Now that we're in the fourth week of the MLB season, it's becoming more and more clear what to expect from many of these ballclubs going forward. We've seen some unexpected teams come out and overperform, such as the Pirates and the Royals. We've also gotten a glimpse at a handful of teams that have struggled to come out on the winning side, examples include the Rockies, Marlins, and White Sox. Therefore, for this 3-team parlay, I'm fading two of the worst teams in baseball and picking an underdog to close out the day. Below I'll provide a breakdown of each individual leg and don’t forget to check out our MLB predictions for every game today.
San Francisco Giants -1.5 over Miami Marlins (+126)
The 7-10 San Francisco Giants are likely to be chasing the Los Angeles Dodgers for much of the season along with every other team in the NL West. That makes this series with the 3-14 Miami Marlins crucial, as the Giants will need to compile wins over teams they're expected to beat. San Fran took care of business in the series opener with a 4-3 victory, and I like their chances again tonight given the starting pitching matchup at hand. Jordan Hicks will take the ball for San Francisco in his 4th start of the season, and the move from the bullpen to the starting rotation appears to have been a great decision to this point. Hicks has lasted at least 5.0 innings in each of his outings and has hardly taken any damage, giving up just 2 earned runs across 18.0 innings. The walk rate (4.5%) is way down from his career mark of 12.3%, and while the strikeout numbers aren't quite as impressive as they were when Hicks came out of the pen, he's been effective in limiting hard contact and inducing ground balls. Hicks should be quite effective against a Marlins team that has the second-lowest OPS at .598.
The Marlins will counter with left-hander Ryan Weathers, who has posted great numbers across 3 outings himself. Weathers owns a 2.57 ERA, which is great on paper, but it's not indicative to how he's actually performed. Weathers has failed to make it past the 5th inning in any of those starts and walks appear to be a major issue, as he's walked 8 batters in just 14.0 innings. Taking a look at Weather's advanced metrics is quite telling, as he ranks in the bottom 10 percentile in both chase rate and barrel rate. Perhaps most notable is the fact that his 6.06 xERA is nearly 3.5 runs higher than his actual ERA and Weathers owns a career ERA of 5.61 through 170.0 innings in the big leagues. It's fair to say some regression is looming and for that reason I'll back the Giants on the road.'