Happy Friday!
Welcome back for another breakdown of the MLB PrizePicks board.
We have several mediocre pitchers in tough matchups on this slate, and one pitcher that may be undervalued returning from injury.
Let’s dive in and find out which spots are worth targeting.
Lorenzen is having a solid season for the Tigers, as his ERA sits at 3.97 through 13 starts this year.
However, he has been well below average as a strikeout pitcher, with his strikeout rate sitting at just 18.6% and a swinging strike rate of just 9.3%.
Today, he faces a massive ballpark downgrade going into Coors Field for a matchup with the Rockies.
Colorado is one of the worst offenses in baseball on the road, with a .292 wOBA and 26.3% strikeout rate this season.
But they are far better in their hitter-friendly home park, where their wOBA sits at .338 and they have struck out just a 21.9% clip.
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Ashcraft got off to a great start this season and looked to be on the verge of a breakout.
He allowed just eight runs in his first six starts and posted an 18.2% strikeout rate.
Since then, he has made eight starts where he allowed a whopping 48 runs and posted only a 14.5% strikeout rate.
He has registered only five strikeouts total in his last three starts, and he has not posted more than two strikeouts in any of them.
Now, he must face a San Diego offense that has heated up in June.
They own a .335 wOBA this month that ranks sixth-best in MLB, and they have only struck out at a rate of 20.7% for the month.
On top of that, they are getting a big ballpark boost today going into Great American Ballpark.
Canning has been roughly a league-average starting pitcher this season, with a 3.99 ERA and 22.9% strikeout rate.
He is coming off a great outing in Coors Field where he tossed six scoreless innings and recorded seven strikeouts.
That said, it was only the fourth time in 12 starts this season that he recorded more than 5.5 strikeouts.
He gets a difficult matchup today with Arizona, who owns the fifth-best wOBA (.333) in baseball.
They have struck out at the third-lowest rate (19.8%) in all of MLB this season.
Their projected lineup today contains just one hitter (Carson Kelly) who has struck out more than 21% this season versus right-handed pitching.
Kelly only has a limited sample size of 23 plate appearances this year, and he struck out at just a 19.1% rate in 220 plate appearances versus righties last year.
Cobb is returning from an oblique injury that landed him on the Injured List earlier this month.
He was having a great year until this recent pause in his season, posting a 3.09 ERA and 22.5% strikeout rate.
He has recorded more than 3.5 strikeouts in 11 of his 14 starts this season, so we are definitely getting a discount on this projection.
Cobb was able to make a rehab start for Single-A San Jose last Saturday and looked dominant (as he should against Single-A hitters).
The 9 strikeouts in 3.2 innings were nice to see, but not important against that level of competition.
The important numbers in that start were 0 walks and 66 pitches.
The sparkling control indicates he is not feeling any lingering effects from the oblique injury, and the 66 pitches set him up for somewhere around 80-85 pitches for his start today.
He gets a matchup with the Mets today, who have underperformed expectations this season.
Their .314 wOBA ranks just 19th in the league.
They are not a high-strikeout matchup, but they do have five hitters in the projected lineup that have struck out at least 23.8% of the time versus righties this season.