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Today, I’ll be projecting the expected pitches, strikes and strikeouts for Corey Kluber tonight against the Minnesota Twins. Kluber is one of three pitchers (Jon Lester, Jake Arrieta) in the “Awesemo.com Presents: $1,000,000 Perfect Line Bonus + $3,600GTD – The Sandlot ($1K to 1st!)“.
Your PlayLine predictions are scored according to the chart below. It’s really simple. The closer your PlayLine is to the athlete’s actual performance, the more points you get. The more points you get, the better your chances of winning!
You will receive PlayLine points each time the featured athlete registers a stat that you predicted will occur. Once the athlete’s actual stat total in a particular category goes over your prediction, you will no longer receive additional per stat PlayLine points.
Corey Kluber
If you’ve been reading these articles for our NBA PlayLine contests, you’ll know we discussed correlations between stats. The process is similar in baseball, but the correlations are a bit more obvious. The three scoring categories (pitches, strikes and strikeouts) all have high positive correlations with each other. Clearly, the more pitches you throw, the more they will be strikes, and as you throw more strikes, you’ll get more strikeouts.
I took a look at all of Corey Kluber’s starts from 2017 and 2018 to get an idea of his normal performance. Below you’ll find his averages and standard deviations over that sample.
Average: 101 pitches, 69 strikes, 8.6 strikeouts
Standard Deviations: 12.2 pitches, 8.9 strikes, 2.9 strikeouts
As we start looking at more and more MLB contests on PlayLine, I’ll go back and do an ownership review, but for now, I’m going to assume people project more optimistic lines.
In my model, I have Kluber projected for 8.8 strikeouts, which is just slightly higher than his recent average. The Twins have Joe Mauer back in the lineup, who strikes out significantly less than an average hitter. Similarly, Minnesota sent Miguel Sano and his gigantic strikeout rate to the minors, which also limits Kluber’s upside. For now, I‘m looking to come in below Kluber’s averages, as I think I’ll have an ownership edge. Similar to the NBA, I’m looking to land within 1.5 standard deviations of the categories. My placeholder for now is 93 pitches, 65 strikes and 7 strikeouts. It’s hard to deviate too much from his averages, as the Vegas line shows Kluber and the Indians as huge favorites, but I’m hoping today isn’t a high-end Kluber start.
