Skenes And Yamamoto? We Have To Bet On This

Pirates vs. Dodgers, 10:10 ET

Line making always fascinates me. I don't think it is quite as complex as everyone makes it out to be and I'll give you a few examples. One of them is that many say the books are trying to get equal money on both sides of a bet and just take the profit. I don't really think that's the case because a lot of money would be left out there, and billionaires don't really invest in leaving money on the table. The other thing is that I make lines for my men's league games and out of eight teams, there really aren't too many huge trends for teams. With that said, how do you make a line for a pitching phenom facing another pitching phenom with one bad team, the Pirates, and one great team, the Dodgers? 

I'm extremely curious, more so than even about line making, about how the Pirates plan to build around Paul Skenes. This isn't the first time the club has had a superstar in their rotation. They had Gerrit Cole and let him walk. They also never really fielded a winning team around Cole. They've had some decent players and some guys that never lived up to the hype, but so has every other team. You now have a generational talent and you're either going to let him walk after his rookie contract, or you need to invest in the team and see what they can do. It will be in interesting. Skenes has been as good as advertised since joining the big league club. He is 2-2 this season with a 2.87 ERA and a 0.80 WHIP. He also has 30 strikeouts in 31.1 innings. Dodgers hitters have been okay against Skenes, holding a .250 average against him. Shohei Ohtani has homered off of him.

Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes at Pirate City in Bradenton, FL. (Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

The Dodgers are not a team that you need to worry about building a competent roster. They have one of the best rosters in baseball history at this point. Maybe that is an exaggeration, but maybe it isn't. We will see when this season is completed just how good they can be. The biggest concern for them is the health of their team. They also aren't great on the road, but that can be fixed relatively easily over the course of the season - at least I think it can. One of their big acquisitions from last year starts tonight. Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the hill, and he wasn't quite great last year, but was very good. He is 3-1 with a 0.93 ERA this season and a 0.86 WHIP. Even better, he has 38 strikeouts in 29 innings. He is unhittable right now. Combine that with the Pirates having never faced him and this could be a rough offensive night. 

I don't always go through the process of picking a line for games. At this point, I've done this long enough where I feel like I can just look at a line and decide that something is correct or off. Things tend to stand out to me. With this game, there is only one thing I can confidently back - it is the Pirates under their team total. I think the whole game goes under, but if any team can get to Skenes, it is the Dodgers. Back the Pirates team total under. 

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