A short slate on Monday but the good news is plenty of day baseball! Makes the work day just a little more tolerable. Today we focus on a few prop bets that the novice bettor might not realize are available:
Red Sox @ Twins Total Runs O/U 9.5
Approach this game with caution, as there looks to be a considerable amount of rain in the forecast. While cold, wet weather isn’t a great recipe for offensive success, a stiff 15+ MPH wind blowing out to center should help offset that. What is most important here is these two potent lineups loaded with RH power against two underwhelming LHP in Martín Pérez and J.A. Happ. Minnesota—featuring the likes of Nelson Cruz, Byron Buxton and Miguel Sanó—is one of the best teams in baseball against LHP (+136 wRC+) and will certainly not be intimidated by the former Twin in Pérez.
The Red Sox haven’t enjoyed as much success against LHP this year as Minnesota, but the AL East division leaders are averaging 8.8 runs per game over their last six games and feature two of the ten best hitters in baseball over the last week in J.D. Martinez (328 wRC+) and Xander Bogaerts (251 wRC+). As long as the weather isn’t too bad and this game gets played, look for it to hit the over.
Pick: OVER 9.5 (-107 DK, -102 FD)
Padres, Padres & More Padres @ Pirates
Don’t look now but the Fighting Bob Nutting’s are on a two-game win streak! Naturally this brief streak of success will come to an end for Pittsburgh very soon and pretty safe bet that it ends tonight against the Padres and Yu Darvish. I am so confident in the Pirates and Trevor Cahill taking the L tonight that we are tripling down on the Padres and Darvish. Taking the Padres run line (-1.5) is easy, that should have no problem. We get a little riskier by taking Darvish to record a win, but the San Diego ace looked much better in his second start of the season and should have a comfortable lead by the time he leaves the game in the sixth/seventh inning. The final piece of the puzzle is taking the OVER for Darvish K’s, which is currently sitting at 7.5 on DraftKings and FanDuel. While Darvish hasn’t quite hit the number yet this year, he has yet to face an offense quite as inept as Pittsburgh’s (26.5 K%). Don’t overthink it here, push all in on the Padres.
Pick: Padres -1.5 (-137 DK, -120 FD)/Darvish to Record a Win (-106 DK)/Darvish OVER 7.5 K’s (+105 DK, -104 FD)
Reds @ Giants ML
While the Reds and Giants hold identical 6-3 records, Cincinnati is sitting pretty atop the NL Central and San Francisco is stuck in 3rd place in the vaunted NL West. The Reds are a solid baseball team that has been carried by its offense while its starting pitching gets healthy, while the Giants have been buoyed by strong pitching during its four-game win streak. This game will see a regression to the mean. After scoring 25 runs in two games against the Pirates last week, Cincinnati mustered just three runs in its last two games. MLB’s top team in wRC+ (137) should be able to score a little more tonight against Giants’ starter Aaron Sanchez, who pitched a little over his head last time out against San Diego. The timeless Wade Miley was strong against Pittsburgh last time out and gets a mediocre San Francisco lineup that hasn’t scored over four runs in over a week. Add in that Cincy is currently an underdog in this matchup and I am all over the Reds ML.
Pick: Reds ML (-103 DK, +104 FD)
Kyle Stanzel Overall Record: 1-2-0
Featured Image by Justin Paradis (@JustParaDesigns on Twitter)