The best No. 3 starter in the major leagues? A case can certainly be made for Nationals lefty Patrick Corbin, who sits behind Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg in that rotation. Here are two props available to wager at Mybookie on Corbin’s 2020 MLB season – assuming there is one – and an overview.
Patrick Corbin MLB Awards Odds & Analysis For 2020 Season
- Most wins of any pitcher: Corbin is +2500
- NL Cy Young Award: Corbin is +4000 to win his first Cy Young
Corbin isn’t a household name like Scherzer and Strasburg, but he ranks seventh in WAR among starting pitchers over the past two seasons.
In December 2018, Corbin left the Arizona Diamondbacks in free agency for a six-year, $140 million deal with the Washington Nationals. The Nats somewhat came out of nowhere to sign him as starting pitching didn’t seem like a huge need because the team already had Scherzer Strasburg. But Nats GM Mike Rizzo emphasizes pitching.
“That’s how we’ve won,” Rizzo said then. “When we put our guy on the mound [and he], each day, gives us a chance to win, you’ve created yourself a chance to have a really good ballclub and play deep into October. That’s our philosophy. There’s different ways to do this. We’ve seen the ‘bullpenning’ and that type of thing in playoff baseball, and that’s fine. But for the marathon that is the season, you better have some starters that you can run out there and give you a chance to win each and every day, and that’s what we’ve always tried to do here.”
Of course, Rizzo would be proven correct with the Nats winning the 2019 World Series. Corbin fired three shutout innings in relief to help the Nationals win Game 7 of the Fall Classic vs. Houston. Earlier in the playoffs, Corbin became already the first pitcher in MLB history to make three starts and four relief appearances in the same postseason. In Game 4 of the NLCS vs. St. Louis, Corbin struck out 12 batters over five innings as Washington swept. Corbin became the first pitcher in MLB history to tally 10 strikeouts through four innings in a postseason game.
In the 2019 regular season, Corbin was 14-7 with a 3.25 ERA. He held opposing left-handed batters to a .248 slugging percentage (2 2B, 2 HR) and .190 average (24-for125), the best marks among MLB left-handed starting pitchers. He threw his slider 37.1% of the time in 2019, an average of 37 per start (most: 51 on 5/4 at PHI and 7/19 at ATL). A total of 161 of his 238 strikeouts were via the slider, the most in MLB in 2019.
Corbin generated 342 swings and misses with the slider, the most of any pitcher (Detroit’s Matthew Boyd, 2nd/231). In 16 home starts during the year, he was 8-2 with a 2.40 ERA with 125 strikeouts. Corbin gave up two earned runs or less in 13 of the 16 starts. His 2.40 ERA at home ranked sixth in Major League Baseball.
Patrick Corbin tossed exactly 7.0 innings in four consecutive starts from June 19-July 7. Over that stretch he allowed one earned run or less in all four starts. It was his longest career streak of at least 7.0 innings and one earned run allowed or less.
Corbin’s slider is unusual in that it’s not a power slider as you usually see from a guy with above-average velocity. In some ways, it acts more like a curveball: above-average movement with below-average velocity. Corbin said the key is that it looks like his fastball coming out of his hand.
