MLB Best Bets Today: MLB ALCS/NLCS Picks for Friday, Oct. 20

MLB Best Bets Today: MLB ALCS/NLCS Picks for Friday, Oct. 20

This article is part of our MLB Picks series.

MLB Best Bets Today: MLB ALCS/NLCS Picks for 
Friday, Oct. 20

Season: 123-143-2 -49.42 units

Prior Article: 5-0 +4.40 units

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Philadelphia Phillies at Arizona Diamondbacks  

What appears to be a bullpen game for both teams as the announced starters have changed in the last 24 hours. But while the Dbacks are truly rolling out bullpen arms (Joe Mantiply, Slade Cecconi), the Phillies have three starting pitchers that could possibly end up in this game - Taijuan Walker, Cristopher Sanchez, and Michael Lorenzen. The Dbacks' bullpen consists of pitchers mainly with ERAs in the 4's or higher and will only be able to go one inning. 

The Dbacks barely scraped out their first win in the series, 2-1, yesterday behind a career start by Brandon Pfaadt. I think the gas has run out on Arizona here, and I would expect the Phillies' offense to unload. Another factor in the game is that the roof is confirmed to be open, which will boost run scoring. Although, Arizona has scored three, zero and two runs in this series, so I am gun shy on taking an OVER on the game or their team total. 

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MLB Best Bets for Phillies at Diamondbacks

  • Phillies -1.5 runs for 1 unit (BetMGM +125)
  • Phillies OVER 4.5 runs for 0.75 unit (DraftKings -135)
  • Bryce Harper OVER 1.5 total bases for 0.5 unit (DraftKings +115) 
  • Trea Turner OVER 1.5 total bases for 0.5 unit (DraftKings -120)
  • Phillies OVER 1.5 home runs for 0.5 unit (DraftKings +135)

Houston Astros at Texas Rangers  

In a rematch of Game 1, Justin Verlander is going against Jordan Montgomery, when the Rangers won, 2-0. An interesting stat in Game 1 is that Yordan Alvarez and Jose Abreu combined for five out of the seven Astros strikeouts. 

After Game 1, the combined scores have been nine, 13, and 13 runs. The Astros struggles at home and strong play on the road have played out in this series with them losing the first two at home and winning the last two on the road. 

There are heavy trends on the OVER in this series at Texas with 5-0 and 7-1 in recent games. I do think we see both starting pitchers have strong performances again, I like the Astros to be able to attack this spent Rangers bullpen later in the game and go over their team total.

MLB Best Bets for Astros at Rangers

  • Astros OVER 4.5 runs for 1 unit (DraftKings -105)

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Rathburn
Known as “Rath” in the Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) community, he has helped run operations for two prominent daily fantasy sports startups. Michael has taken his insider knowledge and expertise in daily fantasy sports to the content side. Rath won the 2016 FSWA "Baseball Article of the Year, Online" award and was a finalist for the FSWA Best Baseball Series in 2011.
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