Top Sportsbooks have released their MLB oddsfor today’s baseball action.
Two games interest me as worth investing in: Marlins vs. Red Sox and Guardians vs. Royals.
For your MLB player props, I will recommend investing in weak pitching performances from Miami’s Sandy Alcantara, Cleveland’s Gavin Williams, and Kansas City’s Brady Singer.
Picks Summary:
- Sandy Alcantara Over 3.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (+120) at BetMGM
- Gavin Williams Over 2.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (-111) at BetMGM
- Brady Singer Over 3.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (+115) at BetMGM
Miami Marlins vs. Boston Red Sox
Tuesday, June 27, 2023 – 07:10 PM EDT at Fenway Park
Sandy Alcantara (Miami Marlins)
Sandy Alcantara starts for the Marlins tonight. This season, Alcantara is not the pitcher that we had been used to seeing. Whereas his ERA was 2.28 last year, it is currently 5.08.
In addition to striking out fewer batters, he’s surrendering walks and home runs at higher rates. Batters are also having more success elevating and making hard contact against his pitches. Evidently, he is not getting away with the bad location that, as heat maps show, his pitches tend to be guilty of.
Particularly his sinker, fastball, and slider, which are three of the four pitches he throws, often land in the more middle parts of the strike zone where batters are likelier to do greater damage.
Alcantara’s Disadvantage
But an additional, managerial factor makes it difficult for Alcantara to avoid giving up higher run totals. He stays longer in games, in which case opposing batters increase their productivity. When he faces the same lineup for a third time in a given game, he yields a 7.56 ERA.
During the fourth time, he yields a 14.54 ERA. Sometimes cashing in on the “Over” on his total earned runs allowed prop is merely a matter of patient waiting.
The Matchup
But we won’t have to wait long for Alcantara to give up the necessary number of earned runs, because Boston matches up well against him. The Red Sox rank eighth with a .428 slugging rate against his four pitches from righties.
Expect, for example, Justin Turner to thrive. Turner slugs .667 against Alcantara despite having cultivated that slugging rate against a more successful version of Alcantara.
For your best bets, expect Alcantara to allow five earned runs or more for a third straight start.
MLB Prop Pick: Sandy Alcantara Over 3.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (+120) at BetMGM
Cleveland Guardians vs. Kansas City Royals
Tuesday, June 27, 2023 – 08:10 PM EDT at Kauffman Stadium
Gavin Williams (Cleveland Guardians)
Gavin Williams starts for the Guardians today. To be fair, Williams is clearly very talented, but that doesn’t mean he’s ready remotely to approach his potential to succeed in professional baseball.
The most significant indicator of a pitcher’s professional readiness is command. Every pitcher who steps on a professional mound has good stuff. But pitchers also need to be able to command their pitches.
Even before his first start and even though this start took place against one of the softest challenges (Oakland), I didn’t like Williams because he lacked the necessary command.
In Triple-A, he walked 4.11 batters per nine innings, which is a bad walk rate even in the majors. Hence, when he faced Oakland, he gave up four earned runs in 5.2 innings. Because, in order to avoid walking batters, he often left his pitches in the more middle parts of the strike zone, batters generated medium and hard contact against his pitches at a high rate. His 6.3% soft contact rate is awful.
The Matchup
While Williams will improve, improvement is a slow process.
Given his preexisting and ongoing tendency to walk too many batters, one can’t expect improvement to happen so quickly for him because he clearly has longstanding flaws with his command that prevent him from being ready to be effective on the professional level.
Besides, Kansas City poses a tougher challenge for him, based on its slugging rate against his pitches from righties in comparison with Oakland’s.
Moreover, Williams is very much a fly ball-inducing pitcher, and the Royals slug .83 higher against such pitchers than against ground ball-inducing pitchers.
As measured by its run production, Kansas City has most recently been a good bounce-back team, and tonight’s game presents a good opportunity for it to continue this bounce-back tendency.
MLB Prop Pick: Gavin Williams Over 2.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (-111) at BetMGM
Brady Singer (Kansas City Royals)
Brady Singer starts for the Royals. No matchup seems to be safe for Singer. Some of his worst starts have come against baseball’s lowest-tiered lineups, such as when he allowed five earned runs in four innings to Oakland.
Moreover, he allowed five earned runs on two different occasions to the Tigers. Singer is rather easy for batters to figure out because similar to a reliever, he relies extensively on only two pitches.
His sinker and slider combine to make up over 90% of his arsenal. As heat maps show, he concentrates the location of his sinker in the more middle parts of the strike zone where batters tend to do greater damage.
He also too often leaves his slider up in the zone, instead of burying it to places where it is harder for batters to make strong contact. But his negative locational tendencies only partly explain why he yields hard contact on an awful 42.1 percent of his pitches and why he likewise struggles to generate soft contact.
In terms of velocity, spin rate, and movement, his pitches also lack quality in themselves. They certainly lack the quality to survive bad locations.
The Matchup
While Cleveland’s hitting numbers are poor, this is largely a reflection of its awful first two months of the season. But we are in June now, so April and May are irrelevant to this point of the season. In June, the Guardians slug .422, compared to .353 in April and .348 in May.
Since the start of June, they slug well above average -.427 – against Singer’s two favorite pitches from righties and even more strongly against Singer’s three favorite pitches from righties.
Hitting machines Jose Ramirez, Myles Straw, Josh Naylor, and Steven Kwan already boast strong track records against Singer as measured by slugging rate.
MLB Prop Pick: Brady Singer Over 3.5 Total Earned Runs Allowed (+115) at BetMGM
