Pirates vs Nationals Predictions Today | MLB Odds, Picks (Wednesday, April 3)

Through the first week of the season, the Pittsburgh Pirates have been one of the best teams in baseball. Sitting at 5-0, this is Pittsburgh’s best start to a year since 1983.

Taking the mound for them on Wednesday night will be 28-year-old righty Mitch Keller, who has become the ace of this staff. He has become a reliable innings-eater, but it still remains to be seen whether he can repeat his strikeout performance from 2023.

Keller had a renaissance in this department last year, but I’m looking towards his strikeout total for my favorite play in this game.

Here's my Pirates vs Nationals pick and prediction.

Keller is the quasi-ace of this staff, but his success doesn’t necessarily come from his elite stuff. Last season, he ranked in the 26th percentile in chase rate and 29th percentile in whiff rate. His fastball velocity was in the 60th percentile and he put up a 104 in Stuff+, which is just barely above average.

In his first outing of the year, we saw a very similar Keller to what we would expect. He had a Stuff+ of 104 once again and his fastball velocity was 91.4, just a tick down from his average of 92.9 last season.

This resulted in a pretty typical Keller outing as he pitched 5 2/3 innings with four earned runs and three strikeouts. Luckily for him, this didn’t come back to bite him as the Pirates’ offense powered them to a victory still.

Keller probably pitched better overall than his final ERA from this game would suggest, but it definitely didn’t look like he was in great form either. The fastball velocity from him may be something to watch going forward, but what was more concerning was his 11.1% strikeout rate through one start.

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The Nationals are off to a rough start at 1-3, but this has largely been due to their lack of pitching. Through these four games they rank 14th in runs per game but have the second worst ERA in the league at 7.27.

I don’t think that this offense has shown to be prohibitively bad so I don’t mind backing them against Keller tonight. They rank 13th in wOBA, 14th in SLG% and 17th in WRC+, so I believe that this has shown to be a fairly average offense to this point in the season.

The Nationals are 21st in strikeout rate this season so far, but that has often come against the opposing bullpens or starters with much better stuff than Keller. Nick Martinez was only able to amass three strikeouts in five innings against this squad while Frankie Montas racked up just four strikeouts in six innings.

I think we may see a similar strikeout rate from the Nationals tonight as we did against Montas and Martinez. My projections have Keller with a median of 4 strikeouts and average of 4.3, so I’m showing good value here on the under at 5.5.

There are various numbers out on the market, but the best at the time of this writing is -140. I would take this to -155, which would still represent a sizable edge according to my numbers.

Pick: Mitch Keller Under 5.5 Strikeouts (-140 at DraftKings)

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