Full Friday slate of action coming up today. 1-1-1 on free plays this week. 5-4-1 overall. Looking to close out the weekend with another winning week. Here’s two plays for Friday. Hit me up @thegreatknoche on twitter if interested in all the plays.
Rangers @ Red Sox – Chris Sale takes the mound in his second start back from Tommy John surgery. He was very solid giving up 2 ER on 6 hits with 8 Ks over 5 IP. Very nice first trip back. Then again it was against the Orioles who are in the midst of a historic losing streak…more on that shortly. The Red Sox are 6-14 in their last 20 games (3-14 if you take out the Orioles series) and have not been playing great ball. The Rangers are an identical 6-14 in the last 20 games. They are sending Dane Dunning to the bump. He’s 5-7 with a 4.06 ERA. xFIP at 3.69. Since July 1st however he has a 2.74 ERA over 29 2/3 innings with opponents batting .202 against him. Rangers are averaging around 4 runs a game over last seven and I could see them getting a few runs across against Sale. The overall line on this game is sitting around +250, but I don’t really trust the Texas bullpen until they get to Barlow. I’m making a straight ROI play here, as I think Boston should be a favorite but not to this degree, There’s lots of value on this dog. Texas First 5 +240 1 Unit.
Atlanta @ Baltimore – The Braves travel to Camden Yards for interleague play today to kick off a 3 game set with the O’s. The Orioles are bad. I mean just plain awful. If you’ve been sleeping under a rock they have lost 15 games straight, and they are averaging 9.2 Runs against over those 15 games. Keegan Akin goes for Baltimore with his 8.13 ERA. He’s been bouncing between bullpen and starting for the O’s. He has given up 3 or more runs in every start since June 4th. Max Fried has been very good over the last four starts giving up only 4 ER over his last 25 innings. Those starts came against the Cards, Mets and 2 starts vs the Nats. Baltimore is in the bottom third in most offensive metrics so I don’t expect a bunch out of them, but the way their pitching has been they might only need 2 runs to put this over the top. Camden Yards is playing as the #8 home park for runs in park metrics and #1 for Home Runs. Atlanta has hit the third most home runs so that looks good for scoring. Finally One of the tools I use for judging if lines looks correct based on pitcher vs hitter matchups is the Streamonator on Razzball.com. Rudy Gamble has his models dialed in, though its mainly for fantasy streaming it translates very well when looking for value. It just thinks this start is okay for Fried with a $1.3 dollar value. Akin checks in with a -$17.7. I’ve got this matchup at 11.5 so there’s value in the Over 10, 1.5 Units
