The Houston Astros will play the Texas Rangers in Game 1 of their series at Globe Life Field on Tuesday night.
The Houston Astros are 82-47 this season and have won five of their last seven games. Houston is coming off of a series loss against Baltimore, where they lost two out of the three games played in the series. The Houston pitching staff has a 3.04 ERA, a 1.12 WHIP, and a .215 opponent batting average this season. The Astros offense has scored 584 runs with a .245 batting average and a .318 on base percentage. Yordan Alvarez is batting .294 with 31 home runs and 80 RBI’s for the Astros this season. The projected starter for Houston is Frambler Valdez, who is 13-4 with a 2.65 ERA and a 1.13 WHIP over 156 innings pitched this season.
The Texas Rangers are 58-69 this season and have lost three of their last five games. Texas is coming off of a series loss against Detroit, where they lost two out of the three games played. The Texas pitching staff has a 4.10 ERA, a 1.31 WHIP, and a .242 opponent batting average. The Rangers offense has scored 579 runs with a .244 batting average and a .307 on base percentage this year. Corey Seager is batting .257 with 28 home runs and 67 RBI’s for the Rangers this season. The projected starter for Texas is Dane Dunning, who is 3-6 with a 4.19 ERA and a 1.37 WHIP over 129 innings pitched this season.
Houston is 5-2 in their last 7 games and 38-16 in their last 54 Tuesday games. The over is 3-0-1 in Houston’s last 4 road games. Texas is 0-7 in their last 7 Tuesday games and 16-41 in their last 57 games following an off day. The over is 5-0 in Texas’ last 5 games. Houston is 40-16 in these two teams last 56 head to head meetings.
Texas hasn’t had the best year, but they are still in third place in the AL West. Houston has had an excellent year and has a 23 game lead on the Rangers. Houston has won five of their last seven games and is starting Frambler Valdez, who has allowed three runs over his last 21 innings pitched. For the Rangers, Dane Dunning has allowed nine runs over his last 15.1 innings pitched. I like the over in this game, as Houston should have a field day on Dunning.