MLB Best Bets for Wednesday (9/29)

Unfortunately, Kansas City, our longshot road dogs of +160, couldn’t get it done against Cleveland Tuesday, losing by a final score of 8-3. We were still correct in some regression coming around to hit Cal Quantrill and he allowed three earned runs and six hits through six innings of work, but Jackson Kowar wasn’t able to keep Cleveland’s bats quiet.

We move to Wednesday’s slate to try and start another winning streak and with a few extremely important games for the AL Wild Card race, action will be plentiful. However, for Wednesday’s column, I’m targeting a game that has no playoff implications whatsoever. One particular reason why I love betting so much — it makes meaningless games extremely exciting.

Miami Marlins @ New York Mets

Miami +165, Caesars Sportsbook; New York -170, DraftKings Sportsbook

After sweeping Tuesday’s doubleheader, New York will host Miami once again for the third game of their current four-game series. Right-hander Elieser Hernandez will be on the bump for Miami to battle New York’s Taijuan Walker.

Hernandez has been mediocre at best for Miami, compiling a 1-3 record over the course of 10 starts and 46.2 innings with a 4.24 ERA and a 4.47 xFIP. He shined in AAA this season with just a 2.95 ERA and 2.88 xFIP to go along with 13.5 K/9, but so far we haven’t seen the same production in the majors. Hernandez has had better road splits during his limited time with an xFIP under 4.00 (3.94) away from Marlins Park. Luckily for him, he also gets to pitch in one of the most pitcher friendly parks in all of baseball, Citi Field, which checks in as the third-worst run-scoring environment in the majors. Going late into games, however, seems to be Hernandez’s real kryptonite. The first time through the order, he’s actually extremely tough on hitters and is able to hold them to a .296 wOBA against with just a 2.83 FIP/3.43 xFIP. He does get progressively worse from there, but even his second time through he’s able to hold hitters to about and average .329 wOBA with a 4.52 xFIP. ,Overall through the first five innings on the road, he has a respectable 3.94 xFIP and white these numbers aren’t earth-shattering by any means, if Hernandez is able to keep New York’s offense at bay the first two times through the order then he gets the luxury of flipping the game to his bullpen that has had the sixth-lowest FIP as a squad over the last month. The Marlins may not be great at scoring runs, but they’ve shown the ability to limit their opposition from scoring this entire season.

New York has been one of the most disappointing lineups in the majors — maybe the most. They had high hopes coming into the season with their big free agent signing Francisco Lindor joining forces with Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto, Domonic Smith, Jeff McNeil and that intimidating starting lineup. They also went out and got Javier Báez at the trade deadline and all they can show for it offensively are below-league-average marks with a .306 wOBA and 96 wRC+. More recently, over the last 14 days New York has been a borderline bottom-five offense with just a .281 wOBA and 80 wRC+, while not being hit by bad luck with a .308 BABIP over that span. Things get even darker over the last week as they have a bottom-three offense with a .264 wOBA and 70 wRC+, despite, again, a normal .302 BABIP. Things are trending in the wrong direction for New York and runs have been extremely hard to come by. Not only do they score the lowest runs per game in the league at home with just 3.66 runs, but over their last 13 games they’ve been averaging barely over three runs per game. Of those 13 games, they’ve scored four or less runs in ten of them. They’ve been striking out at one of the highest rates in the majors lately (L14: 27.5%), L7: 29.2%), while having some of the lowest walk rates over those same spans (L14: 6.4%, L7: 7.7%). For an offense that has seeming forgotten how to hit and who has had a tough time scoring at home all year, I don’t expect them to magically put up a crooked number in this spot.

(Sign up for FTN Bets today for $49.99 a month!)

The pick

It’s a shorter writeup here, as just the Miami pitching and New York offense are relevant here. I’m looking at hopping on the New York team total under as the big plus money for a total has me salivating. Hernandez has been questionable at plenty of times this season, but he’s shown he can limit a lineup at least one time through and behind him he has one of the better bullpens in the league. On the other hand, New York hasn’t been able to hit water if they fell out of a boat over the last couple of weeks and I don’t expect them to all of a sudden turn around their home struggles. Citi Field is one of the worst run-scoring environments in the MLB and the wind should be blowing in from left-center at about 7mph. New York TT u3.5 +115 BetMGM