MLB Best Bets: Last Chance to Bank on Two Bad Bullpens

The White Sox and Royals conclude a four-game series that has favored the over.
MLB Best Bets: Last Chance to Bank on Two Bad Bullpens
MLB Best Bets: Last Chance to Bank on Two Bad Bullpens /

Wednesday baseball was awesome.

Not only did Justin Verlander get his first win of the season yesterday, the win over the Reds means Verlander has officially beaten all 30 major league baseball teams.

Yeah, that’s cool.

It’s also cool that the Orioles took a series from the Rays and the Yankees finally got their first sweep of the season, albeit vs. the Athletics. What was most exciting about it was rookie Anthony Volpe’s first career grand slam.

In fact, Wednesday was a good day all around as we also won both of our plus money bets involving the Tigers in the matinee.

For today, we are going back to the play we already used twice this week. We cashed one and missed on the other, but once again we are taking the over for the White Sox-Royals in the final game of this four-game series.

The over has cashed in two of the three games this week, and this is why we are betting it will cash for a third time today: bullpens.

These two bullpens remain among the worst in the league, with the Chicago relievers having the second-highest ERA in the league at 6.21. On the other side, Kansas City has the fourth-highest at 5.09.

The starters for this game are also among the most generous in the league.

Brady Singer will start for the Royals. His ERA this season is 8.82 and his hard-hit rate and exit velocity allowed are in the bottom 1% of the league. The White Sox should be able to mash.

Mike Clevinger gets the start for Chicago, and his 4.84 ERA is indicative of his career-high wOBA.

White Sox games have gone over the run total 60% of the time this season (21-14-3) while Royals games have gone over 53% of the time (19-17-2).

Here’s one last trend to consider: the total has gone over in four of Chicago's last five games when playing on the road against Kansas City.

The Bet:

Over 9.5 runs 


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Jennifer Piacenti
JENNIFER PIACENTI

Jennifer Piacenti is a fantasy sports and betting analyst for Sports Illustrated. She serves as a host for Sirius XM Fantasy Sports Radio and has her own podcast, “Waiver Wired,” on the Extra Points podcast network. Piacenti is also a featured expert on MLB Network’s “Bettor’s Eye” and is a member of the esteemed Tout Wars, the fantasy baseball battle of the experts. She is a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and is a 2020 Scott Fish Bowl finalist.