From Last Night:

• Jon Lester delivers a 1 hit CGSO as the Sox beat the Jays 5-0
• Alex Cobb strikes out 13 Padres in 4.2 inning, including 4 in one inning…an inning in which he allowed a run on 2 SB and a balk…and fails to pitch deep enough to win
• Miller is brilliant again against the Rockies, retiring 27 straight after allowing a leadoff hit (CG, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 13K)

What I’m Watching Today:

• Buchholz welcomes the Blue Jays to Fenway (130p Eastern)
• Wainwright gets a challenge from the Rockies (2p Eastern)
• Strasburg gets the Cubs offense (4p Eastern)
• Darvish faces the Astros (7p Eastern)
• Cliff Lee starts in the desert (8p Eastern)

The Big Question:

• Which of the six Appointment Television starters who pitch today will you be watching?

Often in this space, I highlight a player who is performing well. Today, who is performing poorly? On the pitching side of things, the winner is Mark Buehrle who owns a -0.5 WAR and 7.02 ERA and 6.34 FIP. His strikeout and walk rates are about on par with career norms, but he’s getting fewer groundballs and allowing an insane amount of homeruns. The homerun rate will regress, but a low strikeout control type guy like Buehrle has a pretty small margin for error and his number can balloon quickly. The league’s worst position player, just barely, is Jeff Keppinger who is worth -1.0 WAR and boasts and impressive .195/.191/.212 line in 27 games, good for a -3 wRC+. This means a couple things. First, he’s taken zero walks, so his sacrifice flies make his OBP lower than his batting average and he is 103% worse at the plate right now than league average. Just to give you an entire of what that indicates, the worst offensive season since WWII belongs to Billy Hunter and his 29 wRC+ for the St. Louis Browns. Not that he won’t pick up a little, but if Keppinger keeps this up, (he’ll get benched) he’ll have the worst season relative to league average by 32% since 1946. Impressive.