Mariners Should Take Down Rangers With Pitching Edge

Mariners vs. Rangers, 7:05 ET

It was a bit of a ho-hum kind of day yesterday as I split my plays. Betting against the Mets hasn't been a favorable thing to do lately and I assumed Sonny Gray would've performed better. Not the end of the world as I was at least able to get a win on the other play to mitigate the damage. That's essentially what it is about - winning as much as possible, and avoiding big losses. Tonight the Mariners take on the Rangers in a divisional matchup that is rather intriguing.

The Mariners enter tonight's contest with a solid 19-12 record and are currently sitting in first place of the AL West. If you remember last year, they were in first for the majority of that season as well. I know Seattle has the pitching to get pretty much anywhere they want to go. The hitting is still something that is a bit suspect, but they are performing significantly better than last season. Unfortunately, their pitching staff isn't throwing quite as well as last season and that means the balance is still about equal to what they were last year. I won't say the team has an identity crisis, but it would be nice for them to figure out exactly what their calling card will be. Tonight, they put Luis Castillo on the hill. We've been on Castillo quite a bit since he headed out West and have seen good returns. Castillo is 3-2 with a 3.62 ERA, and a 1.39 WHIP. For the season, Castillo has allowed 13 earned runs in 32 innings, but he has allowed nine of those runs in 9.1 road innings. Rangers hitters are doing pretty well overall against him, hitting .266 in 79 at-bats. Josh Smith looks like he had a good game against him, but with just four at-bats, I'm not sure that I'm super worried it will happen again.

(Photo by Brennan Asplen/Getty Images)

The Rangers are another team that is still kind of searching for their identity. They hoisted the World Series trophy a couple of years ago and haven't succeeded all that much since. They are 16-17 for the season overall, and their once stellar home record is now just 11-7. That's still a good mark, but not quite as dominant as fans would hope. In their World Series run, the team was awesome on offense. They hit for average and for power. They found ways to manufacture runs, and things worked out well. Now, the team is hitting just .225 and has almost 60 fewer runs than today's opponent. Losers of four of their past five games, Texas is certainly struggling. To try and stop the bleeding is Patrick Corbin. For the year, Corbin has been decent. Honestly, decent is something you should take out of him considering he was viewed as potentially the worst free agent signing of all time. This year, he has only thrown 19 innings in four starts. In that span, he has allowed eight earned runs, three homers, six walks, and 24 hits. His WHIP is high at 1.58, but the damage isn't quite being done. Mariners hitters aren't doing all that well against him either, batting just .255 with no one aside from Jorge Polanco standing out. Polanco also looks like he had one or two good games against Corbin.

This should be a fairly tight matchup. I'm not sure that Corbin is in the category of instant fade any longer, but I'm also not rushing to the window to back him. The real story to me here is the Mariners are playing good ball and the Rangers are not. For me, this is a game where I will back Seattle to take down the win. 

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