The Tampa Bay Rays come up short—like most teams—when compared to the New York Yankees. They’ve lost five of six over their first two head-to-head series. They’ll get another chance against the Bronx Bombers this weekend, including in the middle game of three on Saturday on national television. The Rays will host the Yankees in this game, looking for better results than last weekend in the Bronx. Wilmer Font will need to out pitch Sonny Gray to give the Rays a shot.
First pitch for the game between the Yankees and Rays is scheduled for Saturday, June 23, 2018, at 4:10 p.m. ET at Tropicana Field. The matchup will be shown on FS1.
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Odds Analysis
Prior to Thursday, the Yankees were 14-4 in June, continuing a great run that dates all the way back to mid-April. After a 9-9 start, the Yankees have gone 40-13. That’s a winning percentage of .755.
The Rays don’t come close to being able to compete with that. They’re 34-40 as of Thursday and have been in a major slump since the start of June, going 6-13. They did steal one against the Yankees in the Bronx and against the Astros in Houston this past week, but went 2-5 on the tough road trip. A return home could help, but they’re still only 15-16 at home.
One of the biggest forces behind the Rays’ June skid has been the offense. As a team, the Rays have scored 54 runs in June, taking 19 games to do so. That’s an average of fewer than three runs per game.
The Yankees’ offense hasn’t been as strong in June as it was earlier, but they’re still average 4.33 runs per game this month.
There’s no question the Yankee offense is much better than Tampa Bay’s. New York has six hitters with at least 10 home runs and that doesn’t include Miguel Andujar who is batting .289 with nine homers and 23 doubles. The team is loaded with power and anyone, top-to-bottom, can change the game with one swing.
On top of the power, including the 18 homers a piece from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees have Judge, Aaron Hicks, Brett Gardner, Gleybar Torres and Austin Romine getting on base more than 34-percent of the time.
The Yankees put together quality at bats. It’s as simple as that. With Austin Romine likely to catch Gray, that even puts a .393 OBP behind the plate in place of Gary Sanchez who despite 14 homers and 41 RBIs is batting just .197.
As for the Rays, C.J. Cron was the big hitter in the order for a while, but he’s regressed. With Denard Span and Brad Miller gone, that leaves Wilson Ramos and Matt Duffy as the focal points of this offense.
Sure, Ramos is having an All-Star season, but a .288/.337/.447 slash line catcher and a corner infielder with only four homers—even if he is hitting .317—isn’t enough to build a strong middle of the order, particularly not one able to compete with the Yankees.
Probable Pitchers
Early in the season, seeing Sonny Gray on the mound for the Yankees was a good thing for the opposition. It meant you had a chance.
Overall, Gray is 5-4 with a 4.89 ERA and 1.480 WHIP in his 73.2 innings. He’s far removed from this Cy Young contending year in 2015 with Oakland, but he’s still an effective starter—some of the time.
After a slow start, Gray’s settled down to pitch well here in June. He’s made four June starts, giving up seven runs in 24 innings, walking five and giving up 19 hits. That’s a 2.63 ERA and 1.00 WHIP in the month. He’s finding his way throwing to Romine.
The right-hander will be making his first start of the year against the Rays, but he’s 3-4 with a 4.26 ERA in 11 starts against them in his career. He’s got a 2.19 ERA in four starts at Tropicana Field and this year he’s been far better on the road than at home, pitching to a 2.93 road ERA in seven starts compared to his 7.22 ERA at home.
While Gray may be more of a welcome sight on the mound than Luis Severino, he’s no longer the reprieve he was earlier in the year. The Rays will be challenged against Gray, particularly as they’ll be sending Wilmer Font to the mound to match him pitch for pitch against a much more difficult offense.
Font is finally getting stretched out as a starter. He pitched 4.2 innings in his last start and in his three starts has gone 10.1 innings, allowing three runs and eight hits in that span.
In seven total appearances with the Rays, Font is 0-1 with a 2.20 ERA in 16.1 innings. The ERA is a bit artificially depressed by the small sample size. He’s walked eight bats and allowed 11 hits, including two homers, in those 16.1 innings. That comes to a 4.74 FIP.
Font pitched for the Dodgers and the Athletics already this season as he’s moved around quite a bit. Both of those stops didn’t go as well as his time in Tampa Bay so far. He allowed 24 combined runs over 17 innings, all in relief.
Combined amongst the three Major League teams, he’s 0-3 with a 7.56 ERA in 33.1 inning’s here in 2018.
Live Betting
The Rays are essentially starting a reliever, but unlike the Sergio Romo starting experiment, they’re stretching him out. The 28-year old right-hander’s longest outing has been 4.2 innings and 74 pitches. He’ll be able to go deeper on Saturday, but still won’t be granted more than 90 pitches. Don’t look for him to go much past five innings regardless of how he’s throwing.
With that, the Tampa Bay bullpen will be heavily involved. With a ton of pitching turnover, the Rays have already put a ton on their pen, asking them to throw 323.2 innings, the most in baseball. Of course, that number is a bit inflated given their opening pitcher experiment, but they’re still mixing and matching their way through games quite often.
The pen has a respectable 3.73 ERA, but doesn’t have the big name arms the Yankees do. They cannot compete with Aroldis Chapman and Chad Green at the end of the game. Without Alex Colome, the Rays are now looking to Sergio Romo to close out games despite a 5.46 ERA. Journey men like Vidal Nuno, Jonny Venters and Chaz Roe are getting meaningful innings.
Tampa Bay can mix and match all it wants, but drumming up 27 outs will be tough against the Yankees offense.
MLB Pick
With Gray throwing rather well here in June and Font making just his fourth start and yet to even throw five innings in an outing, it would seem the Yankees have the advantage in the rotation and that’s New York’s weakness right now.
Head-to-head, the Rays cannot compete with the Yankees’ pure power and dominating offense and they cannot compete with the stacked bullpen that the Bronx Bombers can run out after Gray to close out the game.
Look for the Yankees to put a few runs on the board against Font and knock him out of the game after five innings down by a couple runs. From there, the Yankees will continue to add on against the bullpen before turning the ball over to their pen to nail down the win.
The Rays have a scrappy offense that will score a few against Gray, but it won’t be enough as the Bronx Bombers are just too powerful. Take the Yankees the win by a few runs.
MLB Odds: Yankees 7, Rays 4
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