Major League Baseball

Best pitching duels of the day: June 29

Published Jun. 29, 2015 10:57 a.m. ET

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by Brandon Warne

This baseball Monday is likely the weakest slate of matchups so far this season, but we still tried to extract some value out of it for your viewing pleasure. Check ’em out:

Mike Pelfrey (MIN) vs. Mike Leake (CIN)

7:10 p.m. ET

Time for a Mike check. Yikes, sorry about that. Today isn’t exactly a banner day across baseball, but tune in to this matchup and you’ll at least see Pelfrey (56.1 percent groundball rate) and Leake (52.8 percent) kill some worms. Big Pelf has allowed more than four earned runs just once this season, and more than three just three times as he’s been remarkably good for a guy who has fanned just 4.3 batters per nine innings. His month-by-month ERAs—2.25, 3.21, and 3.51 in order—are fantastic, and he’s allowing an opponents’ line of .272/.339/.372 that is solid, but also leans very heavily on his groundball proficiency. Any jump in that slugging percentage would prove catastrophic. Pelfrey credits an increased reliance on a split-finger fastball for his resurgence, which PITCHf/x suggests he’s throwing 16.5 percent of the time—a career high. Opponents are hitting just .210/.244/.321 on it, as it’s one of his more elevatable pitches—52.4 percent grounder rate still—but also his best swing-and-miss offering (10.2 percent whiff rate). It’s still not terribly likely Pelfrey can keep this up, but for now it’s a really nice story heading into a free agent offseason.

Leake brought his ERA under 4.00 for the first time in about five weeks with a strong seven innings last time out against the Pirates. Leake fanned five, walked none and allowed just two earned runs on eight hits to win his second straight start. He’s on a string of five starts in a row where he’s allowed two or fewer earned runs, bringing his ERA all the way down from 4.66 on May 27 to the 3.91 mark it resides at today. Leake has induced at least 10 grounders in 10 of his last 13 starts, including an incredible 23 grounders against the Pirates in eight shutout innings back on May 6. In that sense, it’s easy to see where his meal ticket is, though he’s more apt to get strikeouts than his mound counterpart on this day. It’s not by a whole lot though, with just 5.6 K/9.

Warm-Up Tosses

Here’s a peek at today’s “aces in isolation:” Lance McCullers (opposed by Kansas City’s Joe Blanton), Mike Bolsinger (Arizona’s Allen Webster), and Kendall Graveman (Colorado’s David Hale). McCullers has been tremendous in eight starts since his call-up, allowing three or fewer earned runs in each with 52 strikeouts and 16 walks in 46.1 innings. He’s also allowed just one home run—Avisail Garcia three starts ago—and has averaged just under six innings per start so far. The best summary of McCullers’ dominance is this: opponents are hitting just .189/.274/.266 against him.

Bolsinger has ridden a pretty good curveball—the pitch he has somehow thrown most—and a cutter to a 2.95 ERA and 55 strikeouts in 58 innings. He’s been quite a find for the Dodgers, though it’s worth wondering how far he can go throwing just curves and cutters, which is over 90 percent of pitches he has thrown this year.

Graveman has been on a warpath since returning from the minors in late May. He’s held opponents to a .253/.298/.382 line with 34 strikeouts and 11 walks, and also has just a 2.31 ERA in that seven start span. As I noted elsewhere, he appears to be just another arm churned out by the Oakland pitching factory. The A’s are 10 games out, but don’t forget about them; after a couple rough months, they’re 14–11 in June. They’re also still just 6–19 in one-run games, so they’ve certainly fallen on the short side of luck so far this year.

Statistics courtesy of Baseball Reference, Brooks Baseball, and Fangraphs.

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