With the NFL season underway, baseball has taken a slight back seat. But it shouldn’t: with just a few weeks left in the MLB season, there’s a lot left to play for, especially in the American League, where five teams are within four games of each other for the league’s final Wild Card spot.
Several of those teams are in action as part of tonight’s 11-game MLB slate, which also features the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers as they cling to the top of the NL West.
Here are my three favorite prop bets and predictions from tonight’s baseball action at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Cal Raleigh 1+ Home Runs (+195)
As Raleigh’s Seattle Mariners try to hold on to the final Wild Card spot in the American League and chase down the inconsistent Houston Astros, who they trail by 2.5 games, Big Dumper is starting to find his stride at the plate again. He ended August on a nasty slump, going zero-for-14 in the last five games of the month, but he’s gotten a hit every game so far in September and bashed homers in three of his last five.
Overall, it’s hard to trust the Mariners’ offense, which has posted a fairly mediocre .752 OPS since the start of August despite having Raleigh, Eugenio Suárez, Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena, and Josh Naylor, but it’s even harder to trust Miles Mikolas.
Mikolas has conceded 24 or more home runs in each of his last five full seasons, ranking four times in the NL’s bottom 10 in that category. To be fair, his homer numbers are somewhat exacerbated by one disastrous outing on July 4, in which he gave up six homers to the Chicago Cubs, but even after accounting for that start, his numbers are still bad. After opening the season with six homer-less outings, he’s allowed at least one in 14 of his 21 starts. Of course, Seattle’s homers could come from elsewhere, but backing the league’s home run king to go deep is hardly bold.
Mikolas’ weaknesses mitigate Raleigh’s and amplify his strengths. He ranks in just the third percentile in whiff rate and strikeout rate, which are Raleigh’s main problems as a hitter; when he hits it, he tends to hit it hard. Plus, he walks batters very infrequently, so more of Raleigh’s plate appearances should end with a ball in play. Mikolas also tends to throw it down and in to left-handed batters, and Raleigh has posted among his highest barrel rates on such pitches. Big Dumper is well-suited to record another big fly tonight.
Colorado Rockies +1.5 at Los Angeles Dodgers (+133)
I watched Yoshinobu Yamamoto came within two strikes and a few feet of becoming the third Japanese pitcher ever to record an MLB no-hitter — which, coincidentally, would’ve also made him the third Japanese pitcher ever to record a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles — just for the Dodgers to lose 4-3, a first-of-its-kind meltdown. Los Angeles’ 5-2 win yesterday doesn’t inspire tons of belief that the Dodgers are back, just that an inconsistent team managed to luck its way into a win.
This game shouldn’t be close; Los Angeles, buoyed by league-high attendance, is a solid 45-26 at home, and the Rockies are an atrocious 17-51 on the road. All three of the teams’ previous games at Dodger Stadium were Dodgers wins, two of them by double digits, and all in all, Colorado has just a 2-8 record against its rival this season. Chase Dollander has started twice for the Rockies against Los Angeles this season and lost both games by double digits, giving up a total of 10 runs in 8.2 innings.
However, Dollander has extreme home-road splits, having been victimized by the hitter-friendly environment at Coors Field. In his 11 home starts, he has a 9.98 ERA, but on the road, that figure improves to 3.64. Plus, the Dodgers’ starter hasn’t been announced yet, but if it’s Tyler Glasnow, he was scratched from his most recent start with back tightness and might not be 100%. Los Angeles has only won two of Glasnow’s 14 starts by multiple runs. The Dodgers bullpen has a 5.60 ERA through the first six games of September.
Boston Red Sox at Athletics U9 (-111)
In both dugouts, it’s a battle of good offense and better defense. The Athletics have arguably had the league’s best hitter for most of the season; since June 15, Nick Kurtz has slashed .340/.450/.734 with 24 homers and 57 RBI’s, leading the young squad to an impressive 36-31 record. Combined with the breakouts of fellow AL Rookie of the Year candidate Jacob Wilson and catcher Shea Langeliers, the Athletics have had among the league’s best offenses, putting up the league’s fourth-best OPS since the All-Star break.
On a season-long basis, the Red Sox have had the eighth-best OPS while scoring the league’s sixth-most runs. Though they’ve been slightly worse away from the hitter-friendly confines of Fenway Park, they still have formidable offensive talent, from Alex Bregman to Trevor Story to Ceddanne Rafaela, and they should be okay at Sutter Health Park, which has also been an offense-forward venue this season.
However, this could be a proper pitching duel. Despite a rough start against the Cleveland Guardians in his most recent outing, Boston’s Garrett Crochet is still a Cy Young Award contender, having posted a 2.67 ERA this season and ranking second in the AL in both strikeouts and strikeout-to-walk ratio. He’s conceded two or fewer earned runs in 23 of his 28 starts this season, so I’m confident in him to bounce back. The same is true of the Athletics’ Luis Morales, who has given up two or fewer runs in each of his five MLB starts and was similarly strong across his last month with Triple-A Las Vegas.
The Red Sox have struggled to find their offense as of late, scoring exactly one run in two of their four games since rookie sensation Roman Anthony went down with an oblique strain. If they let closer Aroldis Chapman — who has not allowed a hit since July 23 — pitch for the second straight night, his inning is virtually guaranteed to be scoreless.
