Braves vs. Red Sox prediction and odds for Tuesday, July 25 (Value on OVER)
By Reed Wallach
The Atlanta Braves travel to Boston as the best team in Major League Baseball, will the team's offense keep on rolling against the Red Sox?
Atlanta will lean on starting pitcher Charlie Morton to support the team's offense against a Red Sox team that is using a bullpen day in the series opener, starting with Brennan Bernardino. Boston comes in hot at the plate, can it knock around the veteran Morton?
Here are the odds and our play on the total:
Braves vs. Red Sox odds, run line and total
Braves vs. Red Sox prediction and pick
These are two of the five best lineups in baseball over the last month, per MLB.com. Atlanta is second in OPS behind only the Los Angeles Dodgers while the Red Sox are in fourth. Both teams are raking at the plate, and I expect it to keep up on Tuesday.
While Morton comes in in good form this season, he has a 3.36 ERA and a Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP) mark only sightly higher, 3.69.
He has pitched to expectation with about 10 strikeouts per nine innings, but has seen an uptick in walks at nearly four per nine. With an increased walk rate and a streaking lineup like the Red Sox, I'm conncerned about his ability to navigate through the Boston lineup.
Meanwhile, the Red Sox league average bullpen is in trouble against a Braves lineup that can do no wrong at the plate.
Led by Austin Riley, who has six home runs and 17 RBI's in nine games since the All-Star break with a .306 batting average, the Braves are in line for a big outing.
I'm going to stay off the side of this and bank on runs between two high level offenses in a hitter friendly stadium like Fenway Park.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.