Cubs at Diamondbacks

The read

• Matthew BoydUNDER 3.5 Strikeouts Strikeouts+117

  LActual 5

  Boyd hasn't been a strikeout pitcher in months and the market is still pricing him like one. Seventy-one punchouts in ninety-one innings, and the pitch he throws almost half the time — the 92.7 four-seamer — gets a whiff rate of nine percent. Nine. His last four starts: three, three, two, three. He has not reached four strikeouts since July 29.

  Now put that in front of this lineup. Arizona is one of the hardest teams in the league to miss bats against — a shade over seven strikeouts a game, and only a seventeen-percent strikeout rate against left-handed pitching. Look at the top of Lovullo's card: Vargas whiffs on thirteen percent of his swings, Perdomo eleven. Those two hitters have combined for the kind of at-bats that end in contact, not in the catcher's mitt.

  For this to go over, Boyd needs four strikeouts out of an arsenal generating them at roughly one every two innings against a club that puts the ball in play. He'd essentially need to work into the seventh clean. I don't see the path, and I'm being paid plus money to say so.

• Eduardo RodriguezUNDER 2.5 Pitcher Earned Runs Pitcher Earned Runs-112

  WActual 0

  Twenty-six starts this season. Rodriguez has allowed three or more earned runs in six of them. Six. That is a rate of under a quarter, and the price here is asking me to believe it's basically a coin flip tonight.

  The engine is the changeup — a quarter of his pitches, a .279 expected wOBA against it, a twenty-nine percent whiff rate, and hitters chasing it out of the zone almost half the time. That's the pitch that beat the Dodgers four times this year and held Cincinnati scoreless five days ago. He's at 2.67 at Chase Field across nearly eighty-eight innings here, and his last three turns produced four earned runs total with eighteen strikeouts against four walks.

  I'll grant the fair objection: Chicago has the best offense in the National League and puts up 5.2 a game. That's why this isn't a bigger number for me. But Rodriguez holds right-handed bats to .232 with a .684 OPS, and Counsell is running six righties out there. His blow-up starts this year came against San Diego and St. Louis with the fastball catching too much plate — that's a real failure mode, not a common one. Under 2.5.

• Nolan ArenadoOVER 0.5 Home Runs Home Runs+650

  LActual 0

  Boyd's damage arrives in the air. Eight of his last thirteen runs allowed came on home runs, and eleven days ago he surrendered four in a single start at Wrigley. Thirteen home runs to right-handed hitters in 255 at-bats is a rate north of five percent — one every twenty at-bats against righties, in a season where he's also carrying a 9.8 percent barrel rate allowed.

  Arenado has twenty-one home runs, and six of them have come off left-handed pitching in only 112 at-bats. That's the same five-percent clip from the other direction. He's hitting cleanup, and the shape of his August tells you exactly what kind of hitter he is right now: .216 average but an .820 OPS. He is not stringing singles together — he's either making an out or hitting the ball over a wall. That's precisely the profile you want on a plus-money home run ticket rather than a hits prop.

  Roof closed, 72 degrees, no wind, in a park that plays at 1.06. I'll be straight about the risk: his recent contact quality has been poor, low exit velocity and few barrels, and this is a longshot by definition. But +650 is asking for roughly a thirteen percent chance, and the pitcher-plus-hitter home run rates here both sit above that on their own. That's the gap I'm buying.