Oddsmakers are putting faith in Mike Clevinger and the Cleveland Indians to avoid the sweep at the hands of the Houston Astros when Game 3 of their ALDS goes today at Progressive Field. Despite dropping the first two games by 7-2 and 3-1 scores in Houston and the game Sportsbook as a pick’em, Cleveland is a -125 favorite while Dallas Keuchel and the Astros can be had at +105 to +115 depending on where you shop.
- The Indians are 6-0 SU in their last six games at home with Mike Clevinger as the starting pitcher.
- The total has gone UNDER in eight of the Astros’ last nine games (avg. combined score: 5.67).
- Houston’s .333/.408/.619 leads MLB in the postseason.
Pitching Matchup
Clevinger (3.02 ERA, 1.16 WHIP) makes his first career postseason start after six relief appearances in 2016 and 2017. In just seven innings of playoff work, Clevinger’s ERA is 6.43 and his WHIP is 2.00. Not great numbers, but also a pretty small sample size. He’s been outstanding for Cleveland late in the season, though – his WHIP is 0.93 since the middle of August.
This will be his third start vs Houston this season but his first since May when the Indians took losses in back-to-back Clevinger starts. On May 18 he pitched into the seventh inning but allowed eight hits and three earned runs.
On May 24, the Astros got to him for seven more hits and five earned runs. Again, these games were in May and there’s a lot of water under the bridge since then, but the stats remain 0-2, 6.17 ERA, .349 opponents’ batting average.
Keuchel (3.74 ERA, 1.31 WHIP) had a terrible start to the season, returned to form in the middle of the summer, and had a so-so finish to the 2018 campaign. In two starts against the Tribe this year, he gave up 14 hits and six runs over just 11 innings of work for a 4.91 ERA.
The 30-year-old from Tulsa has plenty of playoff experience entering this game. This will be his eighth playoff start for the Astros since 2015 and he’s compiled a 4-2 record and 1.15 WHIP through 41.2 innings.
Offense Going in Different Directions
Houston is tops among playoff teams in batting average (.333) and OPS (1.027) in the first round and has hit five home runs through the first two games. Cleveland, meanwhile, is worst among playoff teams with a .100 batting average and .306 OPS. The Indians have just six hits, one for extra bases, in the first two games of this series.
My Picks for This Game
The UNDER has hit in eight of the Astros’ last nine games with an average combined score of 5.67, but I believe that today’s game will buck that trend and go OVER 8.5 runs. The OVER has hit in three of Clevinger’s last four starts while the average combined score in Keuchel’s last nine starts is 8.1.
Both of these pitchers were touched up by the opposing offenses this year and with the Indians’ backs to the wall in front of a home crowd, I expect them to come out firing on all cylinders, much like the Braves did last night.
I predict that Houston’s bats stay hot and the Astros find a way to sweep this series. I will be betting them at just better than EVEN money on the moneyline.
