Pick No. 8: Drew Anderson has never finished a 5th inning
The call: Chicago takes Sunday afternoon at Comerica. Confidence: low.
This is the 8th pick on the board and the first one that isn't the Tigers, so I'll say up front that I don't feel great about it and I'll show you the numbers that say I'm wrong at the bottom.
Here's the one that got me there.
42 appearances, and the ceiling hasn't moved
Every appearance Drew Anderson has made this season, plotted by how many outs he got. 42 of them, 4 as a starter. The most he has recorded in any game this season is 14, which is 4.2 innings, and he did that back on May 20. Detroit's median start this year is 17 outs. He has never touched the line.
Here are the 4 starts on their own.
| Date | Opponent | Innings | Batters faced | Pitches | Earned runs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 20 | Cleveland | 4.2 | 18 | 63 | 0 |
| Jun 15 | Houston | 2.2 | 12 | 59 | 1 |
| Aug 5 | Seattle | 3.2 | 13 | 42 | 0 |
| Aug 11 | Cleveland | 4.0 | 17 | 70 | 1 |
The pitch count is climbing, 42 to 70 in 6 days, so the stretch out is real and Detroit clearly wants more out of him. It just hasn't arrived yet. 18 batters is the whole of a lineup twice through with a bit left over, and Sunday he needs a third look at people to save the bullpen anything.
Sean Burke is the other kind of problem
| Innings | ERA | WHIP | K | BB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sean Burke | 135.2 | 2.99 | 1.08 | 152 | 39 |
| Drew Anderson | 71.1 | 3.91 | 1.30 | 82 | 27 |
26 years old, 6 foot 6, 20 starts, and he's gone 6 innings or more in 7 of his last 11. He faced Detroit once, May 31 in Chicago, 5.1 innings and 1 run, and the White Sox won 2-1.
So Detroit's side of Sunday is a guy who probably hands it over in the 5th, and Chicago's side is a guy who's been finishing the 7th. That's 2 or 3 extra bullpen innings Detroit has to find, against a lineup that put 9 on them Friday night.
And the lineup they're finding those runs with is short. Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter, Matt Vierling and James Outman are all on the IL, which is 4 outfielders, and Friday's outfield was Max Clark, Javier Baez and Ben Malgeri. Detroit hits .247 with a .738 OPS against righties, Burke throws right handed, and that .738 was earned mostly by a lineup that isn't available.
Chicago's also just won 4 of the 7 meetings, and Friday broke the strangest thing about this season series, which was that the home team had won all 6.
Now the part where I argue myself down
The bullpen game isn't the disaster it sounds like. I went and counted. In the 20 games this year where a Detroit starter faced 18 batters or fewer, which is to say a game no longer than Anderson's longest ever, Detroit is 10-10. In the other 102 they're 50-52. It's the same team either way.
| Detroit, 2026 | Record | Runs allowed per game | Relievers used |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter faced 18 or fewer, 20 games | 10-10 | 4.10 | 4.0 |
| Starter faced more than 18, 102 games | 50-52 | 3.81 | 2.9 |
A third of a run and one extra arm. That's the whole cost, and if I'm honest that's a much smaller number than the one in my head when I started.
Anderson isn't bad, he's short. He strikes out 10.35 per 9 innings. Burke strikes out 10.08. The guy I'm calling the weak link in this game misses more bats per inning than the guy I'm calling the strength. What he can't do is go around a lineup 3 times, and that's a completely different complaint.
And the big one. Detroit is 60-62 with a plus 86 run differential. Chicago is 63-58 at plus 44. Run the Pythagorean on both and Detroit should be a 71 win team, which puts them 11.1 wins below where they've played. That is the largest shortfall in baseball and it isn't close, Boston's next at 5.9. Detroit's team ERA is 3.52 against Chicago's 4.11. They're at home. On everything except Sunday's starting pitcher, Detroit is the better club, and this site has said so for a week.
So I'm overriding a season of evidence with one afternoon's matchup, which is exactly the sort of thing that gets you a red X.
White Sox win. Low. Best pitcher on the field by a distance, against a Detroit lineup missing 4 outfielders and a starter who's likely gone by the 5th. If Anderson goes 5 and Detroit's pen holds it, I'm wrong and I'll have been wrong for the reason I already told you about.
Sources: MLB Stats API, pulled 2026-08-15, for the probables, both pitchers' season lines and full 2026 game logs, every finished Detroit boxscore for batters faced by the starter, both clubs' standings and run totals, all 30 teams' Pythagorean shortfall, team hitting splits by opposing hand, the season series and the Detroit and Chicago transaction feeds. Every number and the chart come from one run of scripts/short_start_games.py and scripts/anderson_length_chart.py.
Not betting advice. Just calls, made in public and kept in public.
Got a Detroit number you want looked at? Email projectunmuted@proton.me and it gets looked at properly. A stat somebody quoted that smells wrong, a thing you have always assumed about one of these 4 teams and have never seen checked. Every question that arrives is listed with its answer, including the ones where the answer is no.