Braves vs Mets Pick Today | MLB Odds, Predictions for Sunday, August 13

I bet the ESPN executives were licking their lips at the prospect of this week's Sunday Night Baseball game when it was scheduled.

Braves vs. Mets in the middle of August with the NL East on the line? Sign us up.

Unfortunately, the Mets had to Mets and ruin that fun.

However, Kodai Senga's resurgence should make this game more interesting than imagined, hence why the moneyline is so short despite Atlanta's dominance and New York's failures.

I'm going elsewhere for my Sunday Night Baseball best bet for Braves vs. Mets.

The Braves are not a perfect team, but great hitting covers up a lot of holes.

The Braves have the most dominant lineup in baseball. They lead MLB in wRC+ against right-handed pitching (122) and left-handed pitching (135) over the past month. They've hit 40 more home runs than any team in baseball (225). They also lead MLB in avg. Exit Velocity, Hard-Hit Rate and Barrel rate, and none of the second-place teams are particularly close.

Matt Olson made headlines this week by tying Shohei Ohtani for the home-run lead with 40 jacks. Olson is only 12 dingers away from breaking Andrew Jones' single-season Braves record.

Olson has hit 22 homers over his past 45 days, slashing .327/.419/.792 during the stretch. He's striking out less often, making more contact and hitting the ball harder, leading to the best xwOBA stretch of his career.

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The Braves flashed their power during this weekend's series against the Mets, scoring a combined 34 runs across three games.

However, they also allowed only three total runs. Charlie Morton and Spencer Strider got lucky after allowing 13 walks (seven from Morton and six from Strider), but they also received an unbelievable seven-inning start from rookie Allan Winans, an ex-Mets prospect selected by the Braves in the 2021 Rule 5 Draft.

Talk about adding insult to injury.

Starting Pitcher: Yonny Chirinos (RHP)

Atlanta's pitching staff is pretty thin, so Winans' development and the acquisition of Chirinos will be important moving forward.

The Braves grabbed Chirinos off waivers from Tampa Bay, where he was widely considered one of the luckier pitchers in baseball.

His xERA is north of 6.00, he's striking out only 13% of batters faced, and his Statcast profile is brutal.

Luckbox.

It's hard to project Chirinos as anything more than a replacement-level arm, but the Braves need arms. Chirinos doesn't need to do much with how dominant Atlanta's offense is.

Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso, alongside rookies Francisco Alvarez and Senga, create a strong core for the Mets in the future. They also got a prospect haul for trading away the rest of the roster, so the future is bright in Queens.

However, the immediate future is dark, and the Mets will lose a lot of games down the stretch.

The lineups that the Mets are putting out there are outrageous.

The bullpen was always a mess, and it's even worse now that David Robertson plays for the rival Marlins.

The Mets are now 2-10 in August, and it probably will only get worse.

At least Alonso is smashing the ball, racking up nine homers and a 1.124 OPS over the past few weeks.

Starting Pitcher: Kodai Senga (RHP)

Don't look now, but Kodai Senga is turning into the ace who was promised.

It's too bad it took until after Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer were shipped across the country (from the NL East to the AL West).

Senga has a 2.57 ERA over his past six starts as he's struck out 41 batters in 35 frames during the stretch while walking only 11. His command is under control, which was a huge problem in the early season, and his ghost forkball has never been better.

Senga has a 33% Swinging-Strike Rate on that pitch since the start of July — which is a simply absurd number.

It's scary to fade the Braves' offense, but the total is way too high.

Senga has turned into a stud, and the Mets' offense is entirely incompetent. It'll be hard to get to double-digit runs on Sunday Night.

Sean Zerillo makes this total only 8.8, so there's a ton of value on Under 9.5.