The NLCS starts tonight, as the Philadelphia Phillies look to advance to the World Series for the second consecutive season. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers will look to take a 2-0 series lead before heading home for Game 3.
Here are the best PrizePicks plays for Monday, Oct. 16's MLB action.
Monday’s Best MLB PrizePicks Player Predictions
This Season: 110-100
The NLCS starts tonight, as the Philadelphia Phillies look to advance to the World Series for the second consecutive season. Meanwhile, the Texas Rangers will look to take a 2-0 series lead before heading home for Game 3.
Here are the best PrizePicks plays for Monday, Oct. 16's MLB action.
Monday’s Best MLB PrizePicks Player Predictions
This Season: 110-100
While other pitchers have hit five strikeouts, no one other than the regular season league leader in strikeouts, Spencer Strider, has been able to actually strike out more than five Phillies in a start this postseason. Zac Gallen has struck out just four batters in both of his postseason starts despite pitching at least 5.1 innings in each.
Earlier this season, Gallen struck out three Phillies in 5.2 innings. That game was in Philadelphia, so perhaps Gallen will be comfortable pitching on the road tonight. However, the Phillies fans have been incredible this postseason, which could affect Gallen and chase him before the fifth. If he doesn't make it that deep, he has little chance of hitting this over.
We see no reason to start fading Bryce Harper now. Against the Atlanta Braves, Harper had a hitter fantasy score of seven or higher in three of the four games in the series. The only time he failed to hit seven, he had six.
Harper is batting .333 against Gallen in his career, but he has only walked once against him. However, Harper has been doing a phenomenal job of working counts and getting on base this postseason. He has walked seven times and at least once in four of his six games.
He's also hit safely in five of six postseason games. With a double and a walk, Harper would push. With anything more, Harper would hit the over. Based on how he's currently handling his plate appearances, we have to back the over.
It's tempting to take Nathan Eovaldi over 4.0 strikeouts. However, the Astros finished the regular season as the third-best strikeout team in baseball. Despite how bad they looked offensively last night, we think it was simply a matter of facing a pitcher on his game.
Therefore, we will take Framber Valdez to throw more than five strikeouts in this game instead. The Rangers aren't nearly as good at avoiding strikeouts as the Astros, even though they did only get rung up five times by Justin Verlander last night.
In his only postseason start, Valdez was shelled. He gave up seven hits and five earned runs in 4.1 innings, but he still managed to strike out five batters. He's struck out at least five in five consecutive and eight of his last nine. The Rangers' lineup isn't the best matchup for him, but this number is fairly low when you consider everything he's done of late.
Make sure to check out our other best bets for Monday:
Phil Wood is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Phil, check out his archive and follow him @Phil_Wood_Jr.
