MLB Best Bets for Thursday, June 20th
Welcome to my semi-weekly first five inning article! Twice a week throughout baseball season I’ll write up some of the more intriguing first five inning plays of the day. Handicapping pitchers is such a big part of betting baseball, and betting first fives is something I have gravitated to as a bettor.
As always, make sure to keep an eye out for Adam Burke’s columns which will appear daily. Adam is our primary baseball mind, and will be handicapping daily throughout this season.
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Throughout the season I will be keeping track of the results of this article, which you can view here.
MLB Best Bets
Kansas City Royals at Oakland Athletics
Seth Lugo vs Mitch Spence
Seth Lugo takes the mound for Kansas City today. Lugo has been the target of baseball handicappers due to some noise in his numbers and fading him has been a mixed bag.
Ten days ago the Yankees got him for four earned runs, but he still pitched seven strong innings in a loss. In his previous start against the Dodgers Lugo pitched a gem. He went six innings, gave up just two earned runs and struck out four.
Lugo is a classic pitch-to-contact pitcher. Those guys tend to have a ton of noise in their metrics due to the contact they allow and the low strikeout numbers. It is a pitcher I have had trouble reading myself, but the price today is bringing me toward Oakland.
Mitch Spence is making his seventh start for the Athletics. In his starts he has a 3.69 ERA and 3.30 FIP. The market might be sleeping on how effective Oakland’s starter can be.
Spence is similar to Lugo in that he is not a dominant swing-and-miss pitcher. Like Lugo, he tends to let his defense do the work. Spence ranks in the 28th percentile in strikeout rate (18.8%), the 49th percentile in barrel rate (7.6%) and the 31st percentile in hard-hit rate (40.9%). But, 49.1% of batted balls against him are grounders.
The Athletics’ starter should give them a better chance to compete in the first five frames than what the market is saying this morning. The lineup for Oakland is not terrible, and at home they rank 13th in wRC+ (106). Against a pitcher with some signs of regression like Lugo and the price, that is enough to get me behind the underdog today.
Play: Athletics F5 ML (+140)
