@FastMoneyLabs' Best Bet - 8/24

There was a point this season when I penned articles about the Jays… a lot. It felt dangerously close to a Westworld loop, but with a happy ending. Then they dipped off, but now they’re back and hanging by a thread (+0.5 Games) to a Wild Card spot. With 41 games left to play, I'm chompin’ at the bit to get back on the horse.

Toronto enters play tonight on a 5-1 run in their last 6, scoring an average of 5.8 runs per game in that stretch. Last night, they pummeled their rival Red Sox by a final score of 9-3 to extend their Fenway Park winning streak to 6 straight. The Jays are now 8-1 in their last 9 visits to Boston.

In a laughable attempt to stop the bleeding, the Red Sox are tapping rookie RHP Brayan Bello to start off the IL tonight, and he’s been bad. His minor league numbers are excellent but have yet to translate to the Big Leagues, where he’s posted an 0-3 record and 8.47 ERA in five appearances for Boston this season. One of those outings was vs. these Jays at Fenway Park, and they tagged him with 5 runs on 9 hits in just 4 innings pitched.

If you’ve been following my column, you know Jose Berrios isn’t my favorite Toronto slinger (to put it nicely), but to give credit where it’s due – he’s fared well against the Sox this season, allowing just three earned runs over 13 innings. He’s also coming off a strong performance in New York on a night when it felt like the entire country was fading him with heavy wagers on Yankees Team Total.

If the Red Sox want to put Berrios in his place, they’ll need to do it without Tommy Pham and likely Xander Boegarts, too, as both players exited last night’s game with Back Spasms. Those injuries are on top of Eric Hosmer and Trevor Story, two strong bats that remain sidelined on the IL. That leaves just 5 Red Sox starters to pick up the slack.

Long-story short: The Jays not only have more to play for; they have the Red Sox number this year and especially at Fenway Park. Faced with a choice of backing struggling rookie Brayan Bello vs. a healthy, motivated Jays team, or veteran Jose Berrios vs. a depleted, emotionally drained Red Sox lineup; I’ll back the Vet.

To get odds into reasonable betting range, I paired Jays ML with a bet they’ll score 4+ runs as they’ve done in 5 of their last 6 games overall and 5 of last 6 visits to Fenway Park. I got -125 odds using the Same Game Parlay feature on DraftKings (also available at MGM) and laid the juice to win 1 unit.

If you’re feelin risky, dialing it up to 5+ & Win feels reasonable for this matchup, too, but 4+ has a meaningfully higher hit rate, which led me to prefer that number.