After a back-and-forth battle in Game 1 on Saturday, the Royals and the Yankees will return to action on Monday night for Game of their ALDS series.
Can the Royals even things up with ace Cole Ragans on the mound? Or will New York take a commanding 2-0 lead? Let’s break it down from a DraftKings Sportsbook perspective.
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Kansas City Royals at New York Yankees
Cole Ragans Over 15.5 Outs Recorded (+105)
While we can all acknowledge that the postseason is a fully unique experience, I think it’s worth noting that Ragans exceeded this prop in 24 of his 32 starts during the regular season. He also went six scoreless innings in Game 1 of Kansas City’s Wild Card series against the Orioles and probably would have worked deeper if not for some cramping in his left calf. At the end of the day, Ragans is the second-best player on the Royals’ roster. In most circumstances, it would behoof the team to extract as much value and volume out of his left arm as physically possible. As a starter, that usually means throwing 100 pitches.
Ragans comes into Monday’s tilt on quite the hot streak. Including his performance versus Baltimore, Ragans has surrendered just three earned runs over his last five outings. That’s a 0.87 ERA in 31.0 innings of action. Funny enough, that stretch features a September 11 start in the Bronx against this same Yankees lineup. Ragans went six innings with the lone blemish being a Juan Soto home run — the only long ball the left-hander has conceded since all the way back on August 20. Spoiler alert: Cole Ragans is very good. You don’t post the fourth-lowest FIP among all qualified pitchers without being an absolute stud (2.99).
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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.
