For this Pittsburgh club and many over the last 25 years, facing an elite team is the last thing they need to do. Yet, here they are making the cross-country trip in L.A. and the prospects for success are not good for Game 2.
Pittsburgh flew to La-La Land Sunday afternoon in the throes of a 1-10 skid, against a tired Dodgers team. Los Angeles had to play a Sunday night contest in New York and fly home afterwards to play Monday night, usually a no-no by scheduling standards. (The Mets did the same to San Francisco) Nonetheless, the Dodgers prevailed 2-1.
In the second tilt of this three-game set, top online sportsbooks have Dodgers Blue at a whopping -295 on the money line, which are hefty betting odds.
Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Tuesday, August 17, 2021 – 10:10 PM EDT at Dodger Stadium
Trying to Say Something Positive About Pirates Is a Chore
When you get to this time of the year and you are a bad team and slumping, it’s not easy to find many positives. We tried to find something upbeat to talk about Pittsburgh and frankly, it was futile. Instead of tearing them down further, we will just report the facts as we know them.
With 43 remaining in the regular season, the Pirates are 42-77 (-14.4 units). To avoid losing 100 times that would require the Bucs to finish this season 21-22. That seems like a real stretch. The hitting has been terrible all year and they rank last in scoring at 3.6 runs a contest. That’s not going to change.
One brighter spot is the bullpen. The starting pitchers have the second-highest ERA in baseball, but the bullpen is 19th. Not good mind you, nonetheless, acceptable to the point they are always coming into bad situations and often enough not making things worse.
Dodgers Heating Up, Can They Catch San Francisco?
Los Angeles (77-46, -2.5) knows it is going to the postseason yet again. The question is will they go as wild card or as division winners for the ninth straight year? Their current 9-2 record moved the Dodgers within four games of San Francisco and manager Dave Roberts has stated that winning the NL West remains a high priority.
If Roberts’ team didn’t have so much talent, they would have been written off a long time ago. Walker Buehler and Julio Urias have carried a battered starting staff and now Urias is on the IL with a bad calf. The trade for Max Scherzer looks more brilliant every day. If almost any team in the big leagues had as many regular starters miss as much time as L.A. they would have folded their tent long ago. Especially with Cody Bellinger hitting under .200 and whiffing as often as he is.
Still, here the Dodgers are, determined to catch the Giants and hoping to get healthy in a month with the team they expected to have to defend their World Series title.
Pitching Breakdown
Pittsburgh is sending Wil Crowe (3-7, 5.27 ERA) to the bump to hopefully give his team five, possibly six good innings. Crowe’s recent 2.45 ERA over his last three starts is a bit deceiving. Two starts ago he was only charged with three of the seven runs given up to Cincinnati in four innings. However, he allowed eight hits, walked two and was taken deep three times.
Though 35 is not old for a starting pitcher, David Price (4-1, 3.60) is approaching the end of the line. His ERA is not awful, it’s just Price is no longer dominating. He’s averaging less than a strikeout an inning, which is hard to do in the modern game. In Price’s last four start covering 19 1/3 innings, he fanned 11. Opposing teams are batting .281 against him, compared to .235 for his career coming into this season.
Game Prediction
Sportsbooks are uncertain about Price and that is shown by having a fair run line odds compared to the money line for this matchup. Betting the ML on the Dodgers for MLB picks makes no sense because an unexpected loss would mean three straight wins just to show any profit.
Instead, the RL makes far more practical sense with Pittsburgh losing by 2.5 RPG in 33 attempts versus left-starters. Also, the last 269 times the Dodgers were listed as -200 or higher home chalk, they’ve averaged winning by 2.7 RPG.
MLB Pick: Dodgers -150 RL at YouWager (visit our YouWager 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.
