We’ve been struggling a bit as of late, so we’re trying to simplify things a bit with these two plays. For our first play, we’re targeting James Wood of the Washington Nationals in the early afternoon game against the New York Mets. For our second play of the day, we’re going back to the Atlanta Braves where we’ll find Alex Verdugo in their game with the Colorado Rockies.
We’ve been struggling as of late. We went 0-2 our last time out in this column. Fernando Tatis Jr. was leading off. He got just one hit on the day, and he was struggling at the dish the rest of the day. In the Marcell Ozuna world, the team scored seven runs, and Ozuna went 2-for-3 at the plate. The only problem is that Austin Riley drove in a pair of runs in front of him, and he never had runners on base to drive them in.
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- James Wood O1.5 Hits + Runs + RBIs (-105) - 1 Unit BetMGM
- Alex Verdugo O1.5 Bases (+105) - 1 Unit Bet365
James Wood O1.5 Hits + Runs + RBIs (-105) BetMGM
We’re targeting Wood for our first play of the day. The young slugger has been turning heads early on this season, and he’s been hitting quite well over the last week. He’s batting .267 with a .838 OPS over that stretch. This season, his numbers have been nearly even against RHP and LHP with a .254 average and .904 OPS against RHP compared to .263 and .901 marks against LHP. However, he’s also faced RHP 36 more times, so the numbers are slightly skewed. He’s also been much better at home compared to the road this year. He’s batting .291 with a 1.000 OPS at home while those numbers drop to .220 and .796 away from Nationals park.
This afternoon, the Mets are sending RHP Griffin Canning to the bump to wrap up this series. Canning is carrying a 3.12 ERA this season through five starts. He’s also allowing the fewest HR9 of his career at 0.7 compared to his previous low mark of 1.3 back in 2020. Wood has loved this matchup in the past. In three plate appearances against Canning, Wood is 2-for-3 with a home run and a double. As a team, the Nationals are batting .341 against him. Canning relies primarily on his changeup, fastball and slider against LHB. It just so happens that Wood is batting better than .450 against two of those pitches this year. If Wood can just get on base, the lineup behind him can succeed in this matchup.
Alex Verdugo O1.5 Bases (+105) Bet365
We’ve been struggling with our base plays this year, so I decided to tone it down on this one. Since joining the Braves’ lineup, Verdugo has been one of the team’s best hitters, and the team is 6-2 in games that he has played after starting 5-13 without him. He’s batting .333 this year. Of his 12 hits, five have gone for extra bases, and he’s had two different 4-hit outings thus far. Atlanta has used him almost exclusively against RHP, and it’s working out, as he is batting .353 against them while carrying an OPS of .889.
The Rockies are sending Ryan Feltner to the mound for today’s contest. More than 74 percent of the time,Feltner has been throwing fastballs and changeups to LHB this year. Verdugo is batting .500 against changeups this year, and he’s been a bit unlucky against fastballs so far with an expected batting average of .348 vs. an actual batting average of .294. Feltner has been solid against RHB this year. He’s held them to a .192 batting average and a .365 slugging percentage. However, against LHB, those numbers jump to .277 and .489. Throw in the fact that Coors Field is ranked in the top four for hits, doubles and triples over the last three years to lefties, and this is a great spot to snag Verdugo.
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