Pick No. 12: the Royals' Friday starter is a different pitcher at Kauffman
Tigers at Royals, Friday 8:10pm ET at Kauffman Stadium. The call: Tigers win. Confidence Low.
Noah Cameron threw 7 shutout innings against Detroit a month ago and gave up 2 hits doing it. That's the game everybody's going to remember walking into Friday, and it happened at Comerica, which is the only reason I'm still picking Detroit.
The gap
Cameron's season ERA is 4.16. Split it by where he pitched and it stops being one number.
| IP | ERA | WHIP | Opponent average | Walks per batter faced | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| At Kauffman | 62.2 | 5.17 | 1.55 | .287 | 25 in 282 |
| On the road | 75.2 | 3.33 | 0.95 | .196 | 18 in 298 |
That's a run and 8 tenths, and it goes the wrong way. Kauffman is a big park with a big outfield and pitchers are supposed to like it. The league as a whole does: run every starter with 100 innings and 15 starts through the same split and the median guy is about 3 tenths of a run better at home.
Cameron is 4th of 97 in the other direction.
| Starter | ERA at home | ERA on the road | Gap | Home IP |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Lorenzen | 9.12 | 5.61 | +3.51 | 48.1 |
| Cam Schlittler | 3.95 | 1.14 | +2.81 | 57.0 |
| Jesús Luzardo | 4.63 | 1.95 | +2.68 | 72.0 |
| Noah Cameron | 5.17 | 3.33 | +1.84 | 62.2 |
| David Peterson | 6.16 | 4.39 | +1.77 | 57.0 |
| Nick Martinez | 3.87 | 2.14 | +1.73 | 74.1 |
Now the part that argues against me
I want this to be a bigger deal than it is, so here's the deflation.
20 of those 97 starters are more than a full run worse at home. 26 are more than a full run worse on the road. The whole distribution has a standard deviation of 1.45, which is enormous, and that's the tell: 60-odd innings on each side is not enough innings to tell a real venue effect from a couple of bad afternoons. Cameron's worst home start is 7 earned in 5 against San Diego on July 19 and his second worst is 6 in 3 and 2 thirds against Tampa Bay. Pull those two and most of the gap goes with them.
So I'm not claiming Kauffman breaks him. I'm claiming the version of Cameron who shut Detroit out was the road version, and Friday he's the other one, and if you want to call that a tiebreaker rather than a thesis I won't argue.
One more thing about that July 24 game that nobody mentions: it wasn't a start. Kansas City used an opener and Cameron came in behind him for 7 innings. It's in his road split and not in his start log, which is correct in both places. He also lost. Detroit won 2-1.
What Detroit brings
Troy Melton, and he is the reason this pick exists.
| GS | IP | ERA | WHIP | K | BB | Opponent average | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melton | 14 | 84.1 | 1.49 | 0.96 | 73 | 25 | .186 |
| Cameron | 23 | 138.1 | 4.16 | 1.22 | 126 | 43 | .240 |
14 earned runs in 84 and a third. He's given up more than 2 earned runs in a start once all season. Behind him Detroit has the 4th best team ERA in baseball at 3.55, against Kansas City's 4.76, which is 28th.
Melton has already seen these guys: 5 innings, 2 earned, on July 23.
What scares me
The offense is 4 men short and it doesn't hit lefties. Riley Greene, Kerry Carpenter and Matt Vierling are all on the 10-day, plus Pérez, Outman and Meadows behind them. Greene is eligible to be activated Saturday, which is 1 day too late to matter here. Detroit's OPS against left-handed pitching is .694 on the year against .738 against righties, and Cameron is a lefty. Since Greene went out on August 12 the Tigers have scored 4.0 a game.
The ninth inning. 26 saves in 54 chances. Wednesday in Pittsburgh they took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the ninth and lost it. That's 28 blown on the season.
And these two teams cannot stop playing one-run games. 8 of the 10 meetings this year were decided by exactly 1 run. Detroit is 6-4 in the series and 12-22 in one-run games overall, 29th of 30. If Friday turns into another 3-2, the side with the worse bullpen is the side I just picked.
That's the whole reason this is Low. I think Detroit has the better pitcher, the better staff and the opponent's least comfortable venue. I also think this game has maybe a 6-inning window before it stops being about any of that and starts being about who's warming up.
Tigers win. Low.
Melton's line is read straight off the MLB Stats API this morning: 14 earned in 84.1. An earlier piece here had him at 1.71, which was true when it was pulled and stopped being true when 2 runs in the August 15 start were rescored as unearned. That entry now carries a correction.
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.