{"id":20826,"date":"2025-09-12T14:57:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:57:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=20826"},"modified":"2025-09-12T14:57:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T14:57:09","slug":"mlb-picks-best-bets-mets-struggles-continue-against-old-friend-why-its-time-to-fade-the-astros-and-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/?p=20826","title":{"rendered":"MLB picks, best bets: Mets&#8217; struggles continue against old friend, why it&#8217;s time to fade the Astros and more"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n<br \/><\/p>\n<p>Only three regular-season Fridays remain in Major League Baseball in 2025, and we&#8217;ll look to cash some checks the rest of the way build up our accounts before the playoffs. We went 1 for 2 last week with the Blue Jays-Yankees over failing to cash by a half run. Sigh. So close.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Time for a 2-0 night with some hope for hitting the home run play. Let&#8217;s get to it, with the odds via DraftKings.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the big storylines Friday night is the <span class=\"link\">return of Jacob deGrom to Citi Field<\/span>, where he&#8217;s never faced his old team, the Mets, since joining the Rangers. The Rangers are hot right now and right on the cusp of a playoff spot while the Mets are scuffling and seem to be trying to squander their playoff spot. I&#8217;m avoiding any plays on the game result, but I do think deGrom pitches well while his workload is held down. He has a 2.21 ERA in his last four starts, but he&#8217;s only thrown 20 \u2153 innings in there. Keep in mind, deGrom hadn&#8217;t gone over 92 innings in a season since 2019 before this year and he&#8217;s at 155 \u2154.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m looking for exactly five innings from deGrom and the Mets scoring no more than one run off of him.<\/p>\n<h2>Blue Jays over 3.5 runs (-140)<\/h2>\n<p>I do believe Orioles starter Trevor Rogers has unlocked something and will be a frontline starter next season. It&#8217;s a 15-start sample at this point and he&#8217;s still sitting there with a 1.51 ERA. I also don&#8217;t think he&#8217;s Prime Pedro or Bob Gibson or Sandy Koufax. He&#8217;s surely due some regression at some point, right? He did allow a season-high-tying eight hits against the Dodgers last time out and even gave up a whopping two runs for the first time since July 20.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Blue Jays hit really well at home and are one of the best teams against left-handed pitchers in baseball. I don&#8217;t believe they&#8217;ll explode on Rogers or anything, but it&#8217;s reasonable to think they can score three or four runs against him before the Orioles&#8217; bullpen takes over and coughs up another run or two. I don&#8217;t see getting to four being a problem here and I&#8217;m confident enough to take on the juice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>These odds are awfully short for a home run play and, yes, I&#8217;m well aware that Schwarber is one of the easiest home run plays there is. After all, he&#8217;s one of the most prolific power hitters in baseball. Still, we like winning money and this is over +200, so I don&#8217;t see why it would be a bad play.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Schwarber and the Phillies play in a homer-friendly ballpark and he has 28 homers there this season in 72 games. The Royals send Michael Lorenzen to the mound, and he&#8217;s coughed up 21 homers this season. Schwarber is 8 for 22 (.364) with two home runs in his career against Lorenzen.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Futures Play: Fade the Astros<\/h2>\n<p>The Astros are 24-33 since July 3 and that makes them one of the worst non-Rockies teams in baseball for over two months. They host both the Mariners and Rangers next week and I won&#8217;t be even remotely surprised if both teams pass the Astros, meaning they&#8217;ll miss the playoffs. They are +250 to miss the playoffs. The Rangers are +185 to make the playoffs and +1000 to win the AL West. The Mariners are -125 to win the AL West. I&#8217;m good with whatever play here you desire. I&#8217;m out on the Astros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Only three regular-season Fridays remain in Major League Baseball in 2025, and we&#8217;ll look to cash some checks the rest of the way build up our accounts before the playoffs. We went 1 for 2 last week with the Blue Jays-Yankees over failing to cash by a half run. Sigh. So close.\u00a0 Time for a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[6703,4702,2638,5092,5518,5014,749,1830,1032,286],"class_list":{"0":"post-20826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-astros","9":"tag-bets","10":"tag-continue","11":"tag-fade","12":"tag-friend","13":"tag-mets","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-picks","16":"tag-struggles","17":"tag-time"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}