BEST LINES: Pinnacle +102 Bet365 -105 SportsInteraction +100 5DIMES +100

Posted at 1:00 PM EST. 

10:10 PM EST. Like many others, we also watched the A’s lose four games in succession in Toronto and they looked absolutely pathetic every game. The point is that it is so difficult to pull the trigger on a team like Oakland after watching that four-day debacle. That said, the A’s are a completely different team at home with a 28-23 record that makes them very playable when being offered a price and we’re pretty sure the price will go up throughout the day as well. If you are on board here, you may want to wait until game time, as this tag will likely be more in the +110 to +115 range. After battling injuries for much of his career, veteran southpaw Jaime Garcia has managed to remain relatively healthy over the past two calendar years, making 63 appearances (61 starts) since coming off the DL in July of 2015. After a rough four-start stretch heading into the All-Star break during which he yielded 23 earned runs in 22 innings, Garcia has bounced back off 10 days of rest to produce consecutive seven-inning quality starts against two of the top four offenses in baseball. His affordable, expiring contract and roughly league-average production made him an attractive, low-cost acquisition target for any contender in need of lengthening its rotation and so the Twinkies made a move to get him. In his last start while still pitching for the Braves, Garcia beat the Dodgers with an impressive outing that snapped the Dodgers seven game winning streak and put Garcia’s stock higher than it’s been in a long while. Why, then, are the Twins with Garcia going such a short price to open? The oddsmakers didn’t make a mistake here.

Garcia has moved past a rough four-start stretch heading into the All-Star break, reverting to working off a complementary four-seam fastball that set up his deep arsenal. However, the 31-year-old lefty arrives with a 4-7 record and 4.30 ERA (4.22 xERA) with the Braves. His control and strikeout rate are going in the wrong direction. Garcia gave up 108 hits, walked 41 and struck out 85 in 113 innings and he cannot get through the lineup more than twice, which is rarely past five innings. Hitters are currently pummeling him to the tune of a .325/.403/.569 line on third glance and that’s a big problem. As road chalk, we’ll pass.

Daniel Gossett comes in with a 2-5 record and 5.40 ERA after eight starts. However, a lot of the damage to his ERA has been caused by a low strand rate and a ridiculously high hr/f. A 4.19 xERA says his skills have at least been closer to league average or better. His ground ball rate is holding steady at 46%. He has a decent BB/K split of 8/29 in 43 frames. While we’d like to see more K’s, his control compensates somewhat. The skills underlying Gossett’s current ERA give reason to extend him some patience and that’s precisely what the oddsmakers are doing here. In a game in which the market is going after the chalk hard, we’re going to do the opposite.

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