Monday brings a slate of eight evening games, and our favorite MLB player prop of the bunch comes from the 8:40 EST matchup between the Braves and the Rockies.
Our free picks are rolling along; after pushing Friday’s bet of Over 5Ks on Rick Porcello, our free article picks moved to 3-0-1 on the year.
Meanwhile, our subscription picks are 32-23 picks. You can get access to all our picks, plus Slack chat support, by joining the Bet the Prop team — try it for a week for free.
Let’s jump into tonight’s bet.
Braves SP Julio Teheran
Over 5K (+100)
Teheran Two for Two
Perhaps it’s a trap, but this line just seems way too low considering Teheran’s early-season form.
- He struck out 7 in 5.0 innings of work against the Phillies in his first start
- He again struck out 7 in 5.0 innings of work in his second start against the White Sox
Teheran’s 12.6 Ks per 9 inning average through two starts places him eighth among all MLB starting pitchers, just behind noted K-artists like Max Scherzer and Gerrit Cole.
We should certainly expect him to come back down to earth a little bit, considering his career average of 7.8K/9, but this number is still attainable for the nine-year veteran. Last year, he had at least 5 Ks in 21 of 32 starts.
The worry with Teheran is not so much his strikeout rate, but his limited range. He only hit 100 pitches in five of 32 starts last year, and his pitch counts on this year so far are 88 and 91.
Still, he gets a nice matchup tonight against a team that has been swinging and missing early on.
ꓘ’d at Coors
Teheran faces a Colorado team at Coors Field which ranks 20th in total strikeouts with 9.3 per game.
It’s a continuation of a similar trend from last year, when the Rockies finished 19th in team strikeouts with 8.62 per game. The year before that they ranked 20th in strikeouts, giving us a big enough sample size to conclude that the Rockies are one of the better matchups for opposing pitchers when it comes to the over on strikeouts.
In his lone matchup with the Rockies last year, Teheran had 7 strikeouts in 7.0 innings. The year before that, he had 8 Ks in 7.0 innings and 4 Ks in 7.1 innings, giving him a sturdy average of 8.1K/9 over his last three meetings with the Rockies.
Conclusion
The Rockies are a better team in the strikeout department at home, but not enough to make me shy away from this low line on Teheran.
I booked this bet (and posted it on Twitter) at +100, and it’s since moved to around -103. I think it’s a value up to -114.