[bigboydan]

Tuesday’s best (and worst) pitchers

Chicks may dig the long ball, but sharp handicappers know that it’s pitchers that bring home the bacon.

Baseball is an addictive substance. There are statistics available on just about everything – you start digging for information on an upcoming MLB matchup, and the next thing you know, two hours have passed and you’re sitting on a mountain made of acronyms like XIP, ROE and PMLVr.

Or you could just look at the starting pitchers. These are the men that hold the fate of a baseball game in their hands. Each of their 100-some pitches is like a point on a win probability curve, and the best pitchers on the best teams are the ones who consistently stay on the profitable side of the graph. The bad pitchers are also a boon to handicappers; with every 85-mph “fastball” grooved down the middle of the plate, baseball’s most ineffective hurlers beg to be faded.

With that in mind, here’s a look at some of Tuesday’s best bulls and bears on the mound.

Mark Buehrle: With five competent starters, the Chicago White Sox are poison for the rest of the majors. But Mark Buehrle is definitely getting some help from his friends. Despite having a good, but not great 1.21 WHIP, Buehrle has led the Pale Hose to the pay window in eight of his 10 starts, earning nearly 5.4 units along the way. That’s the most of anyone scheduled to start Tuesday; he’s pegged to face C.C. Sabathia (0.90 WHIP, 1.5 units) and the Cleveland Indians.

Buehrle has what would be a career-best ERA of 2.62 at this point of the season. However, an unusual number of runs scored against Chicago in his starts are unearned: eight out of 28, to be exact. He’s also striking out a lot fewer batters: 3.54 per nine innings compared to 5.67 last year. When Baseball Prospectus crunches Buerhle’s stats, they come up with a “translated ERA” of 4.48, which would be his career-worst. BP also suggests that Buehrle’s pitching performance should translate to a win-loss record of 16-15.

One could infer that Buehrle has been lucky. Given Sabathia’s tremendous pitching in 2006, Buehrle’s luck might not be enough come Tuesday. Note that the UNDER is 7-3 for Buerhle and 4-2 for Sabathia.

Andy Pettitte: At the other end of the spectrum, something is just not right with Andy Pettitte. The 11-year veteran has created a deficit of nearly 7.2 units for Houston Astros supporters. Only Toronto’s Josh Towers and Florida’s Dontrelle Willis are faring worse this season. Houston has lost eight of Pettitte’s 11 starts, with the UNDER going 5-4-2.

Like Towers and Willis, a big part of the money-pit Pettitte has dug for himself is based on his excellent 2005 campaign. The former Yankee posted a miniscule 1.03 WHIP that year, almost as tiny as teammate Roger Clemens and his dominant 1.01 WHIP. But that number has climbed to 1.63 this season. What gives?

According to the stats, Pettitte isn’t unlucky – he’s just pitching poorly. And it doesn’t help much that the Astros are giving him just 3.27 runs per game in support. They might not score much more than that Tuesday against Chris Carpenter (1.22 WHIP, -0.8 units) and the St. Louis Cardinals. Then again, Carpenter is in much the same boat as Buehrle: a 2.63 ERA that “translates” to 4.20 when his peripheral stats are taken into account.

Gil Meche: The casual baseball bettor will look at Meche’s 4-3 record, which makes him the only winning pitcher on the Seattle Mariners, and think Meche must be doing fairly well on the mound. Casual bettors are the chum in the shark tank. Meche has an unsightly 1.40 WHIP (which is still second-best on the weak Seattle staff); he still has a job because the Mariners score 5.1 runs per game when Meche starts. That’s been enough to scrape together a lousy one-tenth of a unit in earnings.

Meche will be in Arlington Tuesday to face Kevin Millwood (1.33 WHIP, 0.3 units) and the heavy lumber of the Texas Rangers. Millwood hasn’t been much better than Meche, and he’s also getting by on run support (an even five per game). But Millwood has easily been the better pitcher during his career. Making the move to Ameriquest Field hasn’t helped his cause – the park gives up 1.43 times as many home runs as average, while Meche has the luxury of pitching at Safeco Field, which allows only 88 percent as many dingers as the MLB norm. The OVER is 4-1 in Meche’s five starts on the road; Millwood has also been shelled in his last two starts at Ameriquest, allowing a combined 16 runs in 6.1 innings.