Larry Ness' Las Vegas Insider-MLB (8-2, 80% L19 days)
My 8* Las Vegas Insider is on the Oak A's at 10:05 ET.
Outstanding pitching has been the impetus for New York’s current four-game winning streak. The Yankees are on the brink of matching a season-high five-game winning streak (from April 12-17) and the team’s 1.75 ERA (1.55 from the starting rotation)in the last four contests is a big reason why. Hiroki Kuroda (4-4, 4.12 ERA / team is 5-8 in his 13 starts) will hope to get some help, as the right-hander was a hard-luck loser at Kansas City last Sunday, allowing just two runs in seven innings but the offense went 1 for 17 with runners in scoring position. That 2-1 loss was New York's most recent defeat.
"You get a great performance by Kuroda, and we didn't do anything with it," manager Joe Girardi told the team's official website after that game. That’s really nothing new. The 2014 season has been a struggle for him, as he has won just TWICE in his last 10 outings. I've always liked Kuroda but I'm VERY leery of him these days. His first four seasons were with the Dodgers, where he posted ERAs of 3.73, 3.76, 3.39 and 3.07. However, he was just 41-46 in that span. He’s been with the Yankees these last two years, posting ERAs of 3.32 and 3.31 but yet again, his W-L mark was a mediocre 27-24.
However, this year his ERA is 4.12 (LT it's 3.45), his WHIP is 1.22 (LT it's 1.18) and opponents are batting .266 against him (LT it's .250). The real 'kicker' in this situation is his continuing problems away from home. Kuroda's home ERA is 4.93 this season and his road ERA is just 3.19 but the Yankees just DON'T win when he takes the mound away from home these days, going back to mid-season last year. Here's the skinny. Kuroda is 1-8 in his past 13 road starts, going back to a July 25 of 2013 win. The Yankees are just 3-10 in those 13 starts, making them an 77% "play-against" in Kuroda's road starts.
Getting the ball for Oakland tonight will be Scott Kazmir. Some may remember Kazmir as the ace of a Tampa Bay staff, when the Rays were mostly a struggling team. Kazmir went 45-34 (.570) from 2005-08, posting ERAs between a low of 3.25 to a high of 3.77. During that four-year span, while the Rays went 291-357, they were 65-52 when Kazmir got the start. Doing the math, Tampa played .556 baseball when Kazmir started but just .426 (226-305) baseball with someone else getting the start. That's called a "difference-maker!"
Kazmir's never really been healthy since getting traded by Tampa back in 2009 but here in Oakland this year, we've seen "the Kazmir of old!" He's 7-2 with a 2.20 ERA in 13 starts (A's are 11-2!), allowing just 63 hits in 82 innings with a 70-17 KW ratio and an 0.98 WHIP, while opponents have batted just .211 against him. The A’s lost last night 7-0 but still own the AL’s best record (40-27), as well as MLB’s top run-differential mark (plus-123). The next-best mark in the AL is owned by Toronto (plus-37 runs), with the Giants owning the second-best mark in all of MLB (plus-56), which is less than HALF of Oakland’s plus-123 runs!
Kazmir has made a believer out of me and I look for the A’s to extend Kuroda’s road woes in this one.
