BEST LINE: Pinnacle +138

Posted at 11:40 AM EST.

Yordano Ventura is 4-5 with a 3.20 ERA after 12 starts and 70 innings. Ventura is a little guy with a big arm (fastball touches 100 mph) with secondary offerings that are still something of a work-in-progress. No question he has top-of-rotation potential and if he really is figuring out control as quickly as his numbers suggest, he could get there quickly. Ventura has an elite groundball rate of 52% and his xERA of 3.45 is right in line with his actual ERA. That said, this one is more about riding the red-hot Royals.

After scoring 11 times last night, Kansas City has scored 56 runs over their nine-game winning streak. Six of the eight runs the Royals allowed last night came in the ninth inning when they took an 11-2 lead into the final frame and sent out mop-up man Donnie Joseph to mop it up. The Royals are hitting everyone and everything and we’ll put that to the test again against Max Scherzer. Scherzer is almost always in the price range of an elite pitcher after his breakout in 2013. He has posted outstanding skills in consecutive seasons and his command trend over the last four years has been excellent. That said, there are reasons not to back him when he’s a high price. He has never thrown 200+ IP in consecutive seasons. His fly-ball trend is heading in the wrong direction and that can be seen in his fly-ball rates in 2012, 2013 and 2014 of 39%, 41%, and now 45% this season. It gets worse too. Over his last five starts, Scherzer has one of the worst groundball/fly-ball splits of any starter in baseball (27%/54% - GB%/FB%). Over that span he has an ERA of 5.09 and an xERA of 4.42. Yes, he’s striking out a lot of batters but the Royals strike out the least often in the league. We can't expect that his previous mechanical problems won't sabotage his results again. Scherzer has struggled with maintaining a consistent arm slot in the past and while he was able to overcome that in 2013, it is risky to assume that he has put those issues behind him. He’s good, but there are some warning signs and the Royals are playing too well to ignore taking back a tag like the one offered here.