+140 Run Line is the Way to Go in Seattle

Cardinals vs. Mariners, 9:40 ET

I am a Cubs fan, and I've been very transparent about that. That doesn't mean that I blindly hate the White Sox and the Cardinals, though my birth into Cub-dum and all that goes with it means I should. I still think the Cardinals and White Sox will be good this year. They both are very talented teams. Though this is starting to get concerning.

The Cardinals are not playing very good baseball to start the season. Their hitting is great, but their pitching is not getting the job done by any means. I mean, their hitters are batting .274 which is a great team batting average, but their pitching is then allowing opponents to hit .282 off of them. One of the biggest culprits of this terrible start is Miles Mikolas. For whatever reason, I've always been a fan of this guy. I was successful with him last year and even this year have had success on games with him pitching. To put it mildly, he has sucked in three of his four starts this season. He has an eye-popping 8.10 ERA and has allowed at least five earned runs in three of his four starts. He's had two games already where he has allowed 10 hits. Mikolas has given up 36 hits in 20 innings. That's absurd. Almost two hits per inning? To make matters worse, he's been at home for three of his four starts, that's where he usually succeeds.

Then you have the Mariners, they also came into this season with high expectations, but they are floundering a bit. I should probably go back and look at all of the playoff teams records from last year and see what they were after the first month. It really doesn't matter, but being sub-.500 is not where you want to be. Luckily for the Mariners, they get to throw Luis Castillo on the mound every five days. He's been absolutely phenomenal for Seattle. I gave him and Shane McClanahan out as the Cy Young bets before the season they both are sitting at +1000 right now, down from preseason, but still decent value... but we will need Gerrit Cole to stumble a bit. Anyway, Castillo has only allowed runs in one of his four starts. In fact, he's allowed more than two hits in only one start this season. His three home starts have all been scoreless. Cardinals hitters are familiar with him from the time he spent with the Reds, but outside of Willson Contreras no one has been that exceptional against him.

I'm taking the Mariners to win this game and win it with ease. Most baseball games are not one-run games. I've tried to make this argument in the past and if you can get run lines at plus money, it can be a very profitable endeavor. You're not playing juice on the moneyline so you can benefit here. For reference, Tuesday through Thursday this week, 31 games were played. There were eight one-run games, and 22 by two or more. That's 71%, sure you can get something wrong and be annoyed that they won but didn't cover, but that happens. For me, with this disparity between the two, I'm taking Castillo and the Mariners at +140 on the run line.

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