Not on the current slate
Sam hasn't been scored in 49 days — his last matchup was against Boston Red Sox on Sunday, July 5, 2026. A gap that long usually means an injury, a minor-league option, or a roster move rather than a rest day. Everything below is his most recent real production, not a projection.
Season line
6 starts, 3-4, 5.08 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, 33.2 innings. He's struck out 22 over that span, against 17 walks. This is the baseline the matchup adjusts from — the model starts here and then asks what the specific lineup he's facing does to strikeout arms, how the park plays, and how deep he's likely to go.
He throws left-handed
Sam is a left-hander, and that matters more for a starter than it does for most hitters. Lineups get built specifically to attack lefties — managers stack right-handed bats against them — so the lineup he draws on a given night swings his projection further than a righty's would. The model prices the actual lineup rather than a season-long rate for exactly that reason. A stacked righty lineup is the spot where his strikeout projection comes down hardest.
His last 5 starts
Sam has 14 strikeouts in 21.7 innings across his last 5 starts, a 5.8 K/9, with a 6.65 ERA over that stretch and 12 walks. Strikeouts are the one pitcher market where our model has found real, graded room — projected workload and the specific lineup he draws move that number more than a season-long rate does. Start-by-start detail is in the log below.
Strikeouts and control
Sam has 22 strikeouts and 17 walks in 33.7 innings this season — 5.9 K/9 against 4.5 BB/9, a 1.3-to-1 ratio. That walk rate is the risk in every projection on him. Free passes run up pitch counts, and a short outing caps the strikeout and outs numbers no matter how favourable the lineup looks. His floor is genuinely lower than his stuff suggests.
What his floor looks like
Sam has made 9 starts this season, averaging 3.7 innings with a 5.08 ERA across them. In the 9 starts we hold detailed lines for, he got through five or more innings 3 times. That ratio is the honest read on his floor, and it's what separates an arm worth projecting on the outs board from one whose good starts are unpredictable enough that the market prices them better than we do.
How long he goes
Sam is averaging 4.0 innings a start across his last 8 outings, with a high of 5.3 and about 72 pitches a night. He's not going deep, and that caps the strikeout and outs projections no matter how good the matchup looks — you can't strike out hitters you don't face. Expected batters faced is one of the bigger inputs to his score for exactly this reason.
A long gap since his last start
Sam hasn't started in 50 days. That's the single most useful warning on a pitcher's page, and it's the model's weakest spot. A gap that long usually means an injured-list stint, and a first start back is often on a strict pitch limit that no stat line reveals — books frequently don't post an outs line at all in that spot. Our projection is built on his healthy workload, so it will overshoot a shortened rehab start. Read any projection here with that in mind until he's stretched back out.
His best start in the log
Sam's high-water mark was Tuesday, June 2, 2026 against COL: 5 strikeouts over 5.3 innings, 0 earned runs. One start doesn't set a projection — the model works off the blend of his recent work against the specific lineup in front of him — but it does show the ceiling when the matchup lines up.
How the model reads him
The number on Sam is about tonight, not about him. Strip out the name and the model is asking one question: what does this specific lineup do to this kind of arm, in this park, for as many batters as he's likely to face? That gets scored against every other starter on the slate. The combination math is proprietary and re-tuned every week. The grading isn't — it's all public, including the misses.
What we'd flag
Books don't price every player — coverage tops out around 87% even for confirmed starters, so "no line" here usually means no book posted one rather than a gap in our data. Lineups change late, and an afternoon projection can be stale by first pitch. And the model is tuned across hundreds of graded outcomes, so one game tells you nothing about whether it's working. For Sam specifically, he's coming off a 50-day gap.