The Padres and Mets are facing off in San Diego on Tuesday night. Below, I break down my prediction and pick for the game.
Sean Manaea will be starting for the Mets, and Ryan Bergert will take the mound for the Padres.
Padres vs. Mets prediction, preview
Sean Manaea is making his third start of the season for the Mets. Manaea missed the first half of the season with an injury, but he returned just before the All-Star break. He has made three total appearances for the Mets this season and has looked sharp every time. He has ramped up from 3.1 innings to four innings to five innings across his three appearances. He has been completely steady, giving up exactly one run in each of those games. He will look to keep that consistency up and try to get even deeper into his start against the Padres.
Ryan Bergert is taking the bump for San Diego. The rookie is having a good season for the Padres. He has a 2.84 ERA through 10 appearances, including six starts. The rookie threw a shutout inning in each of his first four appearances in his career. He was then given the chance to start and has made six starts in total since. In his starts, he has a 3.25 ERA but hasn’t been able to go deep into games. He has not made it five innings in any of his past three starts. The Mets’ bats are dangerous at the moment, and it should be a tough test for Bergert.
Padres vs. Mets pick, best bet
The Mets and Padres played an epic first game of their series on Monday night. The two teams combined for nine runs in the fifth inning, the Mets tied the game in the top of the ninth and the Padres walked it off in the bottom of the ninth. It should be a great series between these two teams. The Mets were riding a seven-game winning streak before last night’s loss. That pushed them atop the NL East, while the Padres are only four games back of the Dodgers in the NL West, putting them firmly in an NL Wild Card spot.
Both of these pitchers have been great this season, but both have struggled with stretching deep into games. Manaea is still ramping up from his long stretch on the IL and has yet to make it more than five innings. Meanwhile, Bergert only has six career MLB starts and has never made it deeper than 5.1 innings. That could make the game come down to the bullpens, just as it did last night. The Mets rank seventh in the MLB in bullpen ERA, but the Padres are the best with a 3.03 bullpen ERA.
My best bet is a same-game parlay of under 8.5 runs and Sean Manaea to have five or more strikeouts. While Manaea and Bergert likely won’t go six or seven innings, they have been great at limiting runs. They both should be able to pass the game off to their respective bullpens, who have both been great this season. That should keep the game under 8.5 runs. Despite not going deep into games so far, Manaea has been striking out batters with great efficiency. He is striking out 13.1 batters per nine innings and should be able to rack up at least five strikeouts in this game against San Diego.
