Friday was a different kind of day as I got out of the Tuley’s Takes home office (I’m not fully recovered from my sore throat but well enough to resume most normal activities) to sign up a proxy client for some football contests here in town and then took my family on a 2 1/2-hour drive each way to Cedar City, Utah, to see “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”
The show, part of the Utah Shakespeare Festival, was excellent and helped ease the pain of losing my Best Bet of the day on the Mariners in a 5-2 loss to the Astros. Even if I lost that, I was hoping to salvage the night with Shotei Ohtani pitching for the Angels (%plussign% 130) against the Braves. It looked like I handicapped that game pretty well as Ohtani pitched six shutout innings, but he didn’t get any run support and then got lit up for six runs in the 7th inning and the Angels lost 8-1.
Let’s recap the rest of the Friday MLB card and then try to find a live dog or two on Saturday.
Friday’s recaps
Top MLB Resources:
MLB: Faves went 9-5 Friday with the most significant wins (in my humble opinion) being the Blue Jays (-118) routing Red Sox 28-5 and the Astros (-120) beating the Mariners 5-2 to snap their 14-game winning streak. Biggest upsets were by the Padres (%plussign% 160 in 4-1 win at Mets), Guardians %plussign% 141 in 8-2 win at White Sox) and Reds (%plussign% 130 in 9-5 win vs. Cardinals). Road teams led 8-6. Overs dominated 11-3.
More MLB: Faves lead 830-550 SU (60.1 percent) on the season with 23 games closing pick-'em (faves usually win around 59 percent, so still ahead of that pace, but gap had been narrowing but back above 60 percent now). Home teams lead just 730-673 (52 percent, but usually closer to 54 percent). Unders still lead 691-646-64 (51.7 percent).
Saturday’s Takes
Red Sox %plussign% 125 vs. Blue Jays: OK, there’s not many system plays for baseball teams that give up 28 runs in a game, but in most sports, I’m a fan of betting teams off a huge loss. No one likes to be embarrassed, and you usually get a top effort out of such teams. I don’t consider Kutter Crawford (2-2, 4.50 ERA, 1.38 WHIP) as being a “stopper,” but he’s good enough that I think anything around %plussign% 125 is value on the home dog as they also beat Toronto starter Alex Manoah the last time they faced him. The other dog I like is the A’s %plussign% 112 vs. the Rangers. Granted, Oakland starter James Kaprielian is 1-5, but the A’s are 7-7 in games he starts, so he does usually keep them in the game. And his 5.09 ERA and 1.36 WHIP are actually better than Texas starter Taylor Hearns (5.78 ERA, 1.67 WHIP).
Good luck today (and every day!).
