Braves vs Mariners Odds, Pick & Prediction (4/30)

The Atlanta Braves will take the field against the Seattle Mariners on Tuesday night at T-Mobile Park. These two teams lead their respective divisions, making this an intriguing battle between two top playoff contenders.

Mitch Garver walked things off on Monday with a two-run shot to give the Mariners a 2-1 victory. The first game of this series was a great pitching duel, with Max Fried and Bryce Miller going toe-to-toe. We could see something similar on Tuesday as Reynaldo Lopez takes on Luis Castillo.

Let's get into my MLB betting preview for this Interleague clash and my Braves vs Mariners prediction.

Atlanta has a league-best 19-8 record on the season. Its offense has mostly powered it to this point. It leads the league with 5.56 runs scored per game but is also sixth in the league in runs allowed per game at 3.85.

One of the Braves' biggest surprises this year has been Reynaldo Lopez, who will be getting the nod as tonight’s starter.

Lopez is a full-time starting pitcher for the first time since the 2019 season when he was with the White Sox, but he's made the transition with ease this season. Through four starts, Lopez has put up a 0.72 ERA, which is tops in the league for pitchers with 20+ IP.

Lopez has a 2.62 xERA and 2.72 FIP, suggesting that while this ERA isn’t entirely sustainable, we shouldn’t be expecting him to catastrophically blow up any time soon. He ranks 63rd out of 132 pitchers in Stuff+ this season, sitting right around league average.

My main concern with Lopez is some of the contact metrics he's allowed, as he ranks in the 29th percentile in hard hit rate and 34th in average exit velocity allowed.

However, most of the other metrics on Lopez have been well above average this season as he continues to have the best year of his career.

As mentioned before, this Braves offense is incredibly good. Atlanta ranks third in wRC+ and second in wOBA this season. Atlanta tops the league in hard hit rate and average exit velocity while ranking second in Barrel%.

It's around league average in strikeout rate, but when it puts the ball in play, it's doing plenty of damage.

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The Mariners have hit the ball hard this season but don’t have much to show for it. Seattle’s offense ranks seventh in average exit velocity and fifth in hard hit rate, but they're only 25th in wOBA and 22nd in wRC+.

This is reflected in their 11th-place ranking in XWOBACON on Baseball Savant, suggesting that they should see a bounce in their wOBA at some point based on these contact metrics.

After a rocky start to the season, Luis Castillo seems to have dialed things in. He's registered three quality starts in a row, racking up nine strikeouts in two of them. For the season, Castillo has a 4.15 ERA with a 3.32 xERA and 3.22 FIP. 

Castillo has allowed a 26th-percentile average exit velocity, 48th-percentile hard hit rate and 49th-percentile barrel rate, so this would seem to suggest that his 0.359 BABIP allowed is artificially inflated.

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Both of these starting pitchers have been strong to start the season, so it’s hard to take a side against either of them tonight. The Braves’ offense has been among the best in the league to this point, though, while Seattle has faced mediocre results despite above-average contact metrics.

The under on this game is already pretty low. Instead, I'll play this from the Braves’ side, as I have more faith in their offense to get to Castillo than I do in the Mariners’ unit.

Seattle leads the league in strikeout rate, so while its batted ball metrics have been fine, I think it could struggle to hit against Lopez, who has a 69th-percentile strikeout rate this season.

Seattle has the best bullpen ERA in the league this season, so I’m going to avoid the full-game line and instead take the Braves -0.5 for the first five innings.

Pick: Braves F5 -0.5 (+120)