Orioles vs Phillies Odds
| Orioles Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Moneyline | Total | Run Line |
+106 | 9.5 -110 / -110 | +1.5 -192 |
| Phillies Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Moneyline | Total | Run Line |
-124 | 9.5 -110 / -110 | -1.5 +155 |
Baltimore looks to remain red hot when it makes the short trip to Philadelphia to take on the Phillies.
After taking 3-of-4 from the Rays, the Orioles now have a two-game lead in the American League East. Baltimore has been incredibly hot offensively over the past few weeks, ranking in the top five in baseball in a lot of categories.
The Orioles send Dean Kremer to the mound and hope to give him enough run support, like they did when he pitched against the Dodgers in his last outing.
The Phillies have played themselves into the wild card picture, sitting only a half-game back of San Francisco after the Giants dropped their fifth straight game on Sunday.
They will send Cristopher Sanchez to the mound and hope their offense can keep things going after scoring eight runs Sunday.
Baltimore Orioles
Kremer has been a disaster for the Orioles this season. He's even been significantly worse than his already-bad numbers look on paper.
His ERA sits at 4.80, but his xERA is up at 5.63. He’s in the bottom-10 percentile among MLB starting pitchers in xwOBA, xSLG and xBA.
The Dodgers did a fantastic job not chasing anything in Kremer's last start, so if he faces a team with a good plate approach that doesn't chase anything, he really isn't effective at all.
Kremer is a very straightforward pitcher, with his three main pitches being a fastball, sinker and cutter. All three of those pitches are allowing an xwOBA over .350. He's failed to keep the ball off the sweet spot, allowing an insanely high 11% barrel rate.
Baltimore's offense cooled off a bit in Tampa Bay for its four-game series, and over the last 30 days, it's been an average offense with a .315 wOBA and 100 wRC+.
Baltimore is in the top 10 in wOBA against left-handed pitching, so maybe they'll have a decent matchup against Sanchez.
Philadelphia Phillies
Sanchez has been solid through his first seven starts, posting a 3.06 ERA, but he has overperformed with his xERA at 3.96.
Sanchez is successful when he's inducing a lot of ground balls. He has only three pitches in a sinker, changeup and slider, so everything is designed to be down in the zone. He does have a pretty high 54.5% ground-ball rate.
However, when you dig deeper into Sanchez's Statcast metrics, things look a lot shakier than a 3.06 ERA.
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Image via Baseball Savant
The Orioles have the ability to stack eight right-handed bats against Sanchez, which is why they boast a top-10 offense against left-handed pitching.
The Phillies offense has been average in wOBA against right-handed pitching, but their offense doesn't have a lot of weaknesses when it comes to pitch types. Cutters are the only pitch they have a negative run value against. Kremer throws a terrible cutter, though, so this is a good matchup for Philly.
Orioles vs Phillies Betting Pick
With these two starting pitchers on the mound, I think we're going to see a lot of runs early on.
Kremer has been overperforming like crazy and getting too much run support to disguise himself as a decent pitcher. In reality, he's terrible in all of the expected metrics.
Sanchez has been overperforming as well. He sits below the 30th percentile in hard-hit rate allowed, barrel rate allowed and expected batting average allowed, which are usually good indicators that negative regression is coming for a pitcher who has a low ERA.
Both of these bullpens have been good this season and find themselves in the top 10 in xFIP, so I'm going to avoid the bullpens in this matchup and back over 5 runs for the first five innings at -110.
Pick: F5 Over 5 (-110) |
