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ANALYSIS: While San Diego deals with a myriad of arm injuries, San Diego Padres starting pitcher Matt Strahm has gotten the chance to act as their “opener” in three bullpen games now. In these three games, he has allowed one run and three hits in eight innings, striking out 11 batters. He also has not walked a batter in any of his last five appearances now, a stretch that includes three appearances against the NL East-leading Braves.
While there are a lot of reasons to like Strahm, remember that he has allowed 30.4% hard hit balls this season and only has a 33.3% ground ball rate. A 4.84 xFIP shows that his 2.21 ERA is quite lucky and a .167 BABIP and 9.8% K-BB rate support the claim that he is due for regression.
Joey Lucchesi is returning, so there is a chance that the Padres do not really have a chance to give Strahm a true starting look in 2018, but it is not impossible. There were many that hoped Strahm would get Kansas City’s No. 5 starter job in 2017 before the team signed Jason Hammel, and there are reasons to remain optimistic on him.
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