It took an eighth inning home run from Royce Lewis and another run in the ninth, but the Minnesota Twins took Game 1 of this four-game series over the Cleveland Guardians 7-6.Heading into Game 2 the Twins are 30-27 while Cleveland is 25-31. Minnesota's divisional lead is only growing.
Tonight, the Guardians will look to answer the walk-off loss with Aaron Civale on the mound against Bailey Ober. Civale has made two starts and is 1-1 with a 2.84 ERA while Ober is 3-2 with a 2.68 ERA in seven trips to the mound this year.
The Twins got the win Thursday and they're the favorites to get back into the win column tonight. Here's how we're betting it.
Guardians vs. Twins odds, run line and total
Guardians vs. Twins prediction and pick
Civale has an ERA north of 4.00 and a FIP of 4.11 for his career, so pitching to a 2.84 ERA in a very small sample size might be an aberration. Especially with his strikeouts per nine innings down at 5.7 from his career high last year, 9.1. He might be able to regress a bit and still give the Guardians a chance to win. In May they were 29th in OPS, but in the last seven days they are 12th and their 33 runs scored are second. They've scored the second most runs in that stretch while hitting the second fewest home runs, 3.
Cleveland's offense has been much improved and they might be able to keep that up against Ober despite his impressive numbers. Ober had an ERA of 1.78 through his first five starts, but at that point his FIP was 2.99, so he was prime for some regression. It came in his very next start when he allowed four runs against the Giants in just five innings of work. Now his FIP is 3.24 and his expected ERA is 3.66, so there could still be some more regression coming.
Both of these pitchers have excelled in small sample sizes, but it's time for water to find its level, so I'm fading both and taking the over in this one.
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