Posted at 9:30 AM EST

1:05 PM EST. The Yanks have gone cold but that is still not going to deter us from backing them at these prices in a pitching matchup that so heavily favors them. The last time Michael Pineda faced the Blue Jays, he had a 5-0 lead in the 5th back in New York when the rains came and a subsequently 45 minute rain delay. Pineda did not return and the Jays rallied to win but Pineda was making them look foolish up there.

After enduring a 6.33 ERA in April and a 7.52 ERA in May, despite outstanding skills, Michael Pineda finally posted a 2.75 ERA 0.97 WHIP in June. But he was back to his early season returns in July and August with a 4.80 ERA. Michael Pineda is the poster boy for how luck plays a factor in this game and how it could follow one around, either good or bad for months at a time. Pineda has an xERA this season of 3.40. His xERA in his last six starts is 2.67, which is the third highest in the majors over that span. Pineda has been hurt by more than his share of misfortune and should have some of the best surface stats in baseball. He has been stung badly by hit rate, strand rate, and hr/f (17%) bad luck. Yankee Stadium's net +55% HR park factor is second in the majors only to Miller Park and is certainly a factor here. The 1½+ run gap between Pineda's ERA & xERA screams for a correction, as does his command numbers. Pineda sports an elite strikeout rate (199 in 165 IP) with sufficient swinging strikes to validate it and his control sub-indicators support it all. Pineda has the talent and tools to pitch at the front of a rotation but he’s not priced like it.

The question here is will luck win over skill. It could but Marco Estrada is the opposite of Pineda. Estrada’s 3.62 ERA is much lower than his 5.22 xERA. Over his last 32 innings, Estrada has walked 15 batters. Over his last 32 innings, Estrada’s groundball/fly-ball rate continues to be one of the worst in the game at 30%/49%. In his last start, Estrada’s groundball rate was 21%. Estrada continues to wiggle out of jams with a high strand rate. Everything that Estrada does with the exception of getting guys to swing and miss on his changeup, is luck driven. From his low hit-rate to his high strand rate, to his hard hit balls being hit at people to his warning track shots just missing, Estrada is a rare pitcher that is behind in the count to almost every batter he faces and gets away with that too. That doesn’t mean that Estrada’s luck will not hold up here, as it very well could. What it does mean is that his surface numbers are not sustainable and whether it’s this year, next year or in the playoffs, Estrada is in for another major swoon, just like the one he had in mid-August. 

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