The Los Angeles Angels are here to take another crack at the San Diego Padres. Should we keep the Padres in our MLB picks?
Wednesday 8, September, 2021 – 8:10 PM EDT at Petco Park
Well, this is a fine how-do-you-do. Here we are with another chance to fade the Los Angeles Angels, just like we did on August 27 when they fell 5-0 to Joe Musgrove and the San Diego Padres (–192 on the closing MLB lines). They’re going to meet again Wednesday night at Petco Park, but we don’t have any official odds at press time, because the Angels haven’t announced their starting pitcher yet. It’s a mystery wrapped inside an enigma.
We do have overseas MLB odds, though. The Padres are available at –180 at a small handful of top sportsbooks, even without knowing whom L.A. might start. Close enough for government work, and it might be worth putting San Diego in your MLB picks at this price or thereabouts, given the options the Halos have to work with.
That’s according to the computer projections at FiveThirtyEight. They have San Diego at 62 percent to win, based on a generic starter for Los Angeles going up against Yu Darvish (3.77 FIP). According to the almighty BMR Odds Converter, that works out to a fair moneyline of –163. That means we want to see someone below generic take the mound for L.A. on Wednesday before we bet on the Padres.
Not that we let the projections stop us last time. Yes, it’s good to use data from the entire season while crunching the numbers, even when giving recent results more weight, but my goodness, these are not the same Angels that started 2021 with so much hope. Mike Trout (1.090 OPS) has been out since mid-May with a strained right calf. Anthony Rendon (.712 OPS) is out for the year with multiple injuries. There’s only so much Shohei Ohtani (.962 OPS) can do to carry this team.
That includes Ohtani the pitcher (3.43 FIP). He’s the last man standing in a Halos rotation with the other four starters in sick bay; Packy Naughton ended up getting the nod against San Diego on Tuesday, just the second start for the raw rookie out of Virginia Tech. Whom might they turn to next? Maybe another delightfully named pitcher in Janson Junk, although he made his MLB debut on Sunday and lost 7-3 to the Texas Rangers (+113 away). That would be a short turnaround indeed.
Whomever the Halos choose, we know Nolan Ryan isn’t walking through that door. As for the Padres, they’re trying to fend off the Cincinnati Reds for the last Wild Card berth in the National League, and they’re coming off back-to-back series wins over the Arizona Diamondbacks and Houston Astros. However, Darvish has struggled a bit this year with his new team, and we don’t know what Los Angeles have up their sleeve, so make it a suitably small bet on San Diego, and may the sphere be with you
MLB Pick: Padres -270 at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review)
*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.