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Posted at 11:10 AM EST. 

4:15 PM EST. Texas has five wins in 15 road games. They lost last night, 8-2 and have now dropped five of its last seven games. On the road, the Rangers are batting a mere .211 and will now face a pitcher that most of this market will not recognize (nor will the Rangers) in Dillon Overton.

Overton has appeared in four games this season, all in relief, covering seven innings. We’re not going to focus on that. His stat line, however, shows a 6.14 ERA over those seven innings but again, it’s too small a sample size and means little. Allow us to bring you up to speed on Overton. He’s 25-years-old and was a highly regarded second-round pick in 2013, but succumbed to Tommy John surgery shortly after the draft. He was a true sleeper in the minors, as he has well above average intelligence and he throws pinpoint strikes with three quality offerings. Overton continues to slowly regain the velocity he lost from surgery, though he still mostly sits between 90-92 mph with his fastball. While it isn’t back to the mid-90s range, he’s learned to cut and sink it and he’s getting a high amount of groundballs. Overton also has a very good curveball and change-up, though neither are plus pitches. Because of his deceptive delivery and keen sequencing, he can be very successful despite the lack of plus velocity. If he can somehow find more ticks in the tank and keep the rest of his game intact, he could be a valuable big league starter for years to come. He had a career 3.06 ERA in the minors prior, which doesn’t mean much today but we’re willing to go with him and the M’s today because Andrew Cashner is another one of our high fade targets

Cashner’s peripherals are on an ominous four-year slide, and it's across the board. Walks and fly-ball rate are up while his first-pitch-strike rate (54%), swinging strike rate (7%) and strikeouts are all down. There are folks in this market that will see Cashner’s 2.95 ERA after four starts and buy it but it’s the biggest illusion in MLB this year. Cashner has walked 16 batters in 21 innings while striking out 10. You may want to read that last sentence one more time. He has a 1.50 WHIP to go along with a 6.24 xERA. Cashner’s wide gap between ERA and xERA is the largest gap among starters with four or more starts this season. To recap, Cashner has warning signs galore. A massive control decline, worst xERA of his career and a troubling xERA trend, issues with HR’s, crumbling strikeout rate and well below-average swing and miss rate. Yesterday, we pointed out similar under the hood numbers on San Fran’s Ty Blach’s 2.55 ERA and he surrendered 10 runs in two innings. Balls will be hit hard off of Cashner and it’ll come with men on base. If they’re hit right at people, that’s just unlucky but we’ll take our chances. 

NOTE: We are still committed to playing one baseball total daily and will pick it up again on Monday. On Sunday, there is not enough time to do the research. 

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