Cleveland Indians vs Los Angeles Angels Predictions, Betting Odds & Picks

Garcia’s 2021 record: (18-13-2)

How to watch Cleveland Indians vs Los Angeles Angels

The Man Who Has Taken Baseball by Storm

Shoehei Ohtani was all the rage in baseball when he came over to the MLB from Japan in 2018. He had a solid start to his career, with 40 home runs in the first two years, but has yet to be able to stay healthy for a full season — he’s yet to play more than 106 games in a season.

But far this season, he has been the superstar that everybody had hoped he would be three years ago. Ohtani leads all of baseball with 14 home runs — he belted one in the first inning last night for the fourth long ball in five games.

On top of that, he knows a thing or two about pitching. The hard-throwing righty has the same ERA as three-time CyYoung Award winner Max Scherzer.

Ohtani will be on the mound on Wednesday night and will see if he can start making it deeper into games. He’s gone five innings or fewer in four of his five starts, but his last one was his best — going seven innings, striking out 10, and giving up just one run against the Astros.

Ohtani is 1-0 overall with a 2.10 ERA, 1.21 WHIP and 40 strikeouts in 25.2 innings.

Indians Try to Start Climbing Again

The Indians were arguably the hottest team in baseball for the beginning portion of this month. However the Tribe has cooled down significantly as of late, Cleveland, coming off of a stretch of 13-3 over the previous few weeks, just snapped a four-game losing streak last night.

The problem during those four losses in a row was the inability to generate the big run — they averaged three runs per game and never scored more than four in any game.

But that’s long been Cleveland’s problem this year — they’ve scored the second-fewest runs of any team in the American League this year. That said, the Indians have been able to stay in-game because of their ability to prevent runs — they’ve given up the second-fewest of any team in the American League.

That’s what’s going to have to happen if they are going to start building on Tuesday’s win. They have one of the right two men on the mound (Shane Bieber is the other) in Aaron Civale who has been awesome this year.

Civale is 5-1 overall with a 3.40 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, and 39 strikeouts in 53 innings. Civale has gone 5.1 innings or deeper in all eight games and pitched into the seventh inning in half of his outings.

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X-Factors to Watch on Both Sides

Shohei Ohtani is the obvious choice on the Angel’s side — but that’s too easy. Superstar and best player in baseball Mike Trout is out for at least six weeks with a Grade 2 calf strain, so it can’t be him either.

That’s tough for Joe Maddon’s club, but Jared Walsh is up to the task. Walsh leads the team with a .343 batting average to go with his .413 OBP and absurd .990 OPS. He’s also top-10 in baseball with 30 RBIs.

For Cleveland, Jose Ramirez is the “too easy” choice.

Cesar Hernandez is instead the man to watch, not something you often say about a .225 hitter.

However, the second baseman is 10-of-32 his last week with a team-high 18 bases. His .313 batting average also leads the way during that stretch — and is a big reason why it’s up almost 50 points since the start of the month.