Be A Belieber Today Against Red Sox

Red Sox vs. Guardians, 7:10 ET

I'm not quite sure it would be possible for me to put out a worse pick than I did yesterday. I stand by the logic, the analysis and anything else you can think of, but the outcome was absolutely terrible. Here I was, looking at two crappy offenses in the Marlins and Royals, and the pitching trends lined up nicely as well. What happened? Well, I took the under 8.5 and the Marlins alone scored nine runs. So... that was fun. Let's get back to the winning ways with a game between the Red Sox and the Guardians.

The Red Sox have been a bit up-and-down this season and right now are sitting at 30-30 with 102 games remaining in the season. I'm not quite sure if I feel surprised we're already 60 games into the season, or if I'm surprised we still have 100 games remaining. Either way, the Red Sox are performing to about the expectation I had of the team. They are in the toughest division in baseball. In any other division, they would probably be fighting for a playoff spot. This one is more likely that they have a mediocre season. The Guardians are in potentially the worst division in baseball and still are somehow under .500. They could certainly turn it on later in the year and find a way to sneak into the playoffs with a division victory. They certainly have the pitching staff capabilities, and it seems like they always are at least sniffing the division title near the end of the year.

Today though, the Red Sox send out James Paxton to try and stop the Guardians in the opener of this three-game series. In the first three-game set between the two teams, the Red Sox took two of the three games. Paxton will be making his fifth start of the Red Sox after some injury-plagued seasons with the Yankees and Mariners the last few years. He's been fairly effective in his four starts aside from a rough one against the Angels. Still, a guy going three games of five or more innings and allowing two or fewer earned runs is a plus in my book. If we are being honest, Shane Bieber has underperformed this season. He's supposed to be an annual Cy Young candidate and this season he just hasn't pitched that great. He's allowed 31 earned runs over just 75 innings this year. That's about half of what he allowed last season in 125 fewer innings. Some of it could be bad luck. He's allowed 13 earned in two of his starts and the rest he has allowed three or fewer - something you would expect. He's been very good at home and has already beaten the Red Sox once this season, the one time the Guardians won against them so far.

I'm backing the Guardians in this game once again. No shade to Paxton, but I still think Bieber, especially in this situation, is the pitcher I want my money on. The Red Sox still probably have the better team from an offensive perspective, but I think the Guardians could get to Paxton. I'll back Bieber here at -120 in what I think is a good value on his line.

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