I’m going with a Total for the Friday free play. The Orioles certainly weren’t a healthy investment the last couple of days, but perhaps trying to capitalize on their struggles will pay off tonight.
ORIOLES (Tillman) @ RAYS (Archer)
Take: UNDER 7 -120
The stats tell the story loudly and clearly. The Orioles and Rays are a pair of teams having a great deal of trouble scoring runs right now. For the month of July, these have arguably been the two worst offensive teams in the American League. I expect those woes with the sticks to continue for at least one more night.
Chris Archer is pitching for Tampa Bay tonight. Archer has not been quite as consistently dominating recently as he had been earlier but it’s sure not like he’s falling apart. Expecting Archer to contain the currently feeble Orioles attack is clearly not unreasonable.
I think the more interesting guy here is Chris Tillman. The Baltimore righty has seemingly found his groove after struggling mightily all season. It’s really not so tough to see why Tillman’s numbers have improved. He’s not walking people like he had been all season.
It’s almost that simple sometimes. Throw strikes and make the other team beat you instead of the other team around. We saw a great example of this on Thursday night with an unknown Diamondbacks kid who had pitched a grand total of there games above Class A. He took the mound at Chase and got ahead of almost every hitter and Zack Godley, a kid with what appears to be really marginal stuff, walked away with a major league win in the process.
So I’ve got an All-Star righty on one side, and a starter who is absolutely in his best form to date this season, plus two offenses that can’t get out of their own way right now. There’s a little juice involved here, with the low being a 6/5 favorite as I’m writing this, but I see that as the way to play. Let’s try for a winner with the Orioles and Rays staying Under the number.