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+155 +150   +150

Posted at 12:00 PM EST and are subject to change.

Seattle +155 over Houston

8:10 PM EST. Yeah, we’ll take Robby Ray (LHP - SEA) and the very warm Mariners at this price every single time. The Mariners have punished opponents recently to the tune of a 114 wRC+ over the last month. wRC+ takes the statistic Runs Created and adjusts that number to account for important external factors -- like park factors for instance. It's adjusted, so a wRC+ of 100 is league average and 150 would be 50 percent above league average, thus 114 is a great number. Ray quietly featured the nastiest stuff in the game among starting pitchers during May and during July. His 20.2% swing & miss rate gave him an elite 33% K%. He also attacked hitters at a high rate (68% first-pitch strike rate).

Alrighty, let’s go through this again. Indeed, Justin Verlander (RHP - HOU) has the pedigree of a champion and the reputation of being one of the best pitchers in baseball. We faded Verlander last week in Seattle and he threw a gem (sort of) allowing one run on four hits while striking out nine and walking two over seven innings. He got out of a bases loaded, one out jam in the seventh and also a runners on second & third with one out jam earlier in the game. We’re not going to argue with a 13-3 record with a 1.89 ERA but it’s also a lot better on the surface than under it. Whether hitters are intimidated by Verlander’s pedigree or whether his pitching IQ is so off the charts that he is making hitters look silly, fact is, he’s getting it done. However, as a fly-ball pitcher at Minute Maid Park, there’s always risk. His swing & miss rate of 12.1 % does not support the strikeouts. We also like that the Mariners get to see him for a second time in less than a week so let’s see how it plays out this time around.