The Toronto Blue Jays and Oakland Athletics play the rubber match of a three-game series this afternoon at Rogers Centre.
The pregame narrative: Toronto leads the season series, 3-2, entering its final matchup of the year against Oakland. Chris Bassitt, a longtime former A's pitcher, faces his old squad for a second time in 2024 opposite JP Sears.
Check out the best Blue Jays picks vs. the Athletics on Aug. 11.
Blue Jays picks vs. Athletics
Go to full Blue Jays/Athletics MLB betting markets.
Best Bet: Under 8.5 runs (-117)
The Jays and A's have combined for just five total runs through two games in this series, and offence has been a struggle in all of their matchups this year.
Four of their five meetings this year have gone under this total. The exception was a 6-4 Toronto win back in June, in which four runs were scored in the 10th inning.
Toronto is one of the best overs teams in baseball, cashing at a 55.3% clip, per Team Rankings. But the Jays have a subpar offence that averages just 4.11 runs per game (24th in MLB), so their bats aren't usually the ones driving up the game total.
The same is true for the A's, who rank 26th in runs per game (4.01).
Both pitchers make this under look like the right play on Sunday afternoon. Bassitt, who's coming off 7.0 innings of two-run ball against the electric Baltimore Orioles offence, has made a habit of shutting down Oakland.
The current A's lineup is batting .220 against him with a .305 SLG in 64 plate appearances, per Baseball Savant. Bassitt allowed just one run on four hits over 8.0 innings when he pitched in Oakland earlier this summer.
As for Sears, his recent numbers are really encouraging. The left-hander owns a 2.72 ERA over his past six starts and has allowed two or fewer earned runs in five of those outings.
The Blue Jays rank 24th in OPS against lefties (.671). Vladimir Guerrero Jr. — who we'll discuss more in a moment — is really the only guy on the team who crushes lefties routinely.
Key stat: This under has cashed in 12 of Bassitt's 23 starts and in 15 of Sears' 23 starts.
Quick pick
Guerrero over 1.5 bases (+102): Guerrero extended his hit streak to 22 games on Saturday with a first-inning single. He couldn't muster up any more offence from there, but power hasn't been a problem during this streak.
The all-star first baseman has cashed this prop 16 times during the 22-game run, collecting 22 extra-base hits and posting an otherworldly 1.025 SLG in that span.
Guerrero is 0-for-3 against Sears, who is pitching well right now as mentioned above. But I'm not balking at a plus-money price for baseball's hottest hitter — especially knowing what he usually does against lefties.
Among 178 hitters with 90-plus plate appearances against LHPs, Guerrero ranks fourth in wRC+ (207) and fifth in OPS (1.108).
Picks made at 9:05 a.m. on 08/11/24.
