Game: Seattle Mariners @ Texas Rangers
Time: 8:05 p.m. ET
Odds: Mariners +100, Rangers -120
Total: 8.5
The Seattle Mariners are on a tear. They have won ten straight games and enter tonight’s game with Texas having won their last seven series in a row. The Mariners have lost just once in their last 14 games. They swept four games against Toronto last week, scored 14 runs in a two-game sweep of San Diego, and are coming off two straight wins over Washington. The Mariners will be up against one of the best pitchers in the AL tonight – the Rangers’ Martin Perez.
Perez was the AL Cy Young favorite for a big part of the 2022 season. He has cooled off some, but he is still 7-2 with a 2.72 ERA. The Rangers have won each of his last six starts. The last time Texas lost one of Perez’s starts, it was the last time the Rangers faced Seattle. While Perez has been very good this season, consider his last three starts. Perez picked up two wins and the Rangers won all three games, but Perez allowed a total of 13 earned runs in 18.2 innings.
That speaks to the Rangers’ offense, which has been outstanding recently. Texas is now a top-10 scoring team averaging 4.58 runs per game, good for ninth in MLB. The Rangers have scored fewer than five runs just twice in their last 11 games. They’ve scored five or more in their last six straight games and are averaging seven runs a game over that span.
Tonight, the Rangers will go up against Seattle’s Marco Gonzalez who is 5-9 with a 3.24 ERA this season. Gonzalez won his last start going 6.2 innings against Toronto in an 8-3 win. The Mariners have only won two of his last eight starts. Gonzalez has only given up more than two earned runs in one of those eight starts. He is not getting the run support he needs to win games. In each of the six losses in his last eight starts, the Rangers failed to score more than three runs.
Seattle has taken over second place in the AL West. They are 47-42 and 11 games behind division leader Houston. More importantly, the Mariners are 3.5 games ahead of Texas and they are right in the thick of the AL wild-card race. Boston, Toronto, and Seattle all have identical records heading into today’s games.
In addition to the 10 straight wins, the Mariners are 9-2 SU in their last 11 games against the Rangers. Seattle is also 10-1 in its last 11 road games and 5-1 in the last six games against the Rangers in Texas. The Rangers have won four of their last six games.
With the Rangers averaging seven runs a game, the total has gone Over in five of their last six games. Seattle is averaging 4.7 runs a game over their last ten. Five of their last seven games have gone Over. In the last ten games between these two teams, Gonzalez has been the losing pitcher four times.