The Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves start a weekend series between two teams at the top of the NL East.
The Braves are one of the best teams in baseball, but the Marlins continue to push for a postseason berth despite some poor underlying metrics like a negative run differential. Miami will hope that Bryan Hoeing can remain a key part of the starting rotation as a utility arm while the Braves hope that Mike Soroka can begin to look like his former self before he suffered two torn Achilles.
How should we target this matchup? Here are the odds and our best bet:
Marlins vs. Braves odds, run line and total
Marlins vs. Braves prediction and pick
The Braves are the only team in the big leagues hitting over .300 in the month of June, and should have little issue tagging Hoeing, who has been pitching far above expectations this season. In his second season at the big league level, Hoeing has made four starts in 18 appearances and posted a 2.31 ERA, but he has an xERA of 3.56 and his lack of strikeout prowess is going to cost him.
Hoeing is striking out only seven batters per nine innings and has gotten by on unsustainable home run rates, allowing a dinger on only five percent of flyballs and stranding 82% of batters.
That will likely come crashing down against the Braves offense, who are averaging nearly seven runs per game in the month of June and have scored 13 more runs than the next team in the big leagues (the Cincinnati Reds) despite playing two fewer games.
I'm avoiding the side and total and just keying in on the Braves team total over as my favorite bet in this one.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.
