David Troy
Videos by OutKick
Pirates vs. Marlins, 6:40 ET
The heat of summer is upon us. Baseball is the only major sport that is in… well… full swing right now. Bad puns aside, this is a good time of year and now that this is the only sport going, I’ve been heating up a bit with it. Yesterday wasn’t great, but we can get those back and continue a streak of hot plays. Let’s build that bankroll with football right around the corner.
If you told me that the Pirates would have over 30 wins before June was done, I probably wouldn’t have believed you. In fact, I probably would’ve been willing to bet the under. Terrible was the first word that popped into my mind when I was thinking of what the Pirates would be this year. Maybe I was tying success too much to payroll, but no matter the reason, I was wrong. They are playing pretty well in a division that is completely up for grabs. Today they get one of their better pitchers hurling the ball for them in Mitch Keller. Keller owns a 3.62 ERA, but he has struggled in four of his past five starts. He started the year pretty strong with a solid April. Even May wasn’t bad until his last two starts. Now, he has allowed 20 earned runs over 29.1 innings. Take out his solid start on June 11th, and he has allowed 19 earned runs over 22.1 innings. Marlins hitters have a decent track record in a small sample size with eight hits over 29 at-bats.
The Marlins are playing great baseball this year. They, too, are a team that I was expecting nothing from this year, but like the 2020 season, they kind of came out of nowhere to at least make a run at the playoffs. Don Mattingly is squeezing every drop of juice from this Florida orange. It helps that they have a guy batting almost .400 for the year and Jorge Soler is finally reaching his potential. Their pitching staff has been pretty good even with some regression from Sandy Alcantara. Tonight they send out Braxton Garrett to the mound in hopes of taking a win in the first game of this four-game set. This is not an ideal spot for the Marlins with Garrett as he has allowed 20 earned runs over 28.1 innings. However, over half of those runs came in a game against the Braves where he allowed 11 earned over 4.1 innings. He also allowed four earned to the Royals in five innings. He also has allowed eight hits to Pirate hitters over 21 at-bats.
Take the over in this game. Maybe this is a trap line because the total is just 7 runs and it probably should be closer to 8.5. Neither one of these teams make me overwhelmed with confidence that they will rack up runs. However, I think they both can get to these starters. I’m taking the over on this game.
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