Wednesday MLB Best Bet: Yankees vs. Royals

Written by Jake Thompson
Wednesday, 17 August 2011 04:41

We’ll preview the game between the Yankees and the Royals in Wednesday’s MLB best bet selection.

The Kansas City Royals (50-73) and the New York Yankees (74-46) will play in our MLB best bet game for Wednesday, and we’ll try to get back on the winning side of things after losing our first baseball selection in seventeen tries.  Online sportsbooks have the road-team Yankees as -168 betting favorites with the MLB odds showing a total of 9.5 runs.

New York has won 3 straight games and has taken the American League East lead back from the Boston Red Sox (74-47).  The Royals have fought valiantly this season but have now lost 4 straight games and will once again be at home for the MLB Playoffs as they sit 15.5 games in back of the American League Central-leading Detroit Tigers.  The Yankees have won 3 of the 5 head-to-head meetings this season after Kansas City took 2 games in New York back in May.

The Royals will start veteran left-hander Bruce Chen (7-5, 1.42 WHIP, 4.15 ERA), and this guy seems to either dominate or get knocked around.  There just hasn’t been much in-between and Chen has lost his last 4 straight games pitched against the Yankees.  The good news is that he’s fared much better at home this season, but he will be going against a New York squad that hits .278 against lefties and .273 overall during their last 10 contests this season.

The Yankees will counter with a veteran of their own, going with resurgent right-hander Bartolo Colon (8-6, 1.24 WHIP, 3.31 ERA).  Colon hasn’t faced the Royals since the 2009 MLB season but has brought home wins in 4 of his last 6 start against their American League adversary.  Kansas City has been solid offensively this season but is in the midst of a slump that has seen them bat just .245 over their last 10 games.

Seeing as Chen can put together dominant starts out of nowhere, it doesn’t make sense to play the Yankees as this large of favorites.  Instead, I’m going to go with New York on the run line since every win of theirs against the Royals this season has been by more than a single score.  You can get the MLB odds knocked down to just -105 if you bet on the Yankees to win by 2 or more, and that is where I’m putting my money.  Colon should have a nice start and Chen should give up some runs against the hot-hitting Yankees, but ultimately there just isn’t any good reason to play New York at the normal odds.

Yankees 6

Royals 3