Royals at Rockies

Deadline eve at 5,280 feet, and the Rockies may be trotting out a starter who won't be wearing purple by Monday. Two clubs with nothing left to play for, a ballpark that doesn't care about that, and a market that's crept from pick'em this morning to Kansas City by a nose. I'm on the Royals moneyline at -114.

Start with the guy on the mound for Colorado. Tomoyuki Sugano's record says 10-4 and his ERA says 4.69, but everything underneath it is screaming — a .400 expected wOBA against, a 14.2 percent barrel rate, 44.9 percent hard contact. He's given up two home runs in each of his last three turns and he's surrendering a .929 OPS with 14 homers to left-handed hitters. Kansas City is sending five lefties and two switch-hitters at him tonight. That's seven of nine batting from the left side against a man whose sinker generates a 2.9 percent whiff rate and gets hit at .342, and whose four-seamer sits at .317. His one genuine weapon is the splitter — 31.6 percent whiffs, chased more than half the time — and the splitter is exactly the pitch that shows up to Coors and forgets how to finish. Take away the dive and he's a 92 mph strike-thrower asking a lineup to miss. They haven't been missing: Jensen, Caglianone, Massey and Perez have all averaged over 90 mph off the bat the last two weeks and hit .205 to .229 for their trouble, because they've been doing it in Detroit and Minneapolis. Those same swings land differently here.

The other half is Michael Wacha, who has gone six-plus in seven of his last eight and owns the pitch that specifically handcuffs Colorado's table-setters — the changeup, .252 expected wOBA, and both Moniak (.081 xwOBA against it) and McCarthy (.215) have no answer for it. He holds lefties to a .672 OPS, keeps the barrel rate at 6.6, and every inning he eats is an inning the Royals don't have to hand to Erceg or Lange, which after Thursday night is worth real money. I know the argument on the other side: Kansas City is 20-37 on the road, this is game eight of a ten-game trip, and the lineup is missing Witt and Pasquantino with Velazquez and Rave filling in behind it. That's a fair reservation and it's the reason this is priced at a coin flip instead of a favorite. But it's also old news that's been in the number for weeks, while the team on the other side has lost 12 of 16, owns the worst record in the sport, and is running out a rental starter with a seven-handle expected ERA in front of a bullpen carrying a 5.54 team mark. At a shade over even money I'll take the better pitcher and the platoon edge and live with the altitude.