How Many Hot Dogs Will Joey Chestnut Eat?

Happy birthday America! This, July 4th, we celebrate the 249th birthday of our great country. We will have an abbreviated column today since you all want to go eat hot dogs, watch baseball and do fireworks. We do have a baseball play, hot dog thoughts and some CFB futures to bet.

Back Monday with the full newsletter and coverage from the weekend. Be responsible today, with the fireworks and your betting!

Tampa Bay Rays (-105, Zack Littell) at Minnesota Twins (-115, Chris Paddack)

Chris Paddack's 3-7 record and 4.70 ERA aren't exactly encouraging. I get it. But in the vortex that is betting baseball daily, you have to remember to take a granular approach as opposed to looking at the overall sample.

Paddack ranks ninth of 70 qualifiers in chase rate, a nod to the deceptive nature of his arsenal. I don't mind betting into that skill set most days, but especially when you consider the trends of his opponent today.

Tampa Bay Chase Rates

April: 30.4%
May: 31.6%
June: 32.5%

They rank in the middle third of the league in contact rate when the ball is in the zone, not a damning rate, but not nearly enough to undo the downside that comes with the wild hacks. This year, Paddack has been victimized by the Astros (eight innings, 19 hits, and 11 earned runs), a team that ranks fourth in Z-Contact percentage.

That's not what Tampa Bay brings to the table, so when you consider that Paddack owns an 3.95 ERA and allows 7.5 hits per nine innings when not facing Houston, I'm happy to invest in the home team moneyline (-115) to shows signs of life that they haven't recently (7-19 over their past 26) on this Fourth of July.

It’s the United States of America’s birthday, so how do we celebrate? With Nathan’s Hot Dog eating contest of course. While it might look gross and you are mad at yourself for watching, you will watch. And of course you can bet on it in some states. Latest odds and trends from BetMGM: