Harry touched on it yesterday, but in this series with the Padres, tonight’s game, featuring a pitching matchup between Jake Peavy and Rich Harden, is the most compelling matchup. Aside from the fact that it’s a pair of aces squaring off, it’s also last season’s big acquisition for the Cubs versus this season’s rumored acquisition. It’s two great pitchers who haven’t quite gotten the results they’re used to this year. Both have allowed a lot more runs than you’d expect, so far.

Peavy and Harden are both over their career ERAs - Peavy by a run, Harden by a run and a half. You have to take into account the ballparks they play in, however. Wrigley is a hitters’ park, and PETCO is an extreme pitchers’ park. So Harden’s numbers this year are actually a shade better than Peavy’s even though his ERA is higher.

I’m going to delve into dangerous territory here and try to look at why the two of them are having trouble early on. For Harden, the story is mostly home runs - he’s giving up 1.7 homers per nine innings right now, an entire home run more than his career average of .7. He’s also walking about one more every nine innings than in past years. These are offset a little by his strikeout rate being slightly up, but if you put more guys on base and then give up more longballs, you’re in trouble.

Whether there’s a particular reason for Harden’s walks and homers is unclear. A lot has been made of his shoulder and his velocity, but Fangraphs says his average fastball is only .3 mph slower than last season, at 91.7. And if you look at what batters are doing against him (the contact percentages on his Fangraphs page), those numbers are actually encouraging. They’re not making as much contact overall when they swing, or when they swing at pitches in the zone. Batters are swinging at more pitches out of the zone, though, and they are making more contact with them. That sounds like luck as much as anything else; if you throw a good pitch out of the zone and a batter digs it out of the dirt or goes up and gets it, well, there’s not much you can do but tip your cap. Harden also has only pitched 31.2 innings this season, so a couple of bad outings (like the two three-inning outings he’s had) can really skew things.

Peavy, on the other hand, is a little more of a mystery. He’s striking out more guys than in past years, and only walking slightly more, without giving up many more hits. Like Harden, his numbers are inflated by a couple of bad starts - on April 21, he gave up six runs in six innings, and on April 26 he gave up another five in five innings. That’s eleven earned runs in two starts. In his other five starts he’s only given up eleven runs total. And in those games, nine of the runs came in a total of three innings. So it’s not that Peavy is having a down year so much as he’s suffered through a couple of disastrous innings - maybe that’s just luck because batters managed to bunch their hits and walks together, or maybe it’s that he wasn’t pitching well in those innings.

Like Harden, Peavy’s velocity is fine. And like Harden, there’s nothing alarming in terms of how many balls he’s throwing, or what hitters are doing at the plate. Again, it appears that as much as anything else, his numbers are a little skewed and in reality, Peavy is pitching just fine.

So don’t let the numbers fool you. Yes, Peavy and Harden both have inflated ERAs right now. But they’ve been on more often than they’ve been off, and when they’re on, they’re two of the best pitchers in baseball. Tonight’s matchup is one to look forward to. Hopefully the Cubs can have one of those big innings that have been Peavy’s problem so far and hopefully Harden can keep the ball in the park.