Lake Bachar Has Quietly Built One of Baseball's Best Sliders. Daylight Is the Only Thing That's Beaten Him.
Lake Bachar has turned into a legitimate weapon this year — a 41.5% whiff rate on his slider, a 3.97 ERA that Statcast's model says should be even better (3.67 xERA), a ground-ball rate north of 85%. Nearly everything about the profile says he's arrived. One split says otherwise.
Bachar has a 7.66 ERA in day games this season against a 2.08 mark at night — a gap of more than five and a half runs, the widest of any starter on today's board. First pitch at PNC Park is 1:35 PM ET. It isn't a small sample fluke on the good side, either: the 2.08 mark covers 43.1 innings, nearly twice his day-game workload (22.1 IP), so the day number isn't just noise from a couple of bad outings.
Boston isn't walking in clean, either — Patrick Sandoval carries an ERA (3.30) that's outrunning his contact quality by more than a run (4.59 xERA, .319 opponent average), the kind of gap that tends to close. And if this one gets to the seventh unsettled, Pittsburgh's bullpen is compromised: Luke Weaver, Wilber Dotel, and closer Gregory Soto have all worked recently enough to be flagged unavailable. Bachar's stuff has been good enough to beat anyone lately. Today just happens to be the wrong half of his own calendar.