College Football Kicks Off in Ireland; A Late MLB Game to Play

Happy Friday everyone! Tail end of the summer is here and we are gearing up.

We enter the last week of NFL preseason, which means we are less than two weeks away from real NFL games.

And we have College Football to play this week! It’s only five games, but they all count, so we are excited.

As we gear up for football season to start, make sure to check out the Betting with Bearman podcasts, on the Bleav podcast network, which will be breaking down all 8 divisions before the season starts.

This week we previewed the NFC East and NFC South and will have the NFC North out on Monday. And much more to come!

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Athletics (+183, Luis Morales) at Seattle Mariners (-227, Bryan Woo)

The A's are 17-8 after a 42-62 start to the season and are playing as well as they have all year.

Couldn't care less.

Since the All-Star Break, they are the 12th-most likely offense to chase a pitch and the 7th-least likely to make contact with a pitch inside the strike zone. The raw numbers and results look good, but the profile is underwhelming in a meaningful way.

The regression bus doesn't always run over players/teams when we forecast it to, but a matchup against Woo feels like a pretty good spot.

Seattle's righty has completed six innings in every start this season and has been able to remain efficient while upping his overall dominance. In his three August starts, Woo has 26 strikeouts against three walks in 19 innings of work. "Dominance" is a broad word that can be detailed differently by anyone you talk to, but first pitch strike rate is a good place to start.

81.5%

That's Woo's best showing this season in that regard and it came less than a month ago. Against these Athletics.

Now, he wasn't rewarded for that aggression in a way that would help us tonight (eight hits and five earned runs allowed in 6.1 innings), but that game took place in the minor league park that the A's call home.

Bring that gameplan to spacious T-Mobile and we are onto something.

The Athletics see their walk rate decline by more than a full percentage point when playing on the road compared to at home and their strikeout rate by two percentage points. This is a Jekyll and Hide situation -- the A's offense is different at home than it is on the road. They have some interesting pieces, but not enough to overcome, on a consistent basis, a negative run scoring environment.

I'm not sure there is a pro-Woo angle you could bet that I'd scoff at. The game price is -225 and justifiable so. That’s a little too rich for us, unless you parlay it with something else. Of course, everyone has their tipping point in terms of risk, but I'm circling Woo outs (not listed yet, but should be around 16.5), Athletics under run total through five innings (3.5, -154), the Mariners to not bat in the bottom of the 9th (DraftKings specific market that often provides some value but not listed yet).

We take pride in turning over stones that people aren't immediately looking at. Those markets take far less money and are thus typically less efficient.

This isn't one of those spots. I expect this to be a popular game to target and for the home team to be the popular side. Not all square angles are wrong and I suspect we get reminded of that tonight!