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Posted at 11:00 AM EST.

4:10 PM EST. At home, Matt Cain is 3-2 with a 1.82 ERA but on the road but on the road, he’s 0-3 in six starts with an 8.40 ERA. Cain’s swinging strike rate in his last start was 4%. Overall on the year, it’s 5%. He’s throwing 87 MPH and now has a BB/K split of 27/42 in 65 innings. Over his last five starts covering 29 innings, Cain is 1-4 with a 5.28 ERA, a 5.81 xERA and a BB/K split of 10/15. His overall WHIP is 1.61 and 1.72 over his last five starts. The only reason that Matt Cain is pitching today is because the Giants are paying him 22.5M this season and they’ll pitch him until his arm falls off rather than pay him to sit in the dugout. Pitchers can get very lucky for an extended period of time and while AT&T Park helps every pitcher, the contrast or gap between Cain’s home and road ERA’s are in line to get much closer together than the current gap. Cain’s xERA at home is 5.17 so it’s not like he’s fooling guys at home but not on the road. Much like Bartolo Colon, who threw 89 MPH fastballs 90% of the time and got away with it for years until it exploded on him this year, Cain’s only chance at success is luck. Nothing more, nothing less and therefore he must be faded until the Giants can’t stomach it anymore. If he beats us here, so be it and he’s favored because the Twinkies are sending an unknown rookie to the hill.

There has been a surprising pitching storyline out of the minor leagues this year that not many saw coming. That comes from nearly forgotten lefthander Nik Turley. Turley burst onto our radar for the first time through the reports of his Southern League tying 14-strikeout performance for the Twins’ Double-A affiliate, the Chattanooga Lookouts. Turley is a 6-4, 195 pound Californian who was drafted by the New York Yankees in 2008. From 2008-2016, he bounced around the minors finding time with minor league affiliates of the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox in addition to the Yankees. It was in 2016 that Turley found himself playing independent ball in the Atlantic League for the Somerset Patriots. In the early parts of 2017, Turley found success with the Double-A Lookouts, where in 28 innings over five starts, he recorded a 0.37 ERA with 45 strikeouts and only seven walks. He was then promoted to Triple-A Rochester, where in 28 innings over seven appearances (five starts), he had a BB/K split of 8/39 with an ERA of 3.49.  

It’s unreasonable to use Rich Hill‘s career arc as a road map for anyone on account of how Rich Hill’s career arc is improbable. Nevertheless, the most basic facts regarding Turley’s trajectory through baseball bear some resemblance to Hill’s. For example: he’s a tall left-hander largely dependent on a fastball and curveball. Also, Turley made a brief visit to the independent Atlantic League (same as Hill) and finally, he’s been impossibly good following his return to affiliate baseball. Turley has recorded a 50% strikeout rate this year in the minors, which is a near impossibility. Turley depends a lot on a fastball-curve combo, the former pitch sitting in the low to mid-90s and, as with Hill, is often located by Turley in the upper part of the zone. There is always a risk when backing a first-time rookie but we’ll take out chances with a pitcher in his prime age (28) that is raising eyebrows over a decrepit one that has few starts left in his major-league career. 

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