Blue Jays-Orioles Betting Preview: Bad Pitching Matchup Should Mean Fireworks

Betting odds: Toronto Blue Jays at Baltimore Orioles

• Blue Jays Moneyline: -130 (Sam Gaviglio)
• Orioles Moneyline: +120 (David Hess)
• Over/Under: 9.5
• First Pitch: 7:05 pm ET

Monday night presents an interesting opportunity, a confluence of not-very-good starting pitching with excellent weather conditions.

When the Orioles are involved, you have to pause to think whether this is really worth investing your money considering they’ve barely played at a major-league level for a large portion of the season. But once the lineups for tonight’s game were released, and I saw the offensive projections for these combinations, fireworks seemed more likely than not.

So what’s contributing to a high-scoring projection? Well, a few things.

First off, Baltimore’s Hess has been just plain bad as a starter this year. Rarely do you see starters with an ERA in the 5s and an xFIP even higher. Can a terrible pitcher still be getting lucky? Maybe we’ll find out the rest of the year.

I think the market is being shaped more by his performance against Toronto in his last start — seven innings and one earned run — but that’s a limited sample, and he had major issues with control in his two starts before that.

Is his most recent start the beginning of a run of dominance? It seems unlikely at best, but not impossible.

Same goes for Toronto starter Gaviglio, who put forth one of his best efforts of the season in his last start, which was against Baltimore.

But after two starts in a sea of bad performances, I am betting we see more of these pitchers’ average performances.

Add in temperatures in the mid-80s with the wind blowing out at Camden Yards, and you couldn’t ask for more ideal hitting conditions.

My model gives a First 5-innings projection, so I will be playing the first 5 over. But considering the condition of both bullpens and the teams’ rankings in the bottom third of the majors, you can choose the full-game over, too.

The Bet: First 5 Innings Over 5.5 (-120)