It’s easy to forget that Seattle and Oakland are still very factors in the American League playoff picture, but we haven’t forgotten the Mariners and Athletics on our free MLB picks scheduled for Wednesday.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021 – 9:40 PM EDT at Oakland Coliseum
Seattle cashed as underdogs at top sportsbooks with a 4-2 win in the series opener on Monday, most shops closing Oakland around -175. The Mariners came right back with another underdog win on Tuesday, this time a 5-2 final that clinched the season series for Seattle with a 10-4 advantage over the Athletics. Tuesday’s result also continued the ‘under’ trend in the rivalry on the year, 4-10 O/U all games combined and a strong 1-6 O/U at the Coliseum.
A mound rematch from a little more than four weeks ago is on the slate for the Hump Day clash, Chris Flexen (12-6, 3.77) going for Seattle while Oakland turns to Cole Irvin (10-13, 3.94). The A’s are running around -135 at the best online betting sites with an 8½-run total.
Flexen got the better of Irvin when the two young hurlers met on August 24 in Oakland where the Mariners were on the right side of the MLB scores in a 5-1 final. The A’s took a 1-0 lead in the 1st before Flexen clamped down and pitched into the seventh without allowing another run. Irvin exited after three innings having allowed three runs to suffer the loss with Oakland closing around -150 at most outlets.
This will be Flexen’s fourth time to face the Athletics, the former 14th-round pick by the New York Mets in 2012 going 1-2 in the previous three with a flat 4.00 ERA. The California native is coming off a nice effort last Friday evening in Kansas City where Flexen pitched into the sixth of a 6-2 win in a contest that closed around a pick on the MLB betting odds. Seattle is 10-3 when Flexen starts on the road, the righthander sporting a 4.32 ERA in those 75 innings.
Irvin will be making his 30th start of the 2021 campaign, and fourth against the Mariners. In addition to the loss the southpaw took against Flexen four weeks ago, Irvin also suffered defeat in the other two outings to stand 0-3 with an 8.49 ERA against Seattle. Nobody in the Mariners lineup has taken Irvin deep, but a few hitters have mashed well against him with the quartet of Kyle Seager, Luis Torrens, JP Crawford, and Tom Murphy a combined 15-for-24 (.625).
Seager was the hitting star for Seattle in Monday’s opener with 3 RBI, and the third baseman came back to stroke a pair of doubles on Tuesday. Crawford has also enjoyed the first two games of the set by going 5-for-9 with two doubles and a homer, the long ball coming in the ninth on Tuesday and serving as the coup de grace in the contest that BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) closed the Mariners +124.
Oakland really needs to win the final two games in the series and gain a split with the Mariners if the A’s are going to keep their 2021 postseason hopes alive. They have only Seattle and Houston on the schedule the rest of the way, so it’s in the hands of the Athletics. The bats have been pretty quiet in the first two games against Seattle, though Matt Olson is showing signs of coming around with homers in five of his last 10 games.
A shuffling of umpire crews midseason elevated Greg Gibson to the chief of this crew, and he will be calling balls and strikes on Wednesday. Now in his 24th big league season, Gibson has become a favorite for ‘over’ bettors with his 27 plate assignments clipping along 19-7-1 O/U/P. The Ohio native has also been good to home favorites in 2021 (13-6), and Gibson’s last four times to have dish duty in Oakland have finished 3-1 O/U.
The thermometer should be sitting at 70° when this game begins, with clear skies above the Coliseum and a 6-9 mph WNW breeze (left to right). The A’s are going to get righthander Chris Bassitt back from the IL on Thursday, five weeks after the staff ace was struck in the head by a line drive. That won’t help them at all on Wednesday, however, and I’ll be playing Seattle to pull off another underdog win in this one.
MLB Pick: Mariners +125 with BetOnline (visit our BetOnline 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.