Tiny Nick’s Gambling Picks: 7/05

Locks

MLB (0.5 Unit) Texas Rangers/Baltimore Orioles Over 9.5 (-110): 6:05 PM CT on MASN2

With two relatively solid starting pitchers going last night, these teams found their way over this total by the sixth inning. You can throw out the descriptor of “relatively solid” for tonight’s starters, as these two have seen mostly bullpen work, and it hasn’t been pretty.

Austin Voth for Baltimore is a baserunner-creator, allowing hits and walks to just about everyone as his 1.89 WHIP indicates. It’s tough to know what you’ll get out of the Texas lineup on a nightly basis, but they do tend to get into higher-scoring games against bad teams.

They’re going to need plenty of runs with Spencer Howard back on the mound for the first time in over two months. Maybe the righty figured something out in the interim, but I wouldn’t count on it. His only bright spot is dominance against left-handed bats, but the Orioles only have two lefties on the roster and Howard gets absolutely shelled by righties.

It’s also very humid in Baltimore, allowing the ball to compress more, and a solid wind blowing out to center should help with scoring. All that is likely the reason money has hit the over hard in this one, and I’m in agreement that we’ll see plenty of runs.

MLB (0.75 Unit) Toronto Blue Jays/Oakland Athletics Over 8 (-110): 8:40 PM CT on MLB Network

As one of the lightest-hitting and lowest-scoring teams in baseball, a small bright spot for Oakland has been against Toronto’s pitching. The Athletics have put up 16 runs in the 4 meetings this season, and have yet to face the bottom-tier Blue Jay pitchers.

That’s where I have to place Yusei Kikuchi, regardless of a strong last start against a Tampa Bay team lacking offensive punch. The current trend of his past 10 games being 7-2-1 over this total is too strong to ignore.

It’s also impossible to ignore the number of runs this Toronto staff is allowing in general lately. Blue Jays opponents are averaging 6.3 runs per game since mid-June, an indictment of both the starters and relievers.

But the Jays offense keeps rolling, averaging 5.1 runs of their own in that stretch. Against Adrian Martinez, who has just 10 big-league innings to his name, Toronto should be able to bounce back here. Their powerful lineup will get a boost from a strong wind blowing out of Oakland Coliseum, and that should get this one over a pretty low total.

Degenerates

No degenerates today.

Tiny Nick is 793-665 ATS (+78 Units) on his Locks since joining Zone Coverage. 

Every day he will offer his Locks and Degenerate picks. Locks are the games he’s confident in. Degenerates are entertaining but riskier picks.