MLB Baseball Betting: Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays

The Toronto Blue Jays evened their four game weekend series with the Baltimore Orioles on Friday night, taking a 4-3 win in 10 innings. They’ll try to cut some more into the O’s lead atop the AL East when the teams play again at the Rogers Centre on Saturday afternoon. Toronto is starting to make a move in the division after treading water for much of the season so far. They’re now 33-30 on the year and 4.5 games out of first place. The Orioles have been in very good form of late winning 8 of 10 including Friday’s loss. They’re just one game up on the second place Boston Red Sox and as noted above 4.5 games ahead of the Jays.

Baltimore will start Mike Wright and the right hander is something of an enigma. On one hand, his numbers aren’t good at all. Wright has a 5.24 ERA overall with a 5.91 road ERA. His L3 ERA is in the same range at 5.65. The ‘enigma’ part–the O’s have won and won often when he takes the mound. Baltimore has won 7 of his 10 2016 starts including 3 of 4 on the road and his last 3 overall. Toronto will counter with lefthander J.A. Happ who has a 3.57 ERA overall with Toronto winning 7 of his 12 assignments. He’s got a 4.50 ERA at the Rogers Centre but Toronto has won four of his five starts there. His last three starts have seen him put up a 4.00 ERA with the Jays winning two of those three games.

Baltimore has been very good against left handed pitching this season (8-6 +2.2 units) so there’s no reason to think they’ll find Happ particularly hard to hit. Toronto has lost money against right handed pitching with an unimpressive 23-19 -0.8 unit performance. They’re also 15-15 -4.8 units at home. The curious thing about this game is the pricing–Toronto is a -140 home chalk despite not putting up good home numbers and playing a very potent challenger. Baltimore is just barely over the ‘Mendoza Line’ on the road (12-13 +0.6 units) but they’ve made a ton of money overall (36-24 +11.6 units).

Given the unimpressive numbers put up by Toronto’s Happ and the O’s decent ability to handle left handers we have to think that Baltimore is a value at the price. We’ll take the ‘plus money’ with the Orioles.

BET BALTIMORE ORIOLES +130 OVER TORONTO BLUE JAYS