BEST LINE: Pinnacle -101

Posted at 11:00 AM EST

Miami -101 over CHICAGO

Henderson Alvarez is not as good as his 2.62 ERA suggests but that’s something we’ll elaborate on at a later date. Frankly, we couldn’t care less about who was starting for the Fish because this one is all about fading the opposition’s starter.

The Cubbies have won the first three games of this series but they had an edge facing Randy Wolf and Brian Flynn in two of the three games. In the other game, Cubs ace Jason Hammel defeated Nathan Eovaldi 5-3 but things take a turn for the worse here for the Cubbies. Jake Arietta is 1-1 with a 3.00 ERA after six starts. When talking about misleading surface stats, Jake Arrieta leads the universe in that department. Arrieta has an oppBA of .299, a WHIP of 1.60, a strand rate of 90% and a swing and miss rate of 7%. This does not add up to a 3.00 ERA. Arrieta has been without question the luckiest pitcher in baseball. His 6.64 ERA over his past two starts is twice as high as his actual ERA. In his last start against the Mets, EVERY ball hit was scorched but somehow it was right at somebody. Jake Arrieta is the best candidate in the majors for a serious ERA regression and we’re all over it.