⚾ Nationals at Reds Under 8.5 Runs (-115, Fanatics)
📊 TrendsCenter: Since 2024, Reds regular season home games that start before 3pm ET have gone 22-11-2 to the under (66.67%, +9.9u, 25.71% ROI) when Cincinnati has been favored.
Following three full seasons in Japan, Nationals southpaw starter Foster Griffin (4-1, 2.12 ERA) reinvented himself and is off to an awesome start, leading all left-handed starters in ERA. The 30 year old has essentially average advanced numbers across the board, but, per Baseball Savant, he ranks in the 85th percentile of Pitching Run Value, 84th percentile of Fastball Run Value and 81st percentile of Breaking Run Value. Coming into this game, he’s thrown four straight Quality Starts and even punched out eight and nine guys in two of his last three outings. Despite averaging just 91.2 mph on his fastball, he hasn’t allowed hard contact and I’m comfortable trusting him against a Reds lineup that has the 2nd-worst average (.200), 7th-worst on-base percentage (.276) and 10th-worst OPS (.666) against left-handed pitching. Washington’s bullpen is very bad, but if we get six innings out of Griffin in this spot, that should give us a good shot to avoid crooked numbers.
Chase Burns (4-1, 2.11 ERA) has looked great so far this season with the exception of one early April start against the Angels. He’s gone five straight outings giving up two or fewer earned runs, allowing 20 hits with 30 strikeouts over the last 30.2 innings in that span. Five of his eight starts have finished with a total of four or less runs. Boasting a 91st percentile Pitching Run Value, Burns’ mix of a 98.1 mph average fastball (94th percentile) and electric breaking balls (100th percentile Breaking Run Value) have allowed him to generate tons of whiffs (33.5%, 92nd percentile). While he’s given up an average amount of hard contact and the Nationals have been solid at putting the bat on the ball (19.0% K rate, 2nd-lowest in MLB), it’s hard to ignore how dominant Burns has looked this year. Per Baseball Reference, he even leads all NL pitchers in WAR at 1.8.
So, we’re getting two starting pitchers in elite form at the moment.
Now let’s discuss the number of 8.5 runs. This is inflated to that due to the fact that Washington leads the MLB with a 65% over rate while Cincinnati has a 61% over rate, 4th-highest. Not only should this O/U likely be 7.5 or 8.0, but since this is an early day game after a night game, we will likely see some watered-down lineups with reserves playing, which should also be a boost to pitching.
With all of this being said and the under trend above, I’ll confidently back under 8.5 runs in this spot.
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