Giants vs Dodgers Pick Today | MLB Odds, Predictions (Tuesday, April 2)

The Dodgers continue to look like the powerhouse they were expected to be coming into the season. After taking three of four from the Cardinals over the opening weekend, Los Angeles continued its dominant start by taking down the Giants 8-3 on Monday night.

It’s still early in the season, but San Francisco will want to rebound from its 2-3 start if it wishes to compete for the NL West title.

In most of the Giants’ games this season, their pitching that has let them down. That wasn’t the case on Opening Day, however, as Logan Webb went six innings and allowed two earned runs with five strikeouts before San Diego pulled out the win at the end of the game.

Stuff+ is a metric that stabilizes rather quickly, so it’s useful even in small samples. Webb’s Opening Day performance earned him a 114 in Stuff+ and 115 in Pitching+ (second-highest starter in league). It’s just one start, but that's a vast improvement from last season, when Webb had a 104 Stuff+ and 103 Pitching+.

It’s quite easy to see why the Giants' ace is so hard to hit when he has movement like this:

The Dodgers haven’t been striking out a ton, but they also haven’t been putting the ball in play as much as they should. Even though they faced Miles Mikolas, Lance Lynn, Zack Thompson and Steven Matz in the Cardinals series, the Dodgers still let two of those starters go over their posted strikeout total and Thompson was within half a strikeout, despite none of them getting to six innings pitched. Additionally, Giants starter Keaton Winn was able to strike out six Dodgers in five innings last night.

Los Angeles ranks 17th in the league in strikeout rate this year and is striking out 23.2% of the time.

The Dodgers' offense has been strong, averaging just under seven runs per game, but has been reliant on the long ball as 17 of those runs have come via 11 homers.

Logan Webb excels at limiting hard contact and inducing ground balls. Stylistically, that fares well against a Dodgers team that has been mashing home runs. Webb is a strong starter and it’s possible he can at least get a quality start in this game, giving him ample opportunities to pick up some strikeouts along the way.

Webb’s stuff looked so great in his first outing that I don’t want to be fading him here. Instead, I will be backing Webb to go Over 5.5 strikeouts tonight. 

Pick: Logan Webb Over 5.5 Strikeouts (-130 at DraftKings, Bet to -135)

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