Monday MLB Betting Picks for August 14 - Ride the Line Ep #43

A new episode of Ride the Line with Grant Mitchell and Tanner Kern is now live on all WSN platforms!

Monday MLB Betting Picks

Grant kicks off the Monday episode by taking the Seattle Mariners on the moneyline against the Kansas City Royals. The Mariners just lost back-to-back games against a strong Baltimore Orioles outfit but had won eight straight prior and are looking to get back on track against one of the worst teams in the league. They are also 8-2 on the road since the All-Star break and will look to improve that Monday.

Logan Gilbert has a 2.59 ERA across his last seven starts, five of which have been considered quality starts. Seattle also leads the MLB in bullpen ERA over the last month, while Kansas City is languishing close to the bottom. The Royals offense is much improved on where it started the season, but it will regress to the mean at some point.

Tanner’s first pick is the Oakland Athletics +1.5 against the St. Louis Cardinals. He believes that, despite the A’s claiming the worst record in MLB, the Cardinals have had a comparatively more disappointing season. Proof of that is that they have covered just six times in their last 15 outings (40%), and the A’s have a better record against the spread recently and over the course of the season.

JP Sears is one of the few bright spots of Oakland’s team, and he’ll be on the bump Monday. He has given up just four earned runs in 22.1 innings across his last four road starts for a 1.63 ERA, and the A’s offense also scores more than a half-run more per game on the road compared to at home.

Grant’s second pick is the Orioles moneyline against the San Diego Padres. Grayson Rodriguez will get the start and will look to continue his impressive play, which has seen him yield a 3.51 ERA in five games since he was promoted from AAA a couple of months ago. Yu Darvish has also dialed it in and will get the start for the Padres as they look to bounce back from consecutive losses to the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Orioles are one of the best road teams in the entire league and just took two off of a rod-hot Mariners team in Seattle. Their bullpen has also risen to seventh in ERA over the last month, whereas the Padres are at 17th and have one of the most inconsistent, albeit talented offenses in the league.

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Tanner’s second pick is the under of 7.5 in the Tampa Bay Rays-San Francisco Giants matchup. His best advice is to wait until the first pitch to see if the line rises to eight, but he still like the 7.5 under because of Tyler Glasnow and Ryan Walker on the mound.

The Giants are hitting just .206 at the plate since the All-Star break, while the Rays’ offense is a shell of what it was in the first half of the season. Wander Franco also did not travel with the team to San Francisco and will not appear, which will hurt the Rays’ offense even more.

Grant’s final pick is also on a 7.5 line, but this time it’s the over in the Houston Astros-Miami Marlins game. Framer Valdez is only one game removed from a complete-game no-hitter but has been deplorably bad in the games surrounding that appearance, and his ERA jumps over two points on the road. Miami’s Braxton Garrett is also coming off of a rough month and has a higher ERA at home (5.40) than he does on the road (2.68). 

The Astros have scored the fourth-most runs since the All-Star break—the Marlins have scored the second-fewest but have started to look livelier as of late. Neither bullpen is amazing, and this line is too low not to bet the over (per Grant).

The last pick of the show is Tanner’s selection of the Atlanta Braves runline against the New York Yankees. The Yankees just gave up five runs in the bottom of the ninth in an unforgivable loss to the Marlins and are only a couple of games above .500. The Braves also lost yesterday but took three of four against the New York Mets and are clearly the class of the league.

Max Fried will get the start for the Braves as they make their return to their home field. Clarke Schmidt has played well for the Yankees lately and will get the nod, but he has to take on the league’s most prolific offense that just this weekend scored 21 runs in one game. 

Check back on Wednesday for a new episode of Ride the Line and more MLB betting picks!