Diamondbacks vs. Dodgers, 10:10 ET
I’m not going to dwell on how good last season’s baseball picks were for my Outkick articles, but for context, I was 70 games over .500. I bring that up because I also want to share this: Last season, I started Opening Day with a terrible 0-3 record. It was really bad. Today could be exactly the same. Who knows, this year he could be 70 games under .500. I don’t expect that to happen and I’m very excited to see how this year goes.
The Diamondbacks are a team where I made a lot of money last season. Part of that success came from my confidence in two of their pitchers: Merrill Kelly and tonight’s starter Zac Gallen. The Diamondbacks aren’t a good team, but they are competitive. At least they were considered for the wild card last season; They weren’t particularly close, but they tried to get there. Drawing the Dodgers for the first three games of the season is a tough way to start this year’s campaign. Gallen was eighth in the National League with a 2.54 ERA last season and was second in WHIP. This was his most complete season, but he was also solid in 2020 and 2019. Even 2021 was okay, but not great. He excelled against the Dodgers last season, posting a 0.64 ERA while allowing just one earned run in 14 innings. In fact, he pitched better against Los Angeles than any team he faced last year. I hope his solid 2022 can carry over into 2023 and he starts the year off strong.
For all the hype the Dodgers receive, in some ways arguably the best pitcher on their roster flies under the radar a bit. Yes, they’ve had players like Clayton Kershaw, Max Scherzer, Zack Greinke and other big names over the years, but their best pitcher right now is probably Julio Urías. In 2021, Urias was the league’s only 20-game winner. While he wasn’t as successful in the win column last year, he did win 17 games last year. He improved his ERA quite a bit and posted a 2.16 ERA, but his strikeouts were down by almost 30, which means more balls in play. That didn’t make much of a difference, though, as hitters hit him lower last year than any year before. Urias was terrific against the Diamondbacks last season, too. He made two starts, pitched 11.1 innings and allowed just one earned run in that span. There really isn’t anybody on the Diamondbacks that I care about that much in terms of hitting against him.
This for me is a good opportunity for us to take the sub 7.5 in the game. I don’t expect either team to get a ton of runs against the other pitcher. Top fives under 3.5 may be better to play, but that doesn’t leave much room for error. I will support the entire game and hope these pitchers are in good shape to start the season.
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