We started the week on a strong note Tuesday night, coming one Luke Weaver walk shy of a perfect 3-0 night.
At any rate, we'll happily take the profitable 2-1 evening and look to build on it with three more plays for Wednesday's card.
Dodgers (-130) @ Diamondbacks (+110)
The Dodgers are rolling. They have won eight of the past 10 games on the back of an absurdly hot offense. Los Angeles has plated 62 runs over the last eight, good for an average of 7.75 per game.
They are firing on all cylinders, and I don't see them slowing down against Merrill Kelly.
Kelly is a solid pitcher, but he doesn't have electric stuff to overcome Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and the Dodgers' best weapons. If his location isn't perfect, they will make him pay.
They have done that time and time and time again against Kelly. He has been credited with a loss in eight of his last nine games against the Dodgers.
Zooming out even further, Kelly owns a 0-10 record with a 5.45 ERA against the Dodgers in his career. He has never had an answer for them.
With the Dodgers at the peak of their powers offensively, I don't see any reason to expect different this time around. They should be able to plate a few runs against Kelly and feel comfortable with Bobby Miller doing the rest.
Miller has thrown strikes at a very high clip the past month and his xwOBA of .261 - coupled with an unsustainably high BABIP of .357 - indicates he probably deserves better results than he's been getting.
This is a prime spot for regression to hit against a Diamondbacks team laboring at the dish. They own a putrid .273 wOBA and .133 ISO against righties the past couple of weeks, both of which rank near the bottom of the league.
Bet: Dodgers F5 -0.5 (-105)
Jordan Montgomery over 17.5 outs
Montgomery is Mr. Consistent right now, completing at least six innings in nine of his past 10 starts. It doesn't matter what kind of trouble he runs into along the way - he just gets the job done.
I don't anticipate the Athletics being the team to knock things off the rails. They rank dead last in runs per game, hits per game, and slugging. They don't have the power - nor the ability to string together hits - to realistically pose a threat and chase Montgomery from the game early.
They are also in mind-numbingly bad form against left-handed pitchers. Since July 1, the Athletics own a .276 xwOBA against lefties and have hit grounders at a higher rate (52.1%) than any team in the majors. That should feed right into the hands of Montgomery, who is a pitch-to-contact arm.
Look for Montgomery to induce a lot of low-pitch-count grounders and work his way through another six innings again this afternoon.
Odds: -115 (playable to -130)
Logan Allen under 16.5 outs
Allen has pitched at least six innings in three straight starts, but he wasn't overly impressive, allowing 11 runs over 19 innings (5.21 ERA). Those games came against brutal offenses, with Allen seeing the White Sox twice and the Royals once.
Going back a little further, Allen failed to record more than 15 outs in four straight starts. He saw teams like the Pirates, Athletics, and Royals in that span so it wasn't as if the competition was stiff.
Allen has gone under in four of his past seven starts and was hit around pretty good by a pair of bad offenses in the games he managed to survive. He looks vulnerable right now, and I think the Blue Jays are capable of exploiting him.
The Jays are red hot against left-handed pitching, hitting a whopping .299 against lefties since the beginning of July. Insane numbers.
Only two of the eight left-handed starters they've seen in that time have managed to record more than 15 outs. They're consistently getting lefties out of the game early, and, given Allen's recent form, I expect that trend to continue in this one.
Odds: -130 (playable to -135)
Todd Cordell is a sports betting writer at theScore. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @ToddCordell.
