Kyle Gibson allowed just one hit in seven scoreless innings at Boston Wednesday, striking out a season-high eight. It was his third straight scoreless start and his fourth in the last five, which is reason enough to take a flier on him in Fantasy.
But maybe not to invest all your hopes and dreams in him.
It's a fine line in some leagues, I know, but all I'm trying to say is I don't entirely trust him yet. That's just my natural bias against pitch-to-contact types. Eventually, I come around, as I did with Kyle Lohse a couple years back, but I'll always prefer a bat-misser who has more say in the outcome of an at-bat.
That's the logic behind it, really. A batted ball has an infinitely higher chance of becoming a hit than a strikeout does, so more batted balls is inherently a bad thing. Of course, the quality of those batted ball makes a difference, and Gibson's sinker helps keep the quality low. Right now, he's in the same boat as Henderson Alvarez in that the good starts are too frequent to ignore but the bad starts, because of those days when the batted balls betray him, are still too threatening to dismiss.
Maybe Gibson's eight strikeouts Wednesday are a sign of things to come -- as Al Melchior recently pointed out, no pitcher has a better chase rate over the last 30 days -- but for now, I'm reserving judgment on Gibson.