Play the Over in Rays vs. A's

Athletics vs. Rays, 1:10 ET

After going 3-0 on Friday, I was able to only get one win on Saturday. Now, I want to end this weekend strong here. The biggest issue that I had yesterday was that I picked the Royals through five innings. They won the game, but they lost the first half of it. It is always a risk of course, but I was looking mostly at the starting pitching and unfortunately, Brady Singer had a stinker to start the day. Oh well, let's get this one here.

The Athletics are going to suffer through another year, but the good news is that aside from the movie Moneyball, most people don't have any reason to even think about Oakland. And, since that movie is now over ten years old, baseball in Oakland is even less relevant. Still, the couple of thousand fans that still show up for them deserve better than this. I actually like their starter for today, James Kaprielian. He isn't someone that I'd want to throw out there as an ace or something, but he could be a serviceable rotation guy on a team with playoff hopes. He draws a tough task today having to face the Rays. Last season he was better on the road than he was at home. This season he started the year a little rough with a five-inning start against Cleveland where he allowed five earned runs on seven hits.

The Rays look phenomenal right now. You couldn't start a season any better than they have and honestly, it doesn't look like they have any signs of slowing down. In a division like the American League East, it is very important that you beat the crappy teams that you face like the Tigers, Nationals, and Athletics. They've done that so far with an 8-0 record. What is surprising is how well they are hitting right now. They already have 21 home runs on the year which isn't their normal method of scoring runs. The Dodgers are closest with 18 and have already played one more game than the Rays. Their pitching, which you do expect to be good, has been as good as advertised with a collective 2.13 ERA. Now they get Drew Rasmussen on the hill and he was awesome in his first start. He went six innings and allowed just two hits and collected seven strikeouts.

This is another Rays win in my book. The lines are actually a bit out of control in my opinion so there is value there for Oakland, but I don't really like stepping in front of a speeding train especially when there are no signs of it slowing down. Instead, I'm taking the game to go over the total. The way the Rays are hitting they could score eight runs by themselves. I don't expect a shutout from the Rays either in this game, so I'll take the over 7.5 in this and hope that the bats stay hot.

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