BEST LINE: Pinnacle +261

Posted at 10:15 AM EST

1:35 PM EST. John Lackey is having a mighty fine year with 11 pure quality starts in 14 attempts. Lackey has a skills supported 3.24 ERA and deserves every bit of it with a good K rate, outstanding control, a steady groundball bias profile and normal hit and strand rates. He’s also been very good at Fenway. However, the team he pitches for is not scoring runs. Boston scored two last night and they scored one time the previous night. The Red Sox have score two runs or less in four straight and in seven of their past nine. Over the past 10 games, Boston is in the bottom three in the major leagues in several offensive categories, which makes them far too big a risk when spotting a tag like this.  

One could argue that the Twins aren’t scoring either and that argument would be valid if they were the one’s spotting a big tag or even taking back a small one. Sometimes the price dictates the play and this is one of those times. Minnesota is relatively healthy, they’re very capable of putting up some runs and they are ahead of Boston in almost every key offensive category after playing half of their games in a less hitter-friendly venue. Kyle Gibson has not allowed an earned run in three of his past four starts. In 13 starts, he’s only been taken yard four times and his ERA has dropped from 4.74 after his May 10th start to 3.55 after his last start. Gibson has an elite 55% groundball rate on the year and over his last five starts his GB rate is even higher at 59%. Gibson has just 38 K’s in 76 innings and that has him undervalued but his 12% swing and miss rate over his last 10 games strongly suggests that a significant uptick in strikeouts is coming. This former first round pick (2009) may have been rushed to the big leagues a little too quickly but he has the best raw stuff on this Twins staff and he’s finally starting to figure it out. At this price, Gibson and the Twins offer up some great value and we’re on it.