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Posted at 12:45 PM EST.

7:05 PM EST. Jameson Taillon (RHP) has allowed three earned runs or less in each of his last 11 starts, four of which have resulted in a **pure quality start. At home he has put up a 3.88/3.22 ERA/xERA split and 1.09 WHIP across 10 starts. Taillon also has a BB/K split of 7/31 over his last 30 innings covering five starts. It’s worth noting that Taillon began throwing a new slider in his May 22 start against the Reds and has ramped up its usage since then, utilizing it 27% of the time with strong results (15% swing and miss rate, 54% groundball rate and a .203/.242/.356 slash line). Jameson Taillon is truly legit and he’s starting for one of the hottest teams in the game over the last month.

Jon Lester (LHP) has a lot of market credibility and he plays for a team that also gets plenty of market support so when you wager on the Lester/Cubs combo, you’re absolutely going with the worst of it. We’ve suggested it before and we’ll reiterate that Lester isn’t good anymore. Jon Lester will be facing the Pirates for a fourth time this season. In the three previous meetings he had one decent start and one disaster. He has not thrown a pure quality start over his last eight starts and has been horrendous over his last five where he has a 5.39 xERA with 14 walks over 26 frames.

** Regular readers of this section will often see us mentioning PURE QUALITY STARTS and this is a brief explanation of that.

The old quality start method — minimum 6 IP, maximum 3 earned runs — is simplistic and does not measure any real skill. Bill James' "game score" methodology is better, but is not feasible for quick calculation.

In pure quality starts, we give a starting pitcher credit for exhibiting certain skills in each of his starts. A starter earns one point for each of the following criteria...

1. The pitcher must have gone a minimum of 5 innings. This measures stamina. If he goes less than 5 innings, he automatically gets a total score of zero, no matter what other stats he produces.

2. He must have allowed no more than an equal number of hits to the number of IP. This measures hit prevention.

3. His number of strikeouts must be no fewer than two less than his innings pitched. This measures dominance.

4. He must have struck out at least twice as many batters as he walked. This measures command.

5. He must have allowed no more than one home run. This measures his ability to keep the ball in the park.

Note the absence of earned runs. No matter how many runs a pitcher allows, if he scores high on the pure-quality start scale, he has hurled a good game in terms of his base skills. The number of runs allowed — a function of not only the pitcher's ability but that of his bullpen and defense — will even out over time. This formula combines the individual raw skills of dominance, control and the ability to keep the ball on the ground.

PLEASE NOTE: One of the unique things about our website is that we provide write-ups every single day on every game we post. We’re not sure if everyone understands how time consuming that is and how difficult it is as well but if you do not, please try it one day and you’ll see.

That said, we’re not going to change that. We’ll have write-ups every single day like we always do but we’re also going to have another feature. You see, we post our games usually in the early afternoon or before 1:00 PM EST but there is a lot of movement and other intangibles that occur throughout the day that has influence on what we’re betting. Usually after 6:00 PM EST or thereabouts, we’re going to be adding other games that we’re betting on in a section called “add-ons” for today that we ARE NOT going to write up because it’s too time consuming and with an hour or less before the first game goes off, we just won’t have the time.

This is a feature that you will see on our home page with the other wagers and we’ll also tweet it out when our add-ons have been posted.

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