BEST LINE: Pinnacle under 4½ +100

Jon Lester is flashing the best skills of his career so far this season with 10.8 K’s/9 Dom, a 2.67 ERA and a WHIP of 1.10. Lester is using his sinker less and cutter more and it has proven to be a smart move. Batters have mashed his sinker to the tune of a 1.056 OPS. His cutter has become a weapon. Hitters have a low .505 OPS against it and Lester has produced a 14% swinging strike % with that pitch. Lester has always had great success against the Blue Jays, as current Jays have hit just .195 against him in over 300 combined career AB’s and overall  the Blue Jays have hit just .243 against lefties.

 Mark Buehrle continues to amaze everyone. Buehrle is 7-1 with a 2.11 ERA but that ERA is not supported by his skills.Buehrle has been the beneficiary of a friendly 89% S% and unsustainable 0.2% hr/f. With only a slight groundball tilt there is some regression in his forecast but right now the Red Sox are pressing at the plate. A savvy vet like Buehrle can sniff that out in a second. We’ve seen him breeze through lineups that struggle because he has so many different speeds that he has them overthinking. Buehrle works fast, his groundball tilt is trending the right way and he’s facing a Red Sox team that has lost six in a row while scoring just 14 runs over those six games. Incidentally, six of those runs scored in the past two games occurred at garbage time against Toronto’s second tier of relievers. As soon as it got close and John Gibbons went to his first tier of relievers, Boston went quietly again. Note the 4:00 PM EST start.