There is a huge afternoon matchup between powerhouse offenses today, with the Rangers traveling to San Diego to take on the Padres. Ahead of this interleague game, we will turn to OddsShopper’s Premium Tool to find the best bets, focusing today on a Cy Young contender trying to deal with the huge bats in the opposing lineup. Let’s dive into the best Rangers-Padres bets for Sunday.
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Best MLB Rangers-Padres Bet & Prediction: Blake Snell
Odds via PointsBet
Texas Rangers: +165 | San Diego Padres: -200
Texas Rangers +1.5: -115 | San Diego Padres -1.5: -105
Over 9.0: -120 | Under 9.0: +100
The Padres are moderately heavy favorites here despite lagging behind the Rangers in win-loss record this year. This may be partly due to their homefield advantage, but the more likely explanation is the disparity in these teams’ pitchers. San Diego is sending out its ace in Blake Snell, while the Rangers are countering with the up-and-down Cody Bradford.
The focus here is going to Snell, who has a massive over/under on his strikeouts, and it is not difficult to understand why. He is second in the National League in strikeout rate and total strikeouts, both behind only Spencer Strider. The issue here is that an 8.5 line is quite the task for any pitcher. Even with Snell’s tremendous strikeout numbers, he has only punched out nine or more in six of his 21 starts. Plus, with his (extremely good) pace of 11.6 strikeouts per nine innings, Snell would need to go seven innings to reach his ninth whiff, and he has only thrown a pitch in the seventh inning once this year.
All this is not even considering the other major issues here. For one, Snell has had pretty significant issues with walks in 2023, evidenced by his WHIP being over 1.200 despite his allowing the third-fewest hits per nine in MLB. He has walked at least three in over two-thirds of his starts and at least four in 38.1%. That has kept his pitch count up in his outings and thus limited how many strikeouts he can reach in total. Then there is the fact that Snell is facing one of the best offenses in baseball, one that strikes out below league average and scores runs better than any other team. All of this is pointing to Snell having a modest game.
Check out OddsShopper’s model projections on Snell below:
OddsShopper’s Premium Tool has the true odds for Snell under 8.5 strikeouts at -162, so this bet is beating the market at -145. This is also getting a very strong 62% expected win rate and 5% EV. That is leading to a recommended bet size of $23, one of the highest on the entire slate, and gives Snell’s strikeout under the top value spot for Sunday’s Rangers-Padres game.
Best Rangers-Padres MLB Bet: Blake Snell Under 8.5 Strikeouts (-145, PointsBet)
