MLB Best Bets for Wednesday (9/1)

Man does it feel good to get some wins back under our belt. Our trio of bets from Monday got off to a cruel start with Baltimore and Toronto failing to hit the first five innings over five by scoring just a run each through the first half of the game. In agonizing fashion, the teams combined to put up a four-run sixth inning that would’ve given us our first-five-finning over. With another three runs in the seventh, Toronto was able to cash their team total over five and a half runs and we ended up getting some luck back in the ninth when Baltimore scored a meaningless run to push the total to 10.

We were able to take two of three bets on the game, end up green, and start the week off with some profits. As the calendar turns to September, the first of the month offers us a loaded 16-game slate with St. Louis and Cincinnati matching up for a doubleheader. There will be no shortage of games to sift through and I’ll pick out the matchup and angle I find to provide the most value on Wednesday’s slate.

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Boston Red Sox @ Tampa Bay Rays

Boston +105, BetAmerica; Tampa Bay -110, Caesars Sportsbook

Boston and Tampa Bay are in the midst of a four-game series, with Tampa Bay already taking the first two games of the series. The Red Sox will send out their ace, Chris Sale, to try and salvage Game 3 against Tampa Bay’s Drew Rasmussen.

As amusing as it may have been for Boston fans when just about every New York player was hitting the COVID-IL, it seems that karma has spun back their way and hit them just as hard. Since last Friday, Boston has lost Xander Bogaerts, Kiké Hernández, Christian Arroyo, Matt Barnes, Martín Pérez and Hirokazu Sawamura, while Josh Taylor was also added to the list due to close-contact protocols. Due to all of these losses, Boston will be forced to start callups Yairo Muñoz at short and Jonathan Araúz at second base, while slumping Jarren Duran gets slotted back into the lineup and their typical nine-hole hitter, Bobby Dalbec, is projected to slide up and bat fifth. To put things into perspective as to how much worse this makes Boston’s lineup, players not named Hunter Renfroe, Kyle Schwarber, J.D. Martinez or Rafael Devers went a combined 2-18 in Tuesday’s game with four strikeouts, zero runs scored, zero RBIs and 11 men left on base. With Boston’s lineup looking so different, prior stats won’t provide much insight for us, but with how bad they played yesterday, how bad they’ve been since the All-Star break, and facing one of the better pitching staffs in the league, I find it hard to believe that this group of misfit swill be able to put up a lot of runs in this one.

Luckily for the Red Sox, they’ll have their ace Chris Sale on the mound and hopefully won’t need many runs to win anyway. Sale just recently returned from the IL following Tommy John surgery. In his three starts since coming back he’s picked up right where he left off with a 2.35 ERA, 3.75 FIP and 12.33 K/9. Boston has been hesitant to stretch him out, as he’s only gone about five innings in each start, but even without going deep into games he’s been able to put his team in a position to win, going 3-0 since his return. Granted it is a small sample size, but he’s been able to reduce his barrel% to 5.6%, hard hit% to 30.6%, and average exit velocity to 82.1mph this season after already posting great numbers across the board last year. Sale may not be going deep into games, but if he continues to pitch the way he has been he should be able to shut down this Tampa Bay lineup for another 5-6 innings.

Overall, Tampa Bay has had a top-five offense on the year with a .320 wOBA and 107 wRC+, but it appears southpaws may be their Achilles heel. They’ve only mustered a .308 wOBA and 98 wRC+ against lefties, plummeting their offense down to 17th overall. They’re a free-swinging bunch, with the fifth-highest K% overall, but again facing lefties that number gets worse and balloons up to 26% which is good for the third-highest mark in the majors. Maybe somewhat obvious due to their high strikeout rates, Tampa Bay isn’t great with making contact whether it’s inside or outside of the strike zone. They have the sixth-lowest out-of-zone contact rate (60.8%) and the absolute lowest contact rate inside the strike zone of any team in the league (81.5%). Naturally, this results in them having the seventh-highest CSW% (28.4%) which doesn’t provide them with the best matchup facing a pitcher with elite swing and miss stuff. Tampa Bay has been great at the plate for the better part of the entire season, but it’s tough to score runs if you can’t even make contact.

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Drew Rasmussen has only recently been elevated into a starting role, but in his few starts he’s been nothing short of spectacular. On the season, he has 30 appearances, five of which are starts, with a 3.46 ERA and a 3.25 FIP, without alarmingly low BABIP or HR/FB numbers. While his road splits have been better, he’s still been able to hold opposing hitters to just a .295 wOBA with a 3.78 FIP at home and his numbers have been even better as a starter with just a .204 wOBA against with a 3.27 FIP. His last three games have been the first time all year he’s made consecutive starts and over that span he has a sparkling 1.38 ERA and a 2.85 FIP, including a four-inning appearance against Boston where he allowed just one hit and one run while striking out four. His hard hit rate is definitely higher than you’d like to see at 47%, but he’s been able to keep his barrel rate down to a very respectable 5.8%. Like Sale, he may not go deep into this game, but he’ll be facing a lineup with essentially only 4-5 average-to-above-average hitters, which leads me to believe he’ll have another successful start here.

The pick

With Boston not being able to roll out the team’s everyday lineup and Tampa Bay struggling more facing lefties than righties, I’m sensing another total lean here. Sale has been great since his return and Rasmussen has been a very pleasant surprise starting for Tampa Bay, making me give the advantage to both teams’ pitching. Besides Marlins Park, Tropicana is the worst run-scoring environment in the majors, and I expect that to come into play here. u7.5 +100 BetAmerica