BEST LINE: Pinnacle +143

Posted at 11:55 AM EST

The Tigers are not playing well at all. They just dropped two of three against the White Sox and have now lost six of their past seven series. Aside from their series loss to the South Side, Detroit also has series losses to Cleveland, Seattle, Texas and Toronto (they split with Oakland 2-2). Overall during that stretch, Detroit has just seven wins in its last 23 games. Drew Smyly has been skipped or pushed back in the rotation several times this season due to off days and postponements. It is unclear whether the sporadic usage has negatively affected Smyly's performance, though it made him available for three relief appearances in addition to his nine starts. With four pure quality outings and three disasters, Smyly has shown a tendency toward extreme outcomes. Smyly threw just 99 innings in 2012 and just 76 last season working out of the pen. Now his stamina comes into question, as it always does with relievers that transition to starting. Over his past five starts covering 27 innings, Smyly has a 4.67 ERA, a 1.59 WHIP and he’s walked 11. He also has a 42% fly-ball bias profile. As a favorite in this range against a very good hitting team, Smyly is too big a risk.

After being drafted in the first round of 2009, Kyle Gibson put up some decent stats at AA and AAA in 2010. But he struggled in 2011 and missed 2012 recovering from Tommy John surgery. Gibson has posted a 5-5 record since winning a spot in the rotation at the start of this year and that .500 record is probably very accurate in terms of what to expect from Gibson going forward. Gibson has decent control but strikes out very few batters. Since his swing and miss rate is league-average, it’s likely he’ll see a strikeout growth in the near future. Gibson does a great job of keeping the ball on the ground, as his 54% groundball rate will attest to. He also has an elite 17% line-drive rate. At 26, Gibson still has time to grow. For now, though, with so few walks and strikeouts, he’s at the mercy of the batted ball gods. As his hit%, strand%, and hr/f fluctuate, Gibson’s results will suffer/benefit accordingly so once again we’ll turn to value. As a favorite Gibson has risk but as a pooch that’s very capable of breezing through a lineup because of his outstanding control and groundball rate, he’s very playable and that applies here.