Nick Pivetta and the Boston Red Sox can beat the MLB odds this Wednesday when they visit their hated foes, the New York Yankees.
Wednesday, August 18, 2021 – 07:05 PM EDT at Yankee Stadium
If you were sitting in the stands at Royal Athletic Park eight years ago, watching local boy Nick Pivetta pitch for the Victoria HarbourCats of the West Coast League – that’s collegiate summer baseball – you got a very early look at a future starter for the Boston Red Sox. Pivetta (4.18 FIP) has made the most of this opportunity; the Red Sox have won 15 of his 23 starts this year, raking in a tasty 5.28 betting units in profit.
Now let’s see if Pivetta can work his magic this Wednesday against Boston’s eternal nemesis, the New York Yankees. It’ll be Andrew Heaney (4.77 FIP) taking the mound for New York, looking for his first quality start since arriving from the Los Angeles Angels at the trade deadline. At press time, BetOnline (visit our BetOnline Review) have the Red Sox priced at +105 on their MLB odds board after opening them at +110, so if early money is still sharp money, the Sox were the sharp pick – and should still have some value despite shedding those five cents.
It’s not going to be a ton of value, though. Not if you agree with FiveThirtyEight’s projections, which have New York winning 53 percent of the time, for a fair moneyline of –113 using the sine qua non of gambling calculators, the BMR Odds Converter. We normally hew closely to those projections here at the home office, but we’re willing to throw a suitably small wager at Pivetta and the Red Sox. That’s partly because we’re avoiding the total this time.
There’s a fat over/under of 10 runs on the MLB lines at Bovada (visit our Bovada Review) , no doubt goosed in part by the presence of Heaney. You might remember him from last week’s Field of Dreams game, which we previewed in this space; the Over was the obvious choice for our MLB picks, and Heaney’s seven earned runs allowed in five innings helped the Chicago White Sox beat New York 9-8 (Over 10). Why not keep plucking that chicken?
Because Pivetta. He’s got the Under at 14-9 this year, including each of his last four starts and 11 of 13 since the beginning of June; if Pivetta was getting undue help from using Spider Tack, the league-wide crackdown doesn’t seem to have affected him too much. Furthermore, Yankee Stadium is not the Field of Dreams, and Wednesday’s weather report doesn’t jibe with the Over, promising 90-percent humidity at game time with seasonable temperatures in the mid-70s and light winds blowing towards third base.
This will not do. Wednesday’s game also comes on the heels of Tuesday’s double-header. The Yankees have the better bullpen of the two American League East clubs, but the Red Sox have excellent relievers, too, and the difference between the two will be mitigated once they get put through the shredder Tuesday. We’ll buy that for a dollar.
MLB Pick: Red Sox +105 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.