Pinnacle +124 ET365 +125  Sportsinteraction +125 888Sport +125

Posted at 12:00 PM EST. Odds subject to change.

AL Wild Card Game 1

Detroit over Houston

2:32 PM EST. Tarik Skubal (LHP _ DET) will win the AL Cy Young this year, probably in unanimous fashion. He gives the Tigers the single best pitcher in the playoffs, which isn’t a bad place to start, especially when taking back a price.

Skubal ran roughshod over American League batters from start to finish, never recording an ERA over 3.05 in a given month. He was second only to Garrett Crochet (62) in (Deserved Runs Allowed (DRA) among pitchers with at least 100 innings, at 72, and did it while falling just shy of 200 innings—a modern-day workhorse.

The southpaw will pepper the upper portions of the zone to hitters of either persuasion, then mix in a slider he’s as likely to drop in the zone for a strike as he is to induce a chase below it. The changeup is the rocket that propelled Skubal to such heights, though. His left-handed status will help him a bit against key members of the Houston lineup, gaining what platoon advantage exists against Kyle Tucker and a less-than-100% Yordan Alvarez. He doses lefties with a 1-2 sinker-slider punch—composing just shy of 80% of his pitch usage against same-sided hitters— and mixes in his changeup and four-seamer 10% of the time each. It’s a much more kitchen sink approach against right-handers, with his four-seamer taking the plurality, but still coming in under 40% usage. Predictably, this is where his changeup shines, and he uses it 30% of the time, while keeping hitters off balance with his other three offerings.

Across the diamond will be Framber Valdez (LHP - HOU) who is more than just a left-handed pitcher, but perhaps a left-handed pitcher is all he needs to be given the opponent. The Tigers managed a meager .659 OPS against southpaws on the season, in large part because their two best, most consistent hitters have significant platoon splits: Kerry Carpenter sees north of 85% of his plate appearances against right-handed pitchers and absolutely punishes them (.994 OPS/138 DRC+); his OPS against lefties is .408. Riley Greene is the other actual hitter in this lineup, and he also gives back 175 points of OPS and 39 points of DRC+ against LHP. He remains solid against them, but isn’t the force he is against RHP.

Valdez isn’t just some shmo, though. He’s essentially repeating his dominant 2022 season, recording a 4.3 WARP, 78 DRA-, a sub-3.00 ERA, and similar walk and strikeout rates in each. He struggled a bit to open the year, finding too many bats after restoring his ground-ball rate to just above 60%. He found his happy medium mid-season, and ripped off an ERA of 2.38 (2.94 xERA) across a run of 20 starts and just shy of 130 innings, beginning in June. As Patrick Dubuque noted, what pushed him back into elite territory was upping his curveball frequency, which he started doing in July—it hasn’t dropped below 30% usage since (and actually outpaced his sinker percentage in August).

What made Framber Valdez so special lies not in any particular trait or skill, but the way those traits combined together. There are guys who get as many grounders as he does. There are guys who limit damage on home runs as much as he does. And there are certainly guys who miss bats as well as he does. The key to Valdez is that those traits make a Venn diagram that only he (and Logan Webb and Cristopher Sánchez) can fit inside. Still, Skubal is still the superior starter.

Relief pitching might be the one area the Tigers have a clear edge on the Astros, and even that’s more about pure results than process. Detroit goes very deep in its relief core, with five options for manager AJ Hinch to choose from. What they lack in an ability to miss bats (only Beau Brieske is above-average in K%), they more than make up for in the ability to suppress home runs. They will be relied on a lot throughout the three-game series, as they have during the Tigers’ incredible run, as Hinch noted: Our plan, to give you a brief overview, is Tarik Skubal (Tuesday) and pitching chaos the rest of the way, which is kind of how it’s been the last two months.

The Astros have the most expensive bullpen in baseball and little to show for it. Josh Hader is still the best reliever on either side of this series under the hood, but the topline results have been dented (a lot) by a penchant to give up the long ball. Not necessarily a quality you’re looking for in a closer. Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressley aren’t their peak selves either.

This figures to be a close game or a 50/50 proposition, thus taking back +125 on a 50/50 proposition is very worthy of a bet.

Sherwood

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Arizona     -150

Detroit      +125

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Arizona       -145

Detroit    +134

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