BEST LINE: Pinnacle +100

6:40 PM EST. Ian Kennedy is having a really good year with 11 pure quality starts in 12 tries. He also has an outstanding BB/K split of 19/81 in 74 innings. Dude is pitching better than he ever has with the skills to support it. However, at home, Kennedy is 1-5 with a 4.01 ERA and current Pirates are hitting a combined .311 off him. It would come as no surprise if Kennedy threw a strong game here but the value in this game is on the Pirates and Francisco Liriano.

The Pirates are 2-0 in this series while outscoring the Padres 14-4. The Pirates are quietly heating up with five wins in six games and that includes taking three of four against the Dodgers in Los Angeles prior to this series. In their last six games in two pitcher’s parks (L.A. and S.D.), Pittsburgh has scored 29 times. Francisco Liriano is 1-5 with an ERA of 4.62 and he’s precisely the reason you don’t buy or sell surface stats. This is a guy that went 16-8 with a 3.02 ERA in 161 innings last year. Liriano’s skills this year are actually better than last years’. He’s rendered LH batters helpless and his swing and miss rate is tops in the majors at 17%. Liriano’s groundball rate is also on the rise and now sits at 53% on the year. However, over his last five starts, Liriano’s groundball rate is even higher at 58%. Francisco Liriano has been extremely unlucky with a high hit rate and low strand rate but he possesses some of the best, if not the best skills in the game. Regression is absolutely coming in his actual ERA and the fact that he’s a pooch against San Diego, a team with the lowest home on base percentage in the majors is bordering on ludicrous. Invest.