Expect more offence tonight between the Atlanta Braves and San Francisco Giants after Monday’s series opener was one of the best pitching duels of the season.
The pregame narrative: Atlanta won 1-0 in extra innings in a game that saw starters Chris Sale and Blake Snell combine for 23 strikeouts. On Tuesday, I expect a couple of bats to be the stars: Marcell Ozuna and Austin Riley.
Check out my Braves vs. Giants prop picks for August 13.
Braves vs. Giants prop picks
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Best Bet: Ozuna over 1.5 bases (+104)
Venue plays a part in pricing. And San Francisco’s Oracle Park is one of the most pitcher-friendly stadiums in the game.
That’s why Ozuna, one of the top bats in baseball this season, can be had at plus money when he’s routinely around -115/-120 on this prop at other venues.
Well, that’s enough for me to see value coming back his way.
Ozuna has been a monster. He’s hitting over .300 and slugging .591. He’s one home run behind MVP favourite Shohei Ohtani for the National League lead.
The Giants are deploying Kyle Harrison, a lefty who has surrendered 11 of his 14 homers to right-handed hitters.
Against southpaws, Ozuna is hitting .343/.432/.569. He’s one of eight players with an OPS greater than 1.000 versus left-handers.
Harrison has been more than serviceable in his first full season but he does nothing spectacular. He’s allowed 11 hits over his last two outings and didn’t get out of the fifth in either of them.
The 23-year-old is bottom 10 among starters (minimum 100 innings pitched) in average exit velocity and hard-hit rate. Ozuna, meanwhile, is ninth among batters in hard-hit rate.
Key stat: Ozuna has cleared 1.5 total bases in 50% of his games (tied for seventh in MLB), per Team Rankings.
Quick pick
Riley over 1.5 total bases (+108): Atlanta’s third baseman is back to being a problem for opposing pitchers.
Riley started the season painfully slow, hitting .228/.295/.353 with three homers through the end of May (42 games).
Since, over 62 games, he’s done this: .285/349/.553 with 15 bombs.
He slugged greater than .520 in both June and July and is at .644 in August.
Riley is a premium bat who had a .941 OPS versus lefties last season and 1.084 the year before. He has cleared this line in six of 11 games this month.
Picks made at 2:39 p.m. ET 08/13/2024.
Chris joined NorthStar Gaming from Covers.com where he was a publishing editor and wrote betting content. Before that, he was the sports editor at VICE Canada, worked for theScore and covered the Blue Jays for MLB.com. In addition to filling out the lineup card each day for the editorial team, Chris writes frequently himself, primarily on the NBA and MLB.