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Posted at 11:15 AM EST.

7:10 PM EST. Chris Sale is Chris Sale. He’s the deserving front-runner for the AL’s Cy Young Award and has the record and skills to back up everything. Sale has a ridiculous 146 K’s in 107 innings. Still, that’s a lot of innings (and pitches) in less than half a season. Sale’s 39%/39% groundball/fly-ball profile is also a tiny bit concerning when considering this park and the fact that the Twinkies have some bombers. When Sale faced the Twinkies back on May 7, he struck out 10 but also allowed four earned runs. If Minnesota can duplicate that output or score two or three times here, we like our chances.

The Twins just went into Cleveland this past weekend and swept the Indians. They also defeated Cory Kluber in the middle game of that set while Boston dropped two of three to the Angels because they couldn’t score runs. If the Red Sox could not score against Parker Briswell, J.C Ramirez and host of relievers, it’s not out of the question that they’ll have a helluva time scoring on Jose Berrios. Furthermore, no team in MLB has hit fewer jacks than the Red Sox, which is another reason they’re too big a risk when spotting a price like this and now they’ll face Minnesota’s best pitcher, who truly is an ace.

Jose Berrios has filthy stuff. This stud has Cy Young potential and he appears to be getting better with each passing game too. Berrios has an outstanding BB/K split of 15/53 in 54 frames. His swing and miss rate over his last five starts is 15%. Berrios also has an elite 57% groundball rate, not to mention a great ERA, xERA and WHIP. Berrios was lights out in the minors. He had a “can’t miss” scouting report and one of the best minor-league pedigrees you’ll ever see. After struggling last year, his star quickly faded but we’ll call it nerves and put zero emphasis on it. Jose Berrios is the real deal. His 12% line-drive rate is the lowest in the majors among starters and it is 10 percentage points lower than Chris Sale’s 22% line-drive rate. Prices like this on pitchers like Berrios don’t come around often and if he stays healthy, it might be another 10 years before a price like this is offered on him again. If we get beat here, so be it, but it’ll be a cold day in hell when we pass on a price like this on a starter that is as good as the one we get working for us here. 

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