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While we waited all spring and summer long for football to return, the wait from today to Thursday night feels even longer. With Tom Brady coming back the anticipation for this Thursday’s game is higher than ever and we can’t wait for it to get here. The Patriots are currently -6.5 favorites at home against the Steelers for Thursday night’s game. We’ll have more on that when it comes time, but it should be a good one.
Until then we are blessed to have baseball in our lives and especially so tonight as Clayton Kershaw gets takes the mound against Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels. It’s not often you get to see the best hitter in baseball go against the best pitcher and this should be a great one. Kershaw has absolutely been on fire lately. He had a bit of a rough April and May, but since then he has been basically flawless allowing just 19 runs in his last 17 starts. That match-up leads the day as far as watching on TV, but for betting purposes we have a whole different slate of games to get into.
MLB Betting Tips:
The Brewers have been surprisingly competent team in the second half of the season playing just a game under .500 at 23-24 with a 6-1 record in September. A big part of that has been the hot hitting of Jonathan Lucroy and Ryan Braun as well as the influx of young pitching. They play Miami today with Taylor Jungmann going for them who has been the best of the young pitchers. He faces a weak Marlins offense today that he should do well against. Jungmann has a 2.42 ERA and has only allowed more than two earned runs in 2 out of 16 starts. He’s the Brewers best pitcher right now by far and he goes against Adam Conley who holds a 5.02 ERA this season. Brewers -115 is a steal today.
A great pitching match-up with serious playoff implications goes down tonight as the Nationals meet the Mets. Washington has struggled to keep up with the Mets, but nothing makes you move closer in the standings than beating the team ahead of you. The Mets send Matt Harvey and his 2.60 ERA to the mound against Jordan Zimmerman. On a pitcher to pitcher basis Harvey has pitched much better than Zimmerman this season and in my mind the Mets should be favored. Harvey is coming off a bit of a controversy surrounding his innings limit so he might have a little bit of extra motivation to pitch well today. (This, of course, is on top of the extra motivation to keep hold of first place.) Mets +115 should come in thanks to a strong performance from Harvey.
Rasiel Iglesias of the Reds has been a revelation as of late. Over his last five starts he has a 2.38 ERA, 0.76 WHIP and 44 strikeouts in 34 innings. He has been an absolute stud. He gets a tough match-up today against one of the best teams in the National League, the Pirates. The Pirates send their top pitcher, Francisco Liriano, to the mound who has held Reds hitters to a .215//.293/.369 line in his career. It is a small sample size, but I really like these two pitchers today and this game should go under 7.5 runs.
Daily Fantasy Baseball Tip:
A game that I really like for daily fantasy purposes, but not betting purposes is the Tampa Bay Rays and the Detroit Tigers. Despite their reputation as a weak hitting team, the Rays are actually the fifth best team in wOBA against left handed starters. Today they get a really juicy match-up with rookie Matt Boyd on the mound. Boyd is a good prospect, but he is clearly overmatched in the majors right now. As a starter he has a 1-5 record with an 8.27 ERA, a low strikeout rate and a high walk rate. He is a recipe for the disaster and I fully recommend stacking Rays in daily fantasy baseball.
