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Justin Steele Over 16.5 Outs -130
| Matchup | Guardians vs. Cubs |
| Time | 2:20 p.m. ET |
| Best Book | DraftKings |
Flying under the radar through the first half of the MLB season has been the performance of Justin Steele. The lefty has put together an All-Star worthy campaign, pitching to a 2.62 ERA over his 14 starts.
Steele has reached the six inning mark in 10 of his 14 starts; one miss was due to a mid-game injury and another was because of a limited pitch count in his first start back.
He’s coming off a pristine performance in London – six innings, five hits and only one earned run – which is especially impressive given the tremendous hitting conditions of that environment.
Steele’s recipe for success has been his ability to limit hard contact and keep the ball on the ground.
Amongst starting pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched this season, Steele has the lowest hard hit rate (20.1%) and highest soft contact rate (23.7%) out of 144 qualifiers. And his ground ball rate of 49.3% is 19th-highest (all data, per FanGraphs).
On top of his batted ball profile, Steele is incredibly efficient with his pitches. He pumps the zone with strikes (66.8% strike rate is in the top 85th percentile), which keeps his pitch count down (3.68 pitches per plate appearance is in the 90th percentile).
The Guardians are an ideal matchup for the southpaw. As a team, Cleveland has a .631 OPS against ground ball pitchers and the sixth-highest swing rate (48.8%).
I love Steele to get us through six relatively clean innings this afternoon, as I’d play this line up to over 17.5 outs.
