Giants vs. Twins prediction and odds for Tuesday, May 23 (Is it time to fade Cobb, Gray?)

The San Francisco Giants rode a Michael Conforto home run to a 4-1 win over the Minnesota Twins to open the inter-league series. Heading into Game 2 of this interleague series, the Giants are 23-24 and have won six of their last seven games. The Twins are 25-23 and have a 2.5 game lead in the AL Central. 

Tonight it’ll be Alex Cobb on the mound for San Francisco against the Twins ace, Sonny Gray. Cobb is 3-1 with a 1.94 ERA while Gray is 4-0 with a 1.64. It’s no surprise that Vegas has set a low total in this one, but let’s take a look at the odds to see if we can find some value. 

Giants vs. Twins odds, run line and total

Giants vs. Twins prediction and pick

Sonny Gray has been one of the stories in the MLB this season because of how great he has been for Minnesota. He’s made nine starts and only allowed more than two runs in one of them. Despite his great pitching, the Twins have actually lost the last three times he’s taken the mound and his Cy Young Award level performance might not continue. Gray has a FIP of 2.01, only slightly higher than his ERA, but his expected ERA is 3.16. 

The reason that there could be some Sonny Gray regression at some point soon is his walk rate. He’s issued seven walks over his last 14.1 innings and his walk rate of 9.4% is 39th percentile of all MLB pitchers. The other point is that Gray doesn’t go deep into games. His last start he needed 84 pitches to get through four innings with two runs allowed against the Dodgers. 

Cobb had his rough start last time out with two earned runs on five hits with five walks in 3.1 innings, but in his two starts prior he went seven and 7.1 scoreless. That was an abnormal start for Cobb who has issued just eight walks across his other eight starts. However, Cobb has an expected ERA of 3.99 and FIP of 3.15 along with a 31st percentile expected batting average and ninth percentile hard hit rate. 

Both of these ace starters could see some struggles soon and I’m going to try and get ahead of it and bet the over in this one. 

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change