The stingy Reds lineup did its job against Zack Wheeler last night, striking out just four times in six innings to cash the under on the strikeout total of 6. Good for you, Reds, good for you. Good for us, too.
Tonight's strikeout prop takes us to Boston.
MLB Player Props – Tuesday, April 30
Our FantasyLabs MLB Player Props Tool leverages our projections against odds offered at various sportsbooks and grades each prop on a scale of 1 to 10. All odds as of 4 p.m. ET. View live odds for individual games here.
Athletics SP Aaron Brooks
The Pick: Over 3.5 (+120)
We've been hot with unders recently so therefore, it must be a perfect time to take an over. Reverse psychology … or something like that.
On April 1st, unaccomplished 29-year-old Aaron Brooks pitched six innings of two-hit, scoreless ball against the Red Sox and struck out six men in the process. Since then? Twenty-one innings pitched, 16 earned runs. There's a reason why you've probably never heard of this guy.
However, despite his recent struggles, Brooks has still managed to pitch at least five innings in every start — something that will be crucial for his strikeout success tonight.
Since Brooks isn't a huge strikeout guy (7.67 K/9), and the Red Sox aren't a huge strikeout team (sixth-lowest team strikeout rate), he may not be able to repeat his strikeout per inning performance from his first start against them.
Luckily, he'll be getting some help from the weather gods, as Fenway Park is sporting the first Weather Rating of 0 (on a 0-100 scale) of the season. Home runs have been one of Brooks' biggest downfalls this year, but it'll be as tough as ever for the Sox to hit them out of Fenway tonight.
Do we expect Brooks to mow down batters like Randy Freaking Johnson? Lord no. We're projecting 4.3 strikeouts for him, but that's still more than a 30% difference than the 3.0 strikeouts implied by these odds.
Think of it like this: If Brooks made this start 100 times, would he strike out at least four batters in 46 of those starts? I think he very well could, but alas, this experiment will never happen. Let's just hope he strikes out four tonight.
