Tour Championship in Atlanta, A Tyreek Hill Prop to Jump On

Happy Wednesday everyone! 15 days until NFL 2025 official starts and 3 days until CFB’s first game is played, over in Ireland.

In the meantime, the PGA concludes it’s season in Atlanta, where Scottie Scheffler looks to continue his dominance and we have some MLB and WNBA plays tonight.

As we great 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 South and will be releasing the NFC East betting preview on Thursday, followed by the NFC North.

Make sure to upgrade at the current $99/year plan as you don’t want to miss weekly NFL and CFB week picks in the fall. One $99 price (or $9.99/month) will get you every single newsletter unlocked, all our trends and picks and access to me of course.

Cincinnati Reds (+113, Nick Martinez) at Los Angeles Angels (-137, Yusei Kikuchi)

Neither of these teams has shown much in the way of offensive consistency in August, but as long as one of them can dial in, I think we have a good shot to clear this total.

The right-handed Martinez has struck out just five of the 51 batters he’s faced this month. In this era, you either have to strikeout batters at a high rate or limit the power of the opposition – I don’t trust him to do either. Both righties and lefties have an ISO (Isolated power) north of .180 against him this season, making him vulnerable to literally any Angels hitter that steps to the dish. Martinez hasn’t made it out of the third inning in two of his last three starts.

Kikuchi had a nice run this spring (no more than two earned runs allowed in eight of nine starts) and those numbers are still impacting his season long metrics enough for them to be a bit deceiving when it comes to the version of the 34-year-old that the Reds will see.

He’s simply not fooling anyone. His four highest opponent zone-contact rates this year have come since July 12, struggles that are at risk of being exposed against the eighth best zone contact team this month. He’s given up at least 4 runs in three of his last four starts, which gets us halfway to the total already.

How do you cover up a high zone contact rate or low strikeout numbers?

You get ahead in the count. You may not be able to finish the deal with a punchout, but in being aggressive, the pitcher stands to gain leverage and thus control the at-bat.

That’s the approach I expect both of these starters to take and that’s exactly where I think we stand to win.

28-of-69 (.406 batting average) with 13 extra base hits

26-of-69 (.377 batting average) with nine extra base hits

Those are the numbers for Martinez and Kikuchi this season when the first pitch of at-bats is put in play. Now, those numbers are always going to be inflated to a degree because a strikeout cannot occur, but those are extreme struggles for two pitchers who aren’t in the greatest of form to begin with.

We are going to go with the over in this one, which as of this morning was 8.5.