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Posted at 12:15 PM EST.

10:10 PM EST. A first half HR barrage hurt Hyun-Jin Ryu (LHP) last year, as he struggled horribly versus lefties early on and his formerly fine control was missing all season. Ryu is now 31-years-old and has been pitching professionally since 2006, when he threw over 200 innings in the Korean League. From 2006 until 2012, Ryu pitched 1269 innings in Korea. From 2013 to the present, he’s thrown 480 major league innings. That’s 1749 innings, which is more innings than starting to break down active pitchers, Johnny Cueto, Jason Hammel, Tim Lincecum, Yovanni Gallardo and Edwin Jackson among others. Control is the first thing to go on these starters with too many miles on their arm and Ryu walked five batters while striking out two in his first start this year, which led to a 2.73 WHIP. His swing and miss rate in that start was 3%.

Instead of a step up last year, Sean Manaea (LHP) stepped back in a roller-coaster year. Despite early control woes, his strikeout rate, swinging strikes and groundball % prevailed through June but all that disappeared, as LHB and RHB alike tore into his second half. Pitching at this level is a learning process. There are hundreds of pitchers that struggled in their first two or three seasons before thriving and Dallas Keuchel, among many others is a prime example. In two starts this season, Manaea is showing his prior foundation of really good command building blocks (13% swing and miss rate, 68% first-pitch strikes, 32% ball%) and an ability to keep the ball on the ground (48%). Over 16 innings this season, he has walked just one batter while striking out 11 and the fact that we get him at a price here against Ryu is as sweet as any wager on the board today. 

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