MLB Picks

This is a complete fade of Zac Gallen. If you want to get frisky and back the Padres to score in the first inning instead of the YRFI, I would not blame you. San Diego has been swinging the bat extremely well over the last week and brings six elite rated hitters, plus two more with strong ratings, according to Batters-Box's current season ratings. Gallen has been a disaster in the opening frame, allowing 15 earned runs through 18 starts for a 7.50 first inning ERA. Opposing hitters own a .342 batting average and .964 OPS in the first, making -121 a very fair price.

This is a giant number for a short-leashed pitcher facing an offense that is deader than dead. Trevor McDonald projects for around 90 pitches today, which might be generous for a guy who has thrown more than 90 pitches just once over his last eight starts. He is coming off a one-hit outing and projects as a better-than-a-hit-per-inning starter. He gets the coldest offense in baseball, which has managed just three runs and 13 hits over its last four games (36 innings) and has done nothing offensively since hitting the West Coast last week. Toronto hasn't recorded more than three hits in three straight games. Because of that, the Giants bullpen is fresh and ready to go, making a 15-out outing from McDonald very realistic. It's time to fade the Jays until this offense shows signs of life.

Michael Lorenzen will give up plenty of crooked numbers early, and then the bullpens will guide this total north of the number.

Colorado's pen is tied with the Dodger bullpen for the fifth-most IP the past week, but Colorado's pen has the lowest K% (14.4%) of any during that span.

An inability to miss the LA bats is an easy way to see a game get out of hand, as two tired bullpens will leak runs late.

D-backs starter Jose Cabrera struggled to find the strike zone in his last outing, surrendering three earned runs over 3 1/3 innings against Milwaukee. Arizona will also have a tough time against Michael King, who has held D-backs hitters to a .546 OPS across 62 at-bats. The Padres are playable to -150.

The Cardinals are in a premium offensive spot against Zac Gallen, who enters the day with the second-worst pitcher rating in Batters-Box's current season model. Gallen has struggled to limit power and hard contact, carrying poorly rated matchup marks in ISO, hard contact rate, and ground ball rate. St. Louis counters with seven elite-rated hitters and an offense averaging more than 2.5 first five innings runs per game at home. The Cardinals have also been red hot lately, posting a 122 wRC+ over their last 12 games. With so many favorable individual matchups, backing the offense as a whole makes plenty of sense.

Okamoto's hitting profile perfectly matches up well against Imanaga’s stuff. The Cubs starter throws a heavy dose of the fastball and gets barreled up at a 10.4% rate. The Jays third baseman barrels the ball better than anyone in the Blue Jays lineup with a 13.5% barrel rate, while owning a 63.2% hard hit rate against the four-seamer. 

Atlanta and Chicago send two of the best lineups in baseball to the dish, and they respectively rank eighth and third in wOBA against lefties for the campaign. The two clubs have also trended to the Over, and I'm particularly expecting White Sox southpaw Anthony Kay to struggle considering he's saddled with the fifth-highest xERA in baseball among the 100 pitchers with at least 60 innings this year.