John Bollman's Bet of the Day - 8/25

The Houston Astros and the Minnesota Twins will face off in the third game of a three-game series in Houston. The Astros won each of the first two games of this series and they swept the three-game series between these teams in Minnesota in May. The Twins are really struggling right now, they have lost five straight games to move 4 games back of the Guardians in the division and 4 games back of the Wild Card in the Mariners. Byron Buxton recently went on the IL and the Twins lineup hasn’t scored more than 4 runs in 11 of their last 12 games. They lost last night to the Astros 5-3, and they lost on Tuesday to the Astros 4-2. The Twins are also just 27-32 on the road this season and 30-37 against winning teams. The Astros are 41-18 at home this season and they are 37-21 against winning teams.

Luis Garcia has been a bit of a conundrum this season. He has been much better on the road in terms of ERA, but he is 7-3 with a 4.88 ERA at home. He has been struggling with both walks and runs lately but he didn’t allow a run in five innings against the Twins earlier this season. He also has the second-best bullpen in the league behind him while the Twins are ranked 15 th this season. Michael Fulmer also pitched yesterday allowing three runs so their combination of Fulmer, Jhoan Duran, and Jorge Lopez isn’t as dominant as we once thought.

Chris Archer is starting for the Twins, and he struggles in multiple facets of the game. He walks a lot of batters and even if he is pitching a no-hitter, he won’t go more than five innings as he hasn’t even started a sixth inning this season. That is a problem for a Twins team that will now need to overextend their bullpen. Chris Archer is 0-1 with a 3.93 ERA in August but he allowed five runs in three innings pitched against the Astros earlier this season.

My main worry here is the Astros tend to take certain games off with such a massive lead in the division, so this could definitely be one of those games after winning the first two. Dusty Baker tends to not play his best lineup every day and it causes their games to be a lot closer than expected. Hopefully that doesn’t happen tonight but obviously I can’t wait for lineups, so hopefully we’ll only have one or two regulars get the game off.

John's Bet: Astros ML (-160) vs Twins on BetMGM