Tampa Bay this season. On April 15th, he gave up one run in seven innings. On May 13, he gave up three runs in seven innings. He gave up two home runs and two walks in that game, either because his command was simply off a bit, or because he was focused on trying to break the MLB record for consecutive games with 10+ strikeouts—Tampa Bay was the seventh team in a row against which he achieved 10+ strikeouts—he struck out twelve. Sale faces Tampa Bay for the first time this season in Tampa Bay, where southpaw pitchers tend to do well.


Jacob Faria (3-0 2.23 ERA) counters for Tampa Bay. Top-prospect Faria has lived up to the hype surrounding him so far. It’s still very early for him. It’s not surprising that a rookie pitcher starts off well and then ultimately enters into a slump after he either physically fades because he had put forth too much effort into his first ever professional starts or after opposing batters watch him enough on film and catch onto the element of surprise which he had been dealing opponents. In Faria’s case, the element of surprise was his fastball. He throws it at an average velocity of 92 mph, but the way in which it takes life and explodes upon the hitter makes it difficult to hit. When Faria faced the White Sox in his MLB debut, they fell victim to the fastball, whiffing against 16% of his fastballs. Only one other opponent has whiffed over 10% of the time against his fastball. But Faria has still continued to do well against teams. He is averaging seven strikeouts per game and just over one per inning because of the effectivity of his secondary pitches, particularly his change up and slider. He is not inducing batters to chase his pitches outside of the zone. But he is able to place his pitches inside the strike zone and still induce opponents to swing and miss 12.3% of the time. To put this last statistic into perspective, Chris Sale’s career swstr% (% of pitches which induced opponents to swing and miss) is 12.4%. Faria is also able to command and locate his pitches well, which is why he has walked only four batters in five starts so far. So, like Sale—and some of his numbers so far are comparable to those of Sale— he is locating his pitches well and opponents are struggling to make more than soft contact with them. Perhaps the element of surprise has not so much been his fastball as Faria himself.


The Verdict


Chris Sale is so effective against the Rays partly because he’s Chris Sale. But also because he matches up well against them as a left-handed power pitcher: the Rays' OPS is only .705 vs southpaws and .590 vs power. It seems unlikely that Faria will continue to produce Sale-like numbers. His last two starts have been his worst—in terms of ERA, FIP (this is like ERA, but factors out luck) and HR allowed, possibly meaning that opponents are figuring his stuff out, that Baltimore, whom he faced twice in a row, matches up well against him, or that his stuff simply wasn’t there for him as it was in his previous outings. But even in those two outings he made it at least six innings and gave up no more than three earned runs. Boston is slightly above-average against Faria’s most frequent pitch, the fastball, but one of the worst teams statistically against his best breaking ball pitch, the changeup. Even if Faria does continue to pitch effectively, if his last two performances against Baltimore are not the sign of a regression in progress, Tampa Bay’s bullpen is statistically only middle-of-the-road in terms of FIP, whereas Sale is capable of going deep in every outing for Boston. If necessary, Boston’s bullpen also has a plethora of solid arms, enough of whom should be fresh enough, even though Boston’s starter did not last long yesterday.

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This morning I locked in Red Sox ML and First 5 'Under' 4