The Braves and Mets open a four-game series, with one such contest on Monday a makeup game from earlier this season, making both games played seven-inning affairs. Who grabs the early series lead?
Atlanta Braves vs. New York Mets
Monday, June 21, 2021 – 05:10 PM EDT at Citi Field
The New York Mets might have lost their series at Washington, but they are in better shape than the Atlanta Braves are coming into tonight’s game for this reason. The Mets had a rainout Friday night and played a doubleheader against the Nationals. Despite three games in two days, New York just had the short trip from D.C. to the Big Apple yesterday.
According to top sportsbooks, Atlanta’s situation is far more complicated. The Braves were rained out Saturday, which meant playing two seven-inning contests on Sunday. The bad part for Atlanta was they were already scheduled to play the ESPN Sunday night game, so they had to play later and travel to New York. Granted, they already knew this before, however, an extra contest yesterday afternoon was not known until Saturday.
This encounter will be the first of two tilts Monday evening, the first a makeup game, followed by the regularly scheduled matchup. BookMaker (visit our BookMaker Review) has New York as a -180 favorite according to their betting odds in Game 1.
Atlanta Has to Pitch Better
With Sunday’s doubleheader split, the Braves (33-36, -12.6 units) are closer to the last place Miami in the NL East standings than the first-place Mets. Atlanta was the preseason favorite to win their division. Other than the deplorable Arizona outfit, the Braves are the next worst bet in the National League.
The issue is simple, manager Brian Snitker has few reliable pitching options on a squad allowing 4.8 runs a game. The starting pitching is at least average, ranked 14th in ERA. However, the bullpen ERA isn’t close to good enough at 24th.
In order to start making up ground on New York (36-29, +1.5), Atlanta could use a Monday sweep and that won’t come easy at Citi Field.
Mets Rockin’ at Home
The team in the blue and orange has far and away the biggest home-field advantage in the majors. New York is 20-7 at home and they do it with domineering pitching. As we head into the last third of June, Metropolitans’ hurlers are only giving up 2.1 RPG, which is exactly one run better than the second-best home club, the White Sox.
The offense tends to be good or not so hot, yet, there is one positive development. Francisco Lindor is showing positive signs of coming out of a season-long slump and is hitting .270 this month with an on-base percentage over .350. If he gets cranking and Pete Alonso finds his stroke, the New York offense will do much better than the current 3.7 RPG.
Pitching Breakdown
There has been some uncertainty about both pitching matchups for today’s games. Originally it was Ian Anderson for Atlanta and Jacob deGrom for New York. In looking over several websites, deGrom is most likely to go, and Anderson a probable choice. However, Snitker might move Anderson to Game 2 thinking he might have a better chance with him to win in the nightcap against a lesser Mets’ hurler.
deGrom (6-2, 0.54 ERA) has been unbelievably effective for some time and supplanted Clayton Kershaw and Max Scherzer as baseball’s best pitcher. His stuff is virtually unhittable and in this case, the numbers do tell the story. This season hitters are producing these numbers: .117 Batting Average - .147 On-Base Percentage - .211 Slugging Percentage - .357 OPS. Each figure is absurd, even by today’s standards.
Anderson (4-3, 3.58) is a 23-year old New York native who has not pitched poorly, he, like most pitchers, just pales in comparison to his mound counterpart. Anderson matches an excellent fastball with a changeup, with the curveball a work in progress and that can lead to inconsistency.
Game Prediction
Because deGrom often is lacking in run support, he’s hardly unbeatable, which shows in his record against Atlanta where he is 8-7 despite a 1.94 ERA.
Nevertheless, for MLB picks at any online betting site, over seven innings the Mets ace is going to be hard to beat and Anderson, if he pitches, has a 7.27 ERA vs. New York and we’ll side with the Mets and their brilliant home record.
Free MLB Picks: Mets -180 ML at BookMaker.
*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.
