Take The Under With Scherzer At Home

Brewers vs. Mets, 7:10 ET

Back-to-back losing days are not the way that I wanted to head into the weekend, but here we are on a Thursday, looking for some winners to get ourselves back on track. Losing is always frustrating no matter how it happens. Slumps will come and go, and so will hot streaks. Heck, we were just on a hot streak last week. Today we look to reignite the flame with a win in a game between the Brewers and Mets.

Not many teams are built like the Brewers. Most teams don’t have a good balance between pitching and hitting, the few that do are the cream of the crop (Atlanta, Tampa Bay, for example). The Brewers have solid pitching, but not great hitting. I won’t harp on the issues that the team has had over the years, or even this season. I just want to give a small tip of the cap to the Brewers team for not having any true superstar (Christian Yelich hasn’t been that level outside of maybe two years), but being competitive every year. Tonight, they get Adrian Houser on the hill. He’s been solid enough for them over the few seasons he has been here. Houser has been better on the road for the Brewers this season and has posted a 3.52 ERA. He doesn’t go deep into games, so you’ll have to expect that the bullpen is going to get a big portion of the work. But, aside from two of his nine appearances, he has allowed two or fewer earned runs.

I just wrote the other day that the Mets are the most disappointing team in baseball. They have the highest payroll of all time but currently are 17 games back in the division. That is probably a bit more of a reflection of the Braves than it is the Mets. New York is only eight games under .500, which is manageable if they want to get back into the race for a Wild Card spot, but the division is almost certainly not possible. Max Scherzer is taking the ball for the Mets tonight, and the expectations for him just simply aren’t being reached. He has been very good at home this season, sporting 2.95 ERA which is more than a full run better than his road ERA. However, his last home start was the worst of the season – he allowed six earned runs over 3.1 innings to the Yankees. This will be just his fifth start at home, and in the other three he has completed, he has allowed only one earned run or fewer. Brewers hitters are actually fairly successful against Scherzer with a .270 ERA.

I really don’t think that the Mets should be a -190 favorite here. I wouldn’t be surprised to see if the Brewers could pull it off and they do have value at +160. I think the game probably doesn’t see more than 8 runs though, so I’ll take the under 8.5 in this game. My confidence in that is higher than the confidence in the Brewers, but I’ll still sprinkle the moneyline.

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