The Minnesota Twins began their trip to the east coast with two wins against the Yankees, but after dropping the second two games to split that series, they’re in Boston to face the Red Sox at Fenway Park for three games.
The Twins are 10-6 on the season which is good enough for first place in the AL Central. The Red Sox are 8-9 after losing on Patriot’s Day yesterday and despite being one game under .500, they’re buried in last in the vaunted AL East.
Today, we have a pitching matchup that would have everybody in baseball salivating in 2015 when Sonny Gray and Chris Sale finished third and fourth in AL Cy Young voting. Now, they’re not quite the pitchers that they were. Gray is 2-0 with a 0.53 ERA, but Sale is 1-1 with an 11.25 ERA to his name.
Let’s get into the odds for Gray and Twins against Sale and the Sox at Fenway tonight.
Twins vs. Red Sox odds, run line and total
Twins vs. Red Sox prediction and pick
Chris Sale is no longer the Chris Sale of old, but he’s not a pitcher that’s going to have an ERA north of 10 for the entire season. His FIP is 7.58, so some slight positive regression could be coming for the lefty. He is 82nd percentile in K% and 76th in whiff rate. His batting average on balls in play is .406 right now, which is completely unreasonable and will certainly come down. I don’t think Sale will be dominant, but the Minnesota Twins are 23rd in OPS against left-handed pitching, so I think he’ll be solid for the first time this year.
The flip side is somewhat true for Sonny Gray as well. He’s a better pitcher than Sale at this point, but not the Cy Young candidate that he looks like right now. His ERA is 0.53 and his expected ERA is 3.15.
Yesterday, the Sox put up four runs against the Angels without Justin Turner in the lineup and in the last seven days, Turner has a 1.102 OPS with three doubles and a home run. He’ll likely be back in the lineup for this one and give their lineup a little extra pop against Gray. I like the Red Sox to bounce back and win after losing in the early afternoon yesterday.
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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change