Twins vs. Tigers prediction and odds for Tuesday, Aug. 8 (Detroit's better lefty)

Eduardo Rodriguez didn’t want to leave the Detroit Tigers, at least not for Los Angeles at the trade deadline, so now he’ll make his 17th start for the 49-63 Tigers today against the Minnesota Twins.

The Twins are leading the division at 60-54 and took a 9-3 win yesterday, their fifth straight. Minnesota is starting to run away with the division, but Detroit could reel it back towards the pack with a win today. 

Sonny Gray will go opposite Rodriguez and make his 23rd start for Minnesota. In his previous 22 he is 5-4 with a 3.18 ERA. Rodriguez is 7-5 with a 2.96 ERA in his 16 starts this year and the lefty has the Tigers as only very slight underdogs at home in Game 2 of this series.

Let’s get into the odds. 

Twins vs. Tigers odds, run line and total

Twins vs. Tigers prediction and pick

Sonny Gray has been great and last start he went seven innings for only the third time this year. That’s the biggest issue with his performance this year, he still leaves a decent amount of work for the bullpen.

Minnesota is 11th in bullpen ERA this year with a 3.83 ERA and a 4.04 FIP.

Gray has a 2.93 FIP which is a lot different than his 3.86 expected ERA.

He’s only allowed five home runs, but allows an average exit velocity of 89.3 which is worse than league average and he is 31st percentile in hard hit rate. 

One of the biggest reasons is that he has a very low fly ball rate. The Tigers are 28th in home runs this year, so I’m not overly concerned about them taking Gray deep, but he’s allowed a homer in each of his last two starts, so maybe his good luck has run out in that department. 

While I don’t expect Detroit to really get to Gray very much I’m expecting even less out of Minnesota’s offense. The Twins have been very good lately and took Joey Wentz for eight runs yesterday , one of the only times they’ve done damage against a lefty.

They’re still bad against left-handed pitchers, and I’m not going to overreact to one performance. 

Minnesota has climbed up to 25 in OPS against lefties with its recent success, but Rodriguez is much better than Wentz and I’ll take a year's worth of data over two weeks of hot hitting off left-handers. 

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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change