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Down 2-0 in the World Series, the Yankees will head home to New York looking to keep their hopes of winning this one alive when they send Clarke Schmidt to the hill opposite Walker Buehler.
Buehler's coming off an impressive NLCS against the Mets, but can we really trust him here to keep a Yankees offense which has hit all postseason at bay?
Let's get right into things and hand out our MLB Best Bets for Monday, October 28.
The Yankees entered this series with better expected stats than the Dodgers, led by a beefy hard-hit rate around 50%, and through two games they've produced a 51% hard-hit rate with tough strikeout and walk rates keeping them from doing more at the dish.
He may have dazzled against the Mets last time out, but he not only received some excellent batted ball luck in cold and windy conditions but also managed six strikeouts against a team which had been punching out a ton all playoffs long.
The Yankees were unfortunate through two games, drawing the Dodgers' top two arms who looked incredible right from the jump, but what we've seen from Buehler this year between his rehab assignments and limited game action has been abysmal.
New York should get more balls back into play here, and that should mean good things with the quality in which it's made contact this series. It should also continue to draw walks, just as it has all postseason, with Buehler walking two against a Mets team which hates taking free passes.
The Yankees owned the second-best OPS in the league against ground-ball pitchers this season to boot, and that's enough for m to call this one for the home side as their offense should rise to the occasion.
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We didn't talk a ton about Clarke Schmidt above, but I'm very confident in him on Monday against L.A.
The combination of these numbers, along with the unfamiliarity the majority of this lineup will have with Schmidt, should allow him to continue racking up strikeouts in bunches.
Schmidt only failed to strike out five or more in one of his 16 starts this season, which happened to come in the second week of the year, and while he managed just two strikeouts last time out against Cleveland that wasn't a great matchup considering the Guardians had seen him plenty and strike out at one of the lowest rates in the league.
The righty is very much a strikeout-reliant arm, and as he hunts for punchouts against a team which isn't familiar with his pitching I expect good things. This is a market that's just a bit off.
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As you might guess, I think without much experience against Schmidt that this Dodgers order might take a couple of turns through to finally figure out the 28-year-old right-hander.
On the other end of the stick, though, Buehler has allowed a .332 xBA to Juan Soto in his career and generally speaking has been a hard man to trust all year long with a 9-7 NRFI record.
I don't feel incredibly strongly about it, but I'd certainly side with the NRFI here if you're looking to get a bet down on the first inning. Aaron Judge's struggles this postseason continue to be quite noticeable, as the slugger has yet to even impact the baseball more than once per game.
He's simply lost at the moment, and while New York could conjure up some first-inning walks against Buehler I'm not sure it'll punch across the runner -- something we've seen in the opening frame a bunch of times in the playoffs.
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