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Posted at 10:45 AM EST.

2:10 PM EST. The Twinkies are favored here so you can take TB in the -102 to -110 range but we’re going to play this on the ALTERNATE RUN LINE. The total in this game is o9½ -120 so there figures to be some runs scored and it’s for that reason we have no problem playing the visiting team and spotting an extra half run with a big takeback. Besides, Alex Cobb is vastly superior to Kyle Gibson, thus it’s the Rays that are likely going to be doing the majority of the scoring.

Alex Cobb missed the entire 2015 season because of TJS. Prior, he was regarded as one of the best prospects in baseball and put up some great numbers in 2014 to validate it. He also missed most of last season so we’re talking about a pitcher coming of a long hiatus but Cobb is just 29 years old and he’s rounding back into form. Indeed, Cobb struggled, perhaps predictably, in those tentative first steps back from May 2015 TJS. Entering that season, we were touting him as a potential breakout star, and he had the skills to back it up. He surely still owns those skills and has needed a couple of months this year to find them again. With a 55% groundball rate and more swinging strikes and K’s, Cobb is trending in the right direction again while Kyle Gibson is hanging by the hair on his chiny-chin-chin.

Kyle Gibson has carried breakout potential for five years but has never been able to turn his good stuff into good skills and now things have gone from bad to worse. This is a five-year abused starter that is afraid to throw strikes anymore because of all that abuse. Some guys can handle being called up to the show prematurely without a lot of seasoning and others can’t. Gibson is the latter. His first-pitch strike rate is 50%. He has walked 17 batters and struck out 21 in 31 frames. Over his last 14 frames, Gibson has walked 10 batters and struck out nine. He has an ERA/xERA split of 8.62/6.17. He’s hittable, he has a strained relationship with the plate and as soon as there’s traffic on the bases, he gets all nervous, slows down and becomes even more hittable. Kyle Gibson would make a great fifth starter in the minors. 

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