On Monday evening, the Atlanta Braves continue their recent homestand by welcoming an NL West foe to Truist Park. The San Francisco Giants come to town nursing a series sweep to kick things off after the All-Star break, so the visitors should feel plenty motivated heading into tonight’s contest.
Here’s a Braves vs. Giants prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook for Monday evening’s contest.
Braves vs. Giants prediction, preview
The Braves keep experiencing their fair share of struggles as they fell to 43-55 on the season after losing two of three games to the Yankees over the weekend. It’s been a campaign to forget overall, especially with three starting key pitchers and Austin Riley all on the IL. The latter should return on Tuesday, but as the trade deadline looms, it’s hard to tell what direction this team will go. They feel more like sellers than buyers, but Atlanta still has enough talent to potentially make a run for a Wild Card spot down the stretch.
Overall this year, the Braves rank 20th in AVG, 19th in OPS and 22nd in runs scored. They did muster seven and nine runs in two of their last three games, so that’s an encouraging sign, but they may struggle once more against a very strong Giants staff. As for Atlanta’s own pitchers, they retire a ton of batters with the third-most strikeouts and fall 12th in WHIP, but rank 17th in ERA. Their performance with AJ Smith-Shawver sidelined for the year as well as Spencer Schwellenbach and Chris Sale on IL actually feels quite impressive, but waiting for those two to return means the Braves are losing ground by the day.
The Giants are 52-48 this season at third place in the NL West, just 2.5 games behind the second-place San Diego Padres. San Francisco just lost three straight contests to the Toronto Blue Jays with nine total runs across those three games, so they’re in a bit of an ugly patch but have the opportunity to bounce back over the next few days in Atlanta.
As mentioned earlier, the Giants excel thanks to a talented stable of arms anchored by a couple of ace pitchers in Robbie Ray and Logan Webb. San Francisco sits fourth in ERA as well as 14th in WHIP and strikeouts. The team’s main issue is an offense that flips a coin to decide whether they’ll show up at the plate on any given night — the Giants are 26th in AVG and 24th in OPS with the 21st-most runs this year. While not the biggest problem in the lineup, trade acquisition Rafael Devers slashes just .208/.322/.327 since arriving in the Bay Area over his first 101 at-bats. Even if he alone rounds back into his prior form as seen before that trade, this team would look much better on a consistent basis.
Braves vs. Giants pick, best bet
The Giants enter this matchup as +108 Moneyline underdogs on DraftKings Sportsbook while the Braves are -132 favorites at home. The run total sits at 9.5.
DraftKings Network just introduced a new probable pitchers page to track daily starter matchups, so be sure to check that out ahead of the game! Tonight, Atlanta’s Bryce Elder (5.65 ERA, 1.51 WHIP, 69 SO) faces San Francisco‘s Hayden Birdsong (4.11 ERA, 1.42 WHIP, 68 SO) in a righty-on-righty battle.
Neither one of these teams are consistently great with their bats, but I do think there’s value available in some different markets than I’d usually hit. Looking at the pitchers tonight, Elder hasn’t thrown the ball well as of late — he’s allowed seven or more hits in all five starts dating back to June 13 while giving up at least four earned runs in four of those five appearances. He’s a pitcher to target this evening, so I’m comfortable taking the Giants to score at least three runs in the first five innings. With a high 10.39 H/9 and 1.81 HR/9, it may only take a handful of opportunities for San Francisco to reach this tally.
Best bet: SF Giants over 2-5 runs in first five innings (+105)
Click the odds on this bet to tail!
