MLB Best Bet – August 13, 2022
Atlanta Braves (67-46) vs. Miami Marlins (50-62)
1:10 p.m. ET
If you do some digging in prospect rankings from 2019, you will come across Jesus Luzardo. He was the A’s top prospect, and the 12th best prospect in the game according to MLB.com. Near the deadline, the A’s sent Jesus Luzardo to the Marlins for Starling Marte in what was a pretty shocking trade at the time. Hard to remember now, but the A’s were actually really good and chasing a wild card spot which they ended up getting. You fast forward to now and you have to think the A’s are kicking themselves a bit. Miami is a team loaded with young pitching prospects, and Jesus may be as nasty as any of them.
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Jesus has been up and down this season between the majors and minors, but you would have to think he is finally here to stay. This will be his third start since coming back on August 1st. He worked up to 91 pitches last start, so I anticipate a full workload in this afternoon’s matchup in the first game of the double header.
He has flashed some great K stuff so far in his career, especially this season where he has 52 K in 41 innings. He has an 8 K performance against the Braves already, and his percentiles show elite potential. He is in the 88th percentile in K per inning, 87th percentile in CSW (called strike plus whiff rate), 93rd percentile in K rate, and 90th percentile in whiff rate. He strikes out lefties at 36.0%, and righties at 31.4% so he can have success vs any lineup in the league, especially of the top K teams in the league.
To the Braves credit, they have been “better” vs lefties lately. They have the 8th best K rate vs LHP over the last 30 days, but when you take a peek into that and see they’ve faced Rich Hill and Madison Bumgarner lately, I am not too concerned. They have the 10th worst K rate vs LHP for the season. They average the 2nd most K per game at 9.29 for the season, and they have a 27.0% K rate in day games this season.
After using 4 bullpen arms last night and having the double header today, I like the potential of Luzardo’s workload. They will need him to eat innings, and if he gets deeper into this game I love him to pick up 7+ strikeouts.
Braves vs. Marlins Prop Pick: Jesus Luzardo over 6.5 strikeouts | +118 at FanDuel
