Tomoyuki Sugano's ERA Is 2.50 Runs Better Than His Contact Quality Deserves. Tonight He Takes That Luck to Coors Field.
Tomoyuki Sugano's ERA sits at 4.43. The version built from what actually happens when hitters make contact off him — Statcast's xERA — says it should be 6.93. That two-and-a-half-run gap is the widest of any starter working today, and it belongs to a pitcher who's about to throw at the one address in baseball least equipped to bail him out again.
Coors Field carries a 1.24 run factor, the highest in the sport by a wide margin, and Sugano allows hard contact at a 43.4% clip with a 13.7% barrel rate — both above-average marks for damage against, propped up so far by sequencing and a canyon-sized outfield that hasn't punished him yet. The total is set at 10.5, the board's highest tonight, and the market isn't exactly betting on a pitchers' duel either way.
Blake Snell runs the opposite problem: a 5.00 ERA that undersells a pitcher allowing a 0.0% barrel rate and an 80.3% ground-ball rate, with his curveball generating a 55.6% whiff rate on the pitches hitters do chase. His xERA, 2.34, is nearly three runs kinder than his actual line. And if Snell's bad luck holds and this one turns into the shootout the total implies, Los Angeles is thinner than usual behind him — Kyle Hurt, recalled from Oklahoma City just Sunday, threw 30 pitches in his return and profiles as unavailable tonight. Two pitchers, two luck gaps running in opposite directions, one ballpark built to make both of them look worse before it's over.