Tuesday's MLB slate brings with it 15 games and loads of value, including one insanely juicy underdog.
As a reminder, the Payoff Pitch podcast MLB experts break down their favorite picks from the day's slate every Monday, Tuesday and Friday, including each analyst's favorite underdog on the slate, and they've got one more to recommend today, which both of our analysts love.
You can read about their picks below, and be sure to subscribe to Payoff Pitch for MLB picks and predictions all season long.
Reds vs. Padres, 9:40 p.m.
Graham Ashcraft vs. Michael Wacha
Sean Zerillo: Anthony and I both like the Reds first five and full game. A lot of these underdogs we bet do not have a definitive advantage anywhere in the matchup, but you could say the Reds have a definitive starting pitching advantage in this game. Oftentimes, I’m like "the favorite has the starting pitching advantage, bullpen advantage, offense advantage, but I like the underdog down to this number." Well, we actually get to back the better starting pitcher here.
Graham Ashcraft, compared to his teammates – Nick Lodolo and Hunter Greene – is not going to get nearly as many strikeouts and the Reds have been a bottom five defensive team for the past three years. They are awful defensively. Remember when they tried Eugenio Suarez at shortstop? That was hilarious.
But they’re still terrible defensively, and Ashcraft who still has a 55% groundball rate, is going to continue to get hurt by his defense. The Padres, conversely: better offense, better defense, better base running, better position player group, better bullpen behind Michael Wacha. But Michael Wacha this year has an xERA about a run and half higher than what Ashcraft is doing.
I do like the Reds quite a bit here. The number has moved down, but still within range of my price target. So +134 within five, +145 full game and then also the under, even though I am low on Wacha, temperatures are going to be in the high-50s here — first pitch in San Diego normally 60s or 70s – 9-mph wind blowing in from left field, so I made this closer to 8. I’d bet the under 8.5 to -106, but, certainly prefer the Reds the underdogs.
Anthony Dabbundo: I got the same bets: first five and full game. Michael Wacha’s fastball is one of the worst in all of baseball so far this season, and I don’t think it’s making a comeback. The people he’s listed around are a bunch of soft-tossing lefties: Austin Gomber, Kyle Freeland, Noah Syndergaard, Zach Plesac, Luis Cessa.
It’s a really bad list of people that you want to be named with for fastballs, and it’s getting hit much harder this year. His peripherals are about the same to last season when he was a perfectly capable pitcher, but he’s getting hit a lot harder this year and I think that the reason for that is that his fastball is getting squared up more and you can see that in the numbers.
The Reds are very bad. They’re a very bad baseball team and I try not to bet them often, but with Ashcraft — who has one of the best cutter and slider combinations in all of baseball — I think it’s a good matchup for the Reds so I took them in both halves.
The Padres took a lot of money overnight then it’s come back down this morning, so definitely some market love for the Reds this morning.
