Editor's note: Tuesday's game between the Blue Jays and Red Sox has been postponed because of rain.
It's another full slate of baseball on Tuesday with all 15 games taking place under the lights. A lot of baseball means a lot of opportunities to bet, and our analysts have found a few different angles on which to attack this slate.
From the Marlins-Orioles matchup to Blue Jays-Red Sox and Astros-Mariners in Seattle, we have three bets from four writers to recommend.
Here are our best bets from Tuesday's Major League Baseball slate.
MLB Odds & Picks
Marlins vs. Orioles
Kenny Ducey: If you want to go strictly by recent form at the plate, the Marlins and Orioles are almost neck-and-neck with similarly bad numbers over the last two weeks. Both teams have struggled to hit the ball all season long, and of late that hasn’t really changed despite some nice wins. With so little between the two offenses, I’m turning to the pitching matchup — where there’s a significant gap.
Spenser Watkins has been a great story thus far, pitching to a 1.73 ERA in his first four big-league appearances, but everything about this is a fluke. He’s struck out just 20% of the hitters he’s faced, his walk rate is north of 12% and he’s already given up three barrels. He’s given up plenty of quality contact and had much traffic on the base paths, but he’s survived on a 91.4% strand rate, which is outrageous.
Eventually, Watkins’ luck has to turn, and he should start pitching more towards the 4.23 xERA he’s projected at over at Statcast.
There’s nothing lucky, however, about how Sandy Alcantara has pitched this year. He’s pitched to just a .315 xwOBA on contact and conversely has limited traffic on the base paths. He's rarely been punished for a mistake with a 3.5% barrel rate which ranks inside the top 4% in baseball.
The pitching matchup is extremely lopsided here and I expect this line to keep moving. I’ll play it to -150.
Blue Jays vs. Red Sox
Editor's note: Tuesday's game between the Blue Jays and Red Sox has been postponed because of rain.
Brad Cunningham: Robbie Ray has been pitching quite well for the Blue Jays this season, posting a 3.59 xERA and a 3.27 xFIP. He's really improved his control from an astronomical 7.84 a year ago all the way down to 2.24. His fastball has also gotten much better from last year, too, as he's added almost 2 mph on average to it, which has lowered the wOBA against it down from .447 to .300.
He will have a tough matchup against Boston lineup, which hits lefties and fastballs well, but this bet doesn't have much to do with Robbie Ray, it's more about how awful Garrett Richards has been.
Richards has been an abomination at the back-end of the Red Sox rotation this season, as his xERA is up at 5.76 and his xFIP is at 4.77, both of which are career highs for him. Richards is mainly a fastball/slider pitcher, but neither pitch has been effective, as they are both allowing a wOBA over .360.
This is a terrible matchup for him. The Blue Jays not only crush right-handed pitching — they have the highest wOBA and most home runs — but they also are the fifth-best team in MLB against fastballs with a +38.6 run value.
I have Ray and the Blue Jays projected at -185 for the first five innings, so I think there is some value on them at -130 and would play it up to -160.
Blue Jays vs. Red Sox
Editor's note: Tuesday's game between the Blue Jays and Red Sox has been postponed because of rain.
Mike Ianniello: Robbie Ray is one of those pitchers on whom I keep expecting the wheels to fall off, but he just might be a pretty good pitcher again. After being named an All-Star back in 2017 with Arizona, his ERA had continued to rise for each of the next three seasons. He posted a 6.62 ERA in 2020.
Well, he has really bounced back this year and been Toronto’s best pitcher. Ray is 8-5 with a 3.12 ERA through 19 starts. Since June 1, he has a 2.54 ERA and a 12.23 K/9 rate with teams batting just .201 against him.
Garrett Richards, on the other hand, has seen his production fall off a cliff recently. Since June 1, he has an ERA of 6.44 and his K/9 is just 6.44. Since the MLB started cracking down on sticky stuff his ERA is 7.04 with a 7.89 FIP. His K/9 rate has dropped even lower to 5.48.
Toronto leads the league in wOBA and sits second in wRC+. The Jays have crushed Richards this season. In four meetings, they are batting .299 with a .875 OPS against him and have put up 14 runs and 26 hits in 22 1/3 innings. Richards has a 5.64 ERA against Toronto this season and has allowed four runs in three of the four meetings.
Anybody who has watched this Blue Jays team this year should know you want nothing to do with this bullpen. Toronto still has a big starting pitching advantage here, so I will back the Jays over the first five innings at -130 and would play to -140.
Astros vs. Mariners
Collin Whitchurch: I forgive you if you didn't stay up to watch the Astros-Mariners game on Monday that ended around 2 a.m. ET, but you missed one of the more exciting baseball games of the season.
Houston put up six runs in the top of the first inning, only for those scrappy, loveable Mariners to claw their way back. It was 8-7 Astros in the bottom of the eighth when Dylan Moore did this.
I'm all-in on the Mariners for the rest of the season. They're nine games over .500 with a subpar run differential (-49) but it seems every year a team simply gets hot in the second half and nothing about it makes sense. That's what this is turning into. I'm particularly all-in on the Mariners tonight with Chris Flexen on the mound.
Flexen has been a revelation for Seattle after spending last season in the KBO, and he's been especially solid when pitching at the friendly confines of T-Mobile Park. In 11 starts there, the 27-year-old has a 1.89 ERA and has allowed just three home runs in 66 2/3 innings.
One of the strengths of this Houston offense is how tough it is to strike out. The Astros' 19.4% strikeout rate is the best in the majors by more than two percentage points. Flexen isn't a strikeout artist, though. He pitches to contact and limits hard contact, with a HardHit% right around league-average and an average launch angle against more than one degree lower than league average.
I love his matchup against the Astros and I love the Mariners to score another big win in a key series against a division rival. I'll be betting the Mariners at +145 and would do so to +140.
