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Posted at 12:00 PM EST.

1:10 PM EST. If Justin Verlander is -210 in Arizona today against Matt Koch or Max Scherzer is 2-1 over Jake Arietta, why the f**k is Chris Archer a mere -130 favorite (or thereabouts ) over the Blue Jays and Marco Estrada? The answer is simple: surface stats. Chris Archer has a 6.05 ERA after seven starts and the market once again will put way too much emphasis on that misleading number. Archer has frustrated his backers to no end this season but do not sell, as the culprit is not a lack of skills. In fact, Chris Archer’s skills are tremendous. Archer has a BB/K split of 12/42 over 39 innings, which equates to almost 10 K’s per nine innings. His command sub-indicators were even better (15% swing and miss rate, 65% first-pitch strikes and 33% ball %). A very unlucky 39% hit rate and 61% strand rate are the reasons for his bad surface stats. Chris Archer is an ace that is not priced like one.

Then there’s our old friend, Marco Estrada, a starter we’ve been calling a fluke for years and nothing has changed other than his extreme luck has vanished. Estrada throws 89 MPH and has a weak 27%/19%/54% groundball/line-drive/fly-ball profile. He also has a troublesome 1.47 WHIP, which was even worse over his last two starts at 1.60. Estrada is always pitching with men on base and behind in the count and sometimes he wiggles out of it but mostly he does not anymore, as his 6.19 ERA will attest to. The difference between the two ERA’s of the two starters is that Estrada’s high ERA is legit (5.71 xERA) while Archer’s is not (3.10 xERA). Digging below the surface stats show that Estrada’s past performances were an illusion. Estrada's underlying skills have never supported the surface stats he posted in 2015, 2016 and to a lesser extent 2017. He is a below-average MLB starter and at age 34 his tiny upside is limited. The best that can be said about Estrada is that he will probably continue to provide innings but they will come at a cost to your bankroll if you believe that he’s “just in a bit of a slump”. He’s not, as his true lousy skills have surfaced and they’re not going to improve. That doesn’t mean he can’t get lucky from time to time but he has some of the weakest skills in the game and has had them for years. A big correction to the good to Archer’s surface stats are forthcoming while no corrections are coming for Estrada.

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