BEST LINE: Pinnacle -110

POSTED AT 11:45 AM EST.

The Indians are on fire and that’s never a bad time to step in. Cleveland has won three in a row and nine of 10, which was capped off by last night’s 17-7 win in Texas. Corey Kluber has turned into a top-tier pitcher. His skills vs. RH bats have been electric with 10.2 K’s/9 Dom, 1.4 BB/9 and a 50% groundball rate. It doesn’t stop there either. Kluber also owns elite skills against lefties with 10.4 K’s/9, 2.7 BB/9 and a 42% groundball rate. Overall, Kluber has struck out 99 batters in 86 innings with a 3.23 ERA. What’s even more amazing is that he has an unlucky 35% hit rate and once that comes down, his ERA will be closer to his xERA of 2.92. Kluber is the straight goods pitching for a very hot team.

Jason Vargas’ consistency grade and xERA show his steadiness. Sure, some things are up (overall command) and some are down (dominant start%, notably), but it all comes out in the wash. Vargas lost time last year to a blood clot but otherwise he's good for 200 fair-to-middling, blandly consumed innings pitched. This year he owns a 3.23 ERA and 1.25 WHIP after 85 innings but that ERA is a complete mirage due to his unsustainable 84% strand rate. Vargas’ has a weak groundball/fly-ball split of 40%/40% and over his last five starts his WHIP is 1.42. There’s a correction coming in his ERA and the Indians are the right team to correct it.