My apologies for leaving you guys pick-less the past few days. I fully embraced the July 4th holiday weekend and shut my brain down almost entirely. I’ve made a few tweaks to my K-Predictor (patent pending) to de-emphasize the beginning of year shenanigans for everyone except Jacob deGrom – who I’m beginning to suspect is a terminator-level robot pitcher from the future.
On to the strikeout picks…
Brewers @ Mets, 7:10 pm ET
Since I mentioned him in my intro, it only seems right to check the line on the Mets ace Jacob deGrom. He had a monster outing last time he pitched against the Braves striking out 14 people in 7 innings… and lost. Luckily for us, we don’t care about that – just that K count. The bookies have set the line very high this time – at over/under 10.5. I actually think 10 is going to be his max tonight, so I’m going to take the under and -132 from Barstool Sportsbook.
Phillies @ Cubs, 8:05 pm ET
The Phillies have Aaron Nola pitching tonight and I think this is a tremendous matchup for him. The Cubs are an absolute train wreck right now and I think he could do 8-10K tonight. Most books have the line at 6.5 today, but I don’t want to take -167 for the over on that. The folks at FanDuel have the line set for the over 7.5 for +124 and that’s more my liking.
Cardinals @ Giants, 9:45 pm ET
Johnny Cueto is pitching for the Giants and while he hasn’t been an ace on the road, he’s been much better at home. His season era is at 4, but if you look at his home record, it’s 2.81. He’s also averaging 5-6 strikeouts at home, but far less on the road. I’m projecting him to get 5-6K tonight, so let’s take the +107 we’re getting for over 4.5 at DraftKings.
Come back again — same bat-channel — Batman out!