Pirates vs. Padres prediction and odds for Monday, July 24
By Josh Yourish
Even with the loss yesterday, the San Diego Padres have won back-to-back series and even at 48-52 are trending in the right direction with the trade deadline approaching. That’s not the only good news, the Pittsburgh Pirates are also in town for a three-game set. The Pirates have gone 2-7 to start the second half and are 43-56 overall.
Game 1 is a favorable matchup for the Padres with Yu Darvish against Quinn Priester. Darvish is 7-6 with a 4.36 ERA in 17 starts this season. Priester has made just one career start in the big leagues and last week he gave up seven runs over 5.1 innings.
Let’s get into the odds for the Pirates and Padres in San Diego tonight.
Pirates vs. Padres odds, run line and total
Pirates vs. Padres prediction and pick
Quinn Priester’s first start was very interesting. He got shelled in the later innings for the same reason that he had success early on. He throws a lot of strikes and is aggressive in the strike zone. That can work for some pitchers, but not one with a fastball that averages about 92 mph. Priester doesn’t have nasty breaking pitches either.
So, the Guardians didn’t have him timed up and hit a few balls right at his defenders early, but eventually they were able to drive everything and punished Priester. Priester allowed four hits and a home run off his fastball and the Guardians hit .444 off that pitch with just a 15% whiff rate.
The Padres will hunt for that fastball and will almost certainly punish Priester early on in this game. I have very little faith that Priester will have success in the big leagues this year. He needs to be perfect with his location of his pitches and that’s pretty tough when you’re a rookie and Juan Soto or Fernando Tatis Jr. is digging in.
The Padres have a team OPS of .800 this month with 105 runs scored which is fourth most in the league. Their offense has been fantastic and the Pirates have scored 67 runs. The Padres will cruise in Game 1 and probably 2 and 3 if we’re being honest.
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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change