“Payoff Pitch” | Monday’s Best Bets for Mets vs Cardinals

Our MLB betting experts hopped on the Payoff Pitch Podcast to detail Monday's best bets for Mets vs. Cardinals. B.J. Cunningham and Sean Zerillo are both eyeing the total, so continue reading for their picks and best bets.

By BJ Cunningham

Sean Manaea is having a real hard time with walks this season, averaging around 5.5 walks per nine innings.

Manaea's pitch arsenal leans heavily on sinkers and changeups, but if he isn't inducing a lot of ground-ball contact, that can lead to some problems. The same thing holds true for Kyle Gibson, whose stuff+ has dropped off while he's leaving the ball in the zone way more often. He has a barrel rate allowed of 11% and hard-hit rate around 41%.

The Mets are above average against right-handed pitching this season. I always like to see pitchers who I think are worse than they have pitched to date, so I am going to target these two pitchers with a projection of 5.1 runs in the first five innings.

By Sean Zerillo

I have this game projected at 8.8, so I'd take the line up to 8.5 at -105.

Manaea is showing concerning signs in velocity and stuff+ as both are down. Also, his walk rate is nearly double his career average. I could say a lot of the same things about Gibson. I don't like either of these starting pitchers, so I could see runs coming in early, as well as late in that sixth-inning range. Because the Mets are relatively thin in the bullpen, I expect Manaea to have to go deeper into this one than he normally would.

The Cardinals also used three relievers yesterday in multi-inning stints, so they'll need Gibson to chew up some pitches as well. I like the first five as well, but those have been tough for me of late.