After three straight losses to the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, the Los Angeles Angels are back under .500. Like they’ve been for the majority of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani’s big league careers.
Today is Game 4 of their four-game series in Boston and the Angels desperately need to avoid a sweep. The good news for LA is that Ohtani is on the mound for his fourth start of the year.
Ohtani is 2-0 with a 0.47 ERA in 19.0 innings across his three starts. He will be opposed by Brayan Bello who is making his season debut on Patriot’s Day in Boston. The 23-year-old has a career 2-8 record with a 4.71 ERA.
Here are the odds for the Angels and Red Sox at Fenway Park.
Angels vs. Red Sox odds, run line and total
Angels vs. Red Sox prediction and pick
It used to be that Patriot’s Day in Boston would include two marathons, but now that the pitch clock is shortening games, the baseball game could beat a lot of runners’ times to the finish line.
Especially if we get any sort of pitcher’s duel, which could be in the works with Ohtani and Bello matching up.
Ohtani is an absolute thrill to watch play baseball and he’s taking it to another level on the mound right now. He’s allowed six hits and one earned run across three starts. That would be good for a single start. He has 24 strikeouts, but has issued 12 walks which is the only concern that exists with how he’s pitching right now.
The Red Sox are 23rd in strikeouts and 13th in walks, so they may cut down on the swing and miss and potentially have a few base runners.
Ohtani’s opposition is Brayan Bello, who doesn’t have great traditional numbers for his career, but there are some indications that he pitched better than that last season.
Bello’s FIP was 2.94 a year ago, and his expected slugging percentage was .347 which was 73rd percentile in the MLB. He’s a hard thrower with an above average whiff and chase rate.
Their game yesterday finished as a 2-1 Red Sox win, and I think we could see a similarly low scoring game in this one. Let’s take the under.
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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change