Shane McClanahan OVER 6.5 SO
DK +120
FD +120
BSB+120
Best Bet Season Record: 11-10
David J. Phillip/AP
Shane McClanahan is nasty. As is the case for most pitchers drafted and developed by Tampa Bay. This year is arguably his most impressive, since he has taken the role of the Ace of the staff in Tampa and is leading them in innings pitched. So far he's racked up 111.0 on the season, and with his career high being 160, he's poised to cruise on past that. While his ERA and FIP are higher than last year, he's providing quality starts and giving team starved for starting pitching what it needs. The ERA and FIP are higher, but they're also at 3.00 and 3.78, it's still borderline Cy Young caliber. The secret to the success is throwing hard pitches that batters just can't hope to catch up to.
The K/9 is a career low, but that career low is still 9.57. The pitch that's carried all of his swing and miss numbers is arguably the best pitch in all MLB. His Circle Change.
It's vile. It's induced a .150 BA, .189 SLG and a 54.2% Whiff Rate. The reason why it's such an important pitch is because the lefty hurler can abuse right handed batters with it. He's thrown it 447 times this season, and only 8 of those times has a left seen it. So you mix a circle change with a 100MPH fastball and you get results like this.
And that was against a good team. He's facing a cartoonishly bad hitting team tonight in the New York Yankees. I typically avoid the Red Sox and Yankees for best bets. I want the Red Sox to succeed and the Yankees to fail, regardless or circumstance. There are times where the line is just too good. McClanahan gets to face a team that struck out 18, 12, and 7 times the past 3 games. That 7 was against Zach Eflin who is more than happy to have you ground out to short 20 times in a row. A strikeout pitcher gets to face a team striking out the 9th most in MLB since the All-Star break and is 29th in batting average on the season????? Come on, 7 is easy for McClanahan.
As much as this is fueled by Yankee hate, a team that strikes out 24.9% of the time against a guy who strikes out batters 26% of the time? Match made in heaven.
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