Today we’ll take a look at the race for the postseason in the American League and preview a matchup between the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics. The two AL West giants are tied at 72-69, three games out of the wild card and eight games out of the division, which is led by Houston.
With so much on the line, this should be an incredibly thrilling series. In this specific game, we’ll see a lefty toeing the hill, testing Seattle’s abilities against said handedness. Will another southpaw bite the Mariners? Let’s go over the MLB odds for today.
Wednesday, September 22, 2021 – 09:40 PM EDT at Oakland Coliseum
As the above indicated, the Mariners have been poor in 2021 against left-handed pitching. They had a chance to go out and add a right-handed power bat to solve this dilemma at the trade deadline, perhaps Nelson Cruz, their old friend, but instead, Seattle swapped their closer for a slightly worse closer and got a switch-hitting, contact-heavy infielder.
While that infielder, Abraham Toro, hasn’t been too bad for Seattle, its Achilles heel continues to be left-handed pitching.
The Mariners rank 26th against lefties this season with a 91 wRC+, a number that is supplemented by a poor .681 OPS and a gaudy 25% strikeout rate. Seattle has actually posted a .272 batting average on balls in play against lefties, which would indicate that their struggles aren’t merely a product of bad luck.
Despite all those numbers, and a .226 average, the most staggering of all could be that the Mariners rank sixth in home runs hit against left-handed pitching, which illustrates just how bad this team has been at getting runners on in these situations.
Chris Flexen will pitch for Seattle, and while his season has offered plenty of reasons to believe in him with a 3.66 ERA, his peripherals would indicate he hasn’t been quite that good.
His expected ERA according to Statcast sits at 4.37, a product of many hard-hit balls (39% of batted balls have traveled at least 95 mph, which is higher than league average) and line drives. His strikeout rate is a very low 16.4%, too, which puts a ton of emphasis on the quality of contact he’s allowing.
We’ve got the Oakland A’s on the other side of this matchup, who had been on a tear with five straight wins until dropping the first two games of this three-game series to the Mariners in a disappointing fashion.
The offense simply has sleep-walked through these two games, scattering a few home runs but doing little else to make an impact with just four runs in the two games.
As it stands, Oakland still owns the seventh-best offense over the last two weeks with a 110 wRC+, and has been excellent in the walk department (9%) and the strikeout department (17.2%). Those are very ironclad numbers, and much like Flexen and his low strikeout rate, they really test how well pitchers can limit hard-hit balls.
With that being said, Oakland still has a 37.9% hard-hit rate over that span, which is below average.
Cole Irvin will pitch for the A’s, and he could make all the difference. The lefty enters a great matchup against the lefty-averse Mariners sporting very similar numbers to Flexen, with a 3.94 ERA and a 4.91 xERA. With that said, he’s been great at limiting walks. He’s also struggled against Seattle with no fewer than three earned runs in any of his three outings.
Despite Irvin’s 0-3 record against Seattle, I still like the A’s to prevail here at home. The Mariners aren’t playing a sustainable brand of baseball, and the wheels have begun to come off for Flexen.
On the other hand, Irvin’s peripherals don’t look so good, but he does get to face a terrible offense against left-handed pitchers and one which hasn’t barreled up many balls lately or kept traffic moving on the bases. I think the A’s bounce back here for our MLB pick.
MLB Pick: Oakland A’s ML (-136) at GTbets (visit our GTbets 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.