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Posted at 11:00 AM EST.

7:05 PM EST. Jameson Taillon was very high on our radar for the first four months of the season and he delivered the goods for us but things turned sour for him about a month ago, which was about the time we started fading him. Taillon is running out of gas, which is evident throughout his profile. He’s walking more batters, he’s striking out less, his swinging strike rate is down to 8% over his last five starts and he’s been downright awful against left-handed bats. Taillon’s xERA since the beginning of August covering five starts is 8.15 and most of that can be attributed to 15 walks over his past 28 frames with a brutal line-drive rate of 30%. Taillon is a big-time risk spotting a price and he’ll now face a hot-hitting Reds’ squad that will see him for the third time in less than a month. Incidentally, he was blown up by Cinci in the first game. Taillon managed to hold the Reds to one run in a rematch in his last start but still labored through 108 pitches in just four innings in that effort and was extremely lucky to not give up a crooked number.

Tyler Mahle made his debut last week and took the loss after giving up three earned runs in five frames for an ERA of 5.40. That’s what the market sees but we see so much more. Mahle had a 64% groundball rate in his first start to go along with 5 K’s in 5 innings and a 13% swing and miss rate. The problem was that he walked four batters otherwise he would’ve thrown a gem. The good news is that walking batters is not a characteristic of this starter. He only walked 1.9 batters per nine over his minor league career. His advanced pitchability and knack for keeping hitters off-guard by changing speeds have made him difficult to hit. Mahle commands and controls his 89-95 mph fastball extremely well and is able to spot it impeccably to both sides of the plate. We watched and liked his debut very much and made note of it. Now that his feet are wet and the nerves settled, expect even better things out of this starter today. Nice overlay here.

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