After Friday’s tightly contested Game 1s in the Wild Card Round, Saturday brings with it four teams that have a chance to advance to the Division Series.
Check back on the Action Network App later this afternoon for our picks on the two evening games. Here, we’re focused on the afternoon slate: Rays vs. Guardians and Mariners vs. Blue Jays.
Cleveland will look to advance behind Triston McKenzie, while Seattle will look to pull off an upset with Robbie Ray on the mound.
We have three bets to recommend for these two games, including two totals and one player prop.
Here are our three best bets from Saturday afternoon’s MLB postseason slate.
MLB Odds & Picks
Rays vs. Guardians
Jim Turvey: A couple of factors pointing in the direction of the under on this one. For one, this is going to be all hands on deck for the Rays. We’ve all seen how quick the trigger can be from Kevin Cash and co. in October, and that trigger only gets quicker when the Rays are in elimination games. The bullpen is nearly entirely rested, and Jeffrey Springs is a perfect piggyback candidate given the Guardians struggles with lefties.
Glasnow also only made two MLB starts in all of 2022 after spending most of the season rehabbing from Tommy John. The furthest he got into a game in those outings: 3.2 IP.
Of course, in that outing, he struck out seven, but even if he given something in the range of 4-5 innings (which has to just about be his best case scenario), the Guardians are remarkably hard to strike out.
Against right-handed pitchers this season, the Guardians struck out just 17.3 percent of the time, which was not just lowest in baseball, but it was lowest by a 2.3 percent margin that equaled the gap between second and 11th lowest K rate. Cleveland’s overall strikeout rate was the lowest from any team since 2017!
This line has already been on the move, so jump on it if you can. Anything in plus money is good.