Dodgers Heavily Favored as Hosts of White Sox
Who: Chicago White Sox v. Los Angeles Dodgers
When: Tuesday August 15th, 2017 10:10PM EST
Where: Dodger Stadium—Los Angeles, California
The Dodgers and White Sox are about as polar-opposite as two teams can get. One is on the verge of easily laying claim to a regular season divisional championship, while the other is still struggling to string more than 2 wins together at a time. As you could have probably guessed, this is also a series pitting a World Series hopeful against a team that has 0 chance of making the post-season this year.
To put into perspective just how opposite ends of the spectrum these two teams are, the White Sox currently sit at the bottom of the AL Central and are a whopping 18.5 games off the pace. Conversely, the Dodgers are sitting atop the NL West and the closest competitor is 17.5 games back. To say that the Dodgers have been a dominant force while the White Sox have been precisely the opposite is even an understatement. Right now, the Dodgers are widely considered to be the best team in baseball and are currently favored by Bovada to win the World Series (+240).
While the White Sox have struggled on both sides of the ball, the Dodgers have excelled and are on the verge of laying claim to their 2nd 15-win pitcher if things go as planned on Tuesday. For Chicago, both this series and the rest of the season will be a fight for survival. While fans might be disappointed that they will be again missing out on the playoffs, perhaps there is some silver lining in youngsters being able to get out there, prove their worth, and gain some valuable MLB experience in the process. Will this be enough to overcome the Dodgers? Probably not. But improvement needs to begin somewhere.
Game Overview and Analysis
As if this were any sort of major surprise, The Dodgers (-360) are extremely heavy favorites to win the series opener. Not only are they going to be playing in front of their home crowd, they will be sending one of their best pitchers to the mound in the form of Alex Wood (14-1 2.37 ERA). While Alex Wood may be one of the best pitchers in MLB, he is possibly only the second-best starting pitcher on his own team, seeing as he has a slightly worse record than the now injured Clayton Kershaw (15-2 2.04 ERA).
For tonight, there are few people who will be expecting anything less than Alex Wood’s 15th victory. Wood has been completely dominant as of late, and has gone 8-1 in his last ten starts, pitching more than 61 innings of ball while only giving up 20 runs. For those mathematicians out there, this means that Wood is giving up less than 1 run every 3 innings pitched. Those are some truly remarkable numbers and will more than likely be enough to see Wood through this game. As for the Dodgers bats, so long as they are not completely silent I do not think LA will have many problems winning this game.
For the White Sox (+280) it will be the right-hander Miguel Gonzalez (6-10 4.85 ERA) who will be making the start. To be fair, Gonzalez is actually having a decent year when you consider who he has (or, more importantly, who he does not have) backing him up. The White Sox offense has been devoid of run production for a large majority of this season, and it does not take a rocket scientist to tell you it is not easy for a pitcher to win if his offense cannot get runs across the plate.
Gonzalez will enter this game on the back of an 8 complete inning performance and win against Houston where he gave up only 5 hits and 1 earned run. So, while he will definitely be the weaker of the two pitchers, he has been playing some decent baseball as of late.
Betting Prediction
This game is one of the few matchups where I think the moneyline should be avoided. On one hand, there is almost complete consensus that the White Sox will win, but on the other hand you need to look at the risk/reward. At -360, you will need to make a sizeable wager to win anything worth writing home about. Being that Gonzalez is not necessarily the worst pitcher on the White Sox staff, I think you should avoid the moneyline altogether.
As for the point spread, Los Angeles is currently listed as -1.5 favorites (-160). Though the odds for this are also not the most valuable you will ever see, they are infinitely better than the moneyline odds. What’s more, I think LA covering the spread is just as likely to happen as them winning straight up.
Finally, the last wager you should make is on the over/under, which is currently listed at 8.5 runs (-115/-105). In this one, I think the raw strength of the Dodgers lineup should force you to wager on the over (-115). The Dodgers have scored at least 6 runs in each of their last 3 victories, and if the White Sox can even tack on a single run of their own, I think this game is likely to go over 8 runs.