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Paul Skenes has struck out 162 hitters in 129.2 innings and his record reads 9-10. Eury Perez has held opposing lineups to a .208 batting average and his record reads 5-9. Thirty pitchers take a mound tonight and only seven of them are holding hitters under .230. Two of the seven are in this game, in a ballpark where Miami has already won 36 times.
Pirates vs Marlins
Miami is 60-59, which sounds like a team drifting through August. Split the record by venue and it stops sounding that way. The Marlins are 36-24 at loanDepot park and 24-35 everywhere else. That home mark is better than the Yankees have managed in the Bronx and better than what Boston has done at Fenway this season. Whatever this roster is away from South Florida, at home it has been a winning club by a comfortable margin.
Pittsburgh arrives at 58-62 and 28-32 on the road, having lost seven of its last ten. The Pirates score 5.02 runs a game, a genuinely good number, tied with the Dodgers for the third-highest figure in the majors. What they do with those runs is the problem: a 4.34 staff ERA and 581 runs allowed have turned a productive offense into a .483 team. This is a road trip that opened with the Mets scoring eleven at PNC Park on August 9, and the Pirates get Tuesday's game after an off day.
Pittsburgh Pirates Miami MarlinsSkenes throws six pitches and none of them is a throwaway. The four-seam fastball accounts for 41 percent of his work. After that comes a sweeper at 15.9 percent, a changeup at 13.9, a splitter at 10.7, a sinker at 10.5 and a slider at 7.4. Most starters have a fastball, a breaking ball and something to show left-handers. Skenes has five distinct secondary offerings he is willing to throw in any count, and the result is 162 strikeouts in 129.2 innings with a .226 opponent average and 13 home runs allowed across 24 starts.
His last month has been messier than that line suggests. Five earned runs to the Cubs on July 25, five more to Cincinnati on July 31 in a four-inning outing, and three to Milwaukee on August 5. Thirteen earned runs across three starts, with four walks in each of the last two. The strikeouts kept coming, 24 of them in those 14.1 innings, but the command has drifted.
Eury Perez is the more efficient version of the same idea. He is 5-9 with a 3.61 ERA, a 1.13 WHIP and 121 strikeouts in 109.2 innings, and his .208 opponent average is bettered tonight only by Dylan Cease and Hunter Brown, and matched by Atlanta's Martin Perez. He leans on a four-seamer 39.7 percent of the time and then splits the rest almost evenly between a sinker at 16 percent, a slider at 15.4 and a sweeper at 14.1.
On July 19 he threw six shutout innings against Milwaukee with nine strikeouts and one hit allowed. On July 30 he gave the Mets six and a third and two runs. His most recent time out, August 5 at Atlanta, he struck out nine in five innings but gave up four earned. That is the shape of his season: swing and miss stuff, occasional damage, and 42 walks in 109.2 innings that put more traffic on base than his hit total implies.
One number in that table decides a lot of tonight's at-bats. Pittsburgh has struck out 1,135 times as a lineup, more than any other team in the major leagues, and it is walking into a start from a pitcher who misses bats with four different pitches. The Pirates score more runs than Miami and hit for a slightly higher average, and they do it while giving away more outs on strikes than anyone else in the sport. Against Perez, that trade has historically gone badly for offenses shaped this way.
The other gap is on the mound. Miami's 3.97 staff ERA is nearly four-tenths of a run better than Pittsburgh's 4.34, which matters more in a game with a total of 7 than it would in a nine-run environment.
Both clubs were idle on Monday, and both needed the day. On August 9, Pittsburgh starter Jared Jones allowed eight earned runs in three innings against the Mets and the Pirates emptied the bullpen behind him: Evan Sisk, Kirby Yates, Camilo Doval, Gregory Soto, Mason Montgomery and Rafael Flores Jr. all threw an inning apiece. Six relievers, six innings, in a game that was over early.
Miami's day was less dramatic and nearly as long. Ryan Gusto gave the Marlins four innings against the Angels and five relievers finished it: Michael Petersen, Tyler Zuber, Calvin Faucher, Victor Vodnik and Josh Ekness. Miami won that game 12-3. Both bullpens have had two full days off, which means whoever gets to the sixth inning with a lead has a rested group waiting, and it takes the usual late-game fatigue argument off the table for this one.
Pirates Keys Marlins KeysPittsburgh is priced at -111 with Miami at +103 and the total set at 7, via DraftKings. Those numbers imply about 52.6 percent for the Pirates and 49.3 percent for the Marlins before the book's cut is removed. The run line is Miami +1.5 at -175 and Pittsburgh -1.5 at +144.
A road favorite price on a team that is 28-32 away from home, two games under .500 overall and 3-7 in its last ten is the market paying for Skenes and nothing else. Miami is the better team by record, by home venue and by staff ERA, and it is still the underdog. That is what a name on the mound is worth. The total of 7 is on the lower end of tonight's fifteen-game board, and given two starters who both hold hitters under .230, it is not hard to see why.
This is a game between two clubs going nowhere in particular and two pitchers who deserve better records than they have. Skenes is the more famous arm and the more talented one, with a strikeout total nobody else on tonight's board approaches. The last three weeks have been his least sharp stretch of the season, and eight walks in two starts is the kind of detail that gets lost when the strikeout column stays loud.
Miami has the quieter case and the stronger circumstances. A 36-24 record at loanDepot park, a rested bullpen, a starter with the lowest opponent average in the game outside of two names, and an opposing lineup that strikes out more than any other in baseball. None of that makes the Marlins the better team over 162 games. For one night in Miami with a total of 7 on the board, it is a reasonable description of why the home side is priced as close to even money as it is.