The New York Mets are cruising atop the National League East right now, comfortably in first place by a healthy 7.5 game margin over the Atlanta Braves. After hanging eight runs on the Phillies yesterday, they’ll host Philadelphia for the second game of their three-game series tonight.
Both of these teams can pile on the runs, as we saw last night. There’s a few bets worth making on this game, with odds courtesy of BetMGM.
Mets vs. Phillies picks (7:15 PM ET, FOX)
OVER 8.5 runs (-120)
Let’s start with the offense. The Mets have scored the second most runs in all of baseball on the season with 230, averaging 4.89 runs per game. The Phillies aren’t far behind them – they’ve posted the eighth most runs on the year with 210. Both teams are in the top-seven in batting average, and top-eight in RBIs.
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On the opposite side of things, both pitching staffs have been fairly soft to opposing hitters. The Phillies bullpen has the ninth-highest ERA at 4.25. Zach Eflin will get the start for Philadelphia tonight, and the Mets ran him up for six runs, five of them earned, in only 4.1 innings pitched when they faced him on May 1.
Just like Eflin, Mets starting pitcher Taijuan Walker also got shelled the last time he pitched against the Phillies. On May 5, Philadelphia hung seven runs, six of them earned, on Walker in 4.0 innings pitched – oddly similar to Eflin’s last outing in this NL East matchup.
Both these teams have enjoyed hitting on the over lately. The total has gone over in five out of the last six games for the Mets, and four out of the last five games for the Phillies.
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Mets -1.5 (+150)
Walker has received oddly low run support from the Mets in his last three outings, getting a combined nine runs of support over that time span (3.0 per game). I expect that to course correct tonight, considering the Mets have averaged 5.56 runs per game in games not pitched by Walker this season.
The Mets bats have been on fire recently as well. They have scored 36 total runs in their last four games, and have shown no signs of slowing down. Over the last seven days, New York has eight hitters with a batting average over .310. Amongst that group is the surging Francisco Lindor, who is hitting .321 with two home runs, two doubles, and a team-leading 12 RBIs over that stretch.
With a 14-8 home record on the season and red hot bats, I’ll back the Mets to cover the spread at home with plus odds.