MLB Pick: Rangers ML (+105) at Heritage Sports (visit our Heritage Sports Review)
Friday brings a packed lineup of 15 Major League Baseball matchups, including an afternoon game at Wrigley Field.
We are now 12-6 in our last 18 plays in this space, and for our second best bet Friday, our proprietary model sees value on a side when the Rangers visit the Royals, making it an enticing opportunity based on the MLB odds offered by the top-rated sportsbooks.
Don’t miss out on more MLB expert picks:
Texas Rangers vs. Kansas City Royals
Friday, May 03, 2024 – 07:40 PM ET at Kauffman Stadium
In a case where we foresee opposite regressions for the starting pitchers, we are betting on Michael Lorenzen and the World Series Champion Rangers visiting Brady Singer and the Royals.
Too Many Walks
Singer is 2-1 with a 2.62 ERA through six starts, but he has been lucky to escape pitching around his wildness. Brady was wild his first two seasons in the Major Leagues before improving in that department the last two years. However, the issue has resurfaced in this, his fifth season, with his walk rate back up to 3.41/9.
He has escaped relatively unscathed by scoring highly in the Luck stats, allowing a low .209 BABIP while at the same time owning an abnormally high 86.0% strand rate. He does not figure to continually escape issuing free passes against a Texas offense ranked eighth in the league in wRC+ against right-handers at 108.
Closer to Normal
We see Lorenzen at the other end of the scale, as we expect improvement to his current 4.24 ERA. Remember, Michael was one of the hottest pitchers in baseball for a stretch last season. Ironically that stretch ended when he threw a no-hitter last August 9th while doing so with a career-high pitch count. That basically ruined his arm, and he was never the same the rest of the year.
Some of that carried over to early this year, but it now seems his arm strength is back with an average velocity of 94.5 MPH, back on par with last season. He has also had nice spikes in raising his soft-contact allowed to 13.6% from 9.7% and lowering his hard-contact to 27.3% from 35.2%. And perhaps best of all, his swinging-strike rate is up to 10.6% from 9.4%.
The Pick
With Lorenzen showing so many positive underlying metrics that belie his ERA and Singer being lucky so far, bet the Rangers on the road Friday.
Predicted Score: Rangers 6 – Royals 4
MLB Pick: Rangers ML (+105) at Heritage Sports
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
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