How does Joe Musgrove pitch against the lowly Chicago White Sox? Will Ben Lively manage to strike out at least four St. Louis Cardinals? And can Ketel Marte break out of his slump against the Milwaukee Brewers?
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How does Joe Musgrove pitch against the lowly Chicago White Sox? Will Ben Lively manage to strike out at least four St. Louis Cardinals? And can Ketel Marte break out of his slump against the Milwaukee Brewers?
Here are the best MLB PrizePicks plays for Friday, Sept. 20.
Join our new MLB Betting Group to share bets and compete in leaderboards >>
Friday’s Best MLB PrizePicks Player Predictions
(This Season: 109-83-7)
Taking the over feels too easy. Musgrove has struck out at least seven batters in each of his last three starts. Tonight, he faces the White Sox, a team with the 12th-most strikeouts in the league. Why would his recent success suddenly stop in such a matchup?
The truth is that Musgrove's recent performances are outliers. While he's struck out at least seven batters in four of his last five starts, he only struck out seven or more in two of his first 12 starts. He has only struck out three White Sox batters in 14 attempts this season and has just 86 strikeouts in 87.1 innings.
He'll need to pitch close to 7.0 innings tonight to hit this number. He certainly has a chance since he's facing the White Sox, but the under is the right play.
Lively has struck out three or fewer batters in his last four games. In his last start, he struck out just two batters despite pitching 5.0 innings. He has multiple seven-strikeout games to his name this season, with his most recent coming on July 14. So, he does have the ability to hit a number this low.
Still, this isn't a very good matchup. The Cardinals have the ninth-fewest strikeouts in the league. Lively has struck out just seven of their batters in 41 tries throughout his career. Additionally, the Cardinals lineup is hitting .366 off him, so they could chase him very early in this contest.
The number is set low and with good reason. Lively has just 112 strikeouts in 142 innings this season. He won't improve that ratio tonight.
Marte is 3-of-3 in his career against Brewers starter Colin Rea. Two of those hits were for extra bases, and one of them was a home run. Marte has only topped 1.5 total bases once in his last seven games, but this is a good matchup for him to turn around his cold September hitting.
Marte is still batting .289 on the season despite hitting just .184 in September. While he's not going to remain perfect against Rea forever, it should boost his confidence to go against a pitcher whom he has such a positive history against.
It would be nice to see this line at 0.5, but with how poorly Marte has been hitting, it's actually a positive that the oddsmakers have such confidence in him.
Phil Wood is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Phil, check out his archive and follow him @Phil_Wood_Jr.
