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The national game of the day to start the week is an NL East battle between the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets, the first meeting between the two teams this season.
These matchups could do a lot to determine which squad is going to come out on top of the competitive division, so you’ll want to keep a close eye on them whenever they pop up for the rest of the season. But for today, we got you covered with who we think you should take on the moneyline and a player prop we think has a good chance of hitting as well.
Mets vs. Braves, 7 p.m. ET
Moneyline pick: Braves (-150)
The Mets come into this series on a three-game losing streak, with the last two coming by pretty big margins. New York will be hoping to stop the slide when they send Taijuan Walker to the hill. He’s been quite good this season, going at least six innings in his last three games. The issue is that New York struggles to score runs, regardless of how good their pitcher tosses. It will be tough for them to score Monday too against Max Fried. He started the season shaky but has turned it around, allowing just six hits, two runs and notching 10 strikeouts in his last 11 innings of work. New York has the least amount of runs scored by any team this season and has scored just 11 in their last four games, for an average of just under three runs per game.
Player Prop: Taijuan Walker over 4.5 strikeouts (-114)
Walker is averaging 5.5 strikeouts per game and the lowest he’s ever had in a single game is four. Over his last three games, he has 16 strikeouts, so he’s been on a roll lately too. Atlanta strikes out a lot too, holding the 12th most in all of baseball with 364 on the season. Five Ks should be easy for Walker to hit in this one.
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