Tough week for us in MLB betting tips last Thursday as we missed on all three bets to take our season tally to 27-20. We’ll look to bounce back this week as we take a look at some of the key games in the MLB this Thursday, the 23rd of August and give our betting tips below.
MLB Betting Tips Thursday 23rd August
Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays (2.30am AEST)
The Blue Jays will be looking for a 3-0 series sweep over the Orioles when they face off early Thursday morning. A 5-3 win on Tuesday was followed up by another dominant performance on Wednesday that has Toronto up 8-2 in the bottom of the 7th at the time of writing. The Blue Jays will have a debutant starter on the mound on Thursday in Thomas Pannone, who has a couple of appearances out of the bull pen for the Jays but will make his first start after Marcus Stroman was placed on the injury list.
Pannone will be up against David Hess on Thursday, who was good in his last outing, which was a 2-1 loss to the Indians. However, he has been pretty poor in 2018 so far with a 2-7 record and 5.75 ERA. Baltimore too has been poor as a team in 2018 and currently sit on the bottom of the AL East division with just a 37-88 record.
Blue Jays start as strong favourites here and can’t look past them against a lacklustre Orioles side even with a first gamer on the mound.
Atlanta Braves at Pittsburgh Pirates (9.05am AEST)
At time of writing, Atlanta look like taking a 2-0 lead in the three-game series in Pittsburgh and will have their ace Julio Teheran on the mound on Thursday. Teheran has an 8-7 record on the season so far with a 4.24 ERA and will be looking to keep the Braves on top of the National League East standings, where they currently hold just a one game advantage over Philadelphia.
Teheran will be up against Trevor Williams on Thursday, who has been dominant in his last few starts. He has allowed just three runs in his last 36 innings pitched, which equates to a ridiculous 0.36 ERA although the Prates have only captured a win in one of those games.
With Williams in such good form at the moment and the first few games of this series remaining pretty low scoring so far, I think that this could be another low scoring affair. Both teams have arguably their best pitchers on the mound and have struggled with the bat recently.
Total runs UNDER 8.5
$1.80
Cleveland Indians at Boston Red Sox (9.10am AEST)
Cleveland leads their four-game series against Boston 2-0 after good wins on both Tuesday and Wednesday. They’ll have Carlos Carrasco on the mound on Thursday morning, who was great in his last start, pitching seven full shutout innings in a 2-1 win against the Orioles. Cleveland currently top the AL Central division by a whopping 13 games so can likely cruise throughout the rest of the MLB regular season.
Boston also maintain a big advantage in their division. They currently lead the New York Yankees by nine games and have the a whopping 10 more wins than any other team in Major League Baseball. They will likely reach 90 wins on the season before any other team reaches 80 and currently boast the most hits, runs and best average in all of baseball.
Brian Johnson will be on the mound for the Sox on Thursday in another fill in start. He has nine starts so far this year and has maintained a 3.40 ERA with a 4-1 record in those starts. Boston have looked down with the bat in their two game losing streak to Cleveland over the last few days but you can’t keep this batting line-up down for long. I expect them to bounce back here.
