Gallen Will Make O's See Zeros

Orioles vs. Diamondbacks, 4:10 ET

If I mentioned to you at the beginning of the season that these two teams would be sitting here fighting for a playoff spot, you probably wouldn't have believed me that both would be. Sure, maybe one, but the other would've been a stretch. Nonetheless, here we are, September 3rd, and we have the Orioles leading their division, and the Diamondbacks fighting for a Wild Card spot.

The Orioles are a strange organization. They seemed to have bottomed out as best they could and then all of a sudden last season everything clicked. This was a team that was expected to lose roughly 100 games, and they ended up making a push for the playoffs now they are leading the division this year. They are a good young team that has very solid hitting. Their pitching staff isn't much in terms of starters, but their bullpen is dangerous and very effective at getting their team to the finish line of games. The reason I think they are strange is because even with a chance to do something special this year, it seems like the organization decided... well, let's just get a decent guy and see what happens. There weren't that many arms on the market at the deadline, and as far as "stuff" goes, Jack Flaherty is one of the better pitchers, but I don't think he is really moving the needle for the birds. He takes the ball today to close out the series against the Diamondbacks. Since coming over to the Orioles, we've seen him have three decent starts and one bad one. His bad one came against the Padres where he allowed seven earned runs over three innings. The good ones have been a total of 16.2 innings and seven earned runs over that span. Not great, but at least he is keeping them in games.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 18: Gunnar Henderson #2 and Adley Rutschman #35 of the Baltimore Orioles celebrates after Henderson hit a two-run home run against the Oakland Athletics in the top of the second inning at RingCentral Coliseum on August 18, 2023 in Oakland, California. (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

The Diamondbacks are not a strange organization, but they've had a strange year. They started the season pretty hot and were able to ride that basically until the end of the first half. At the All-Star Break they owned the division lead and were looking to keep pushing that going into the second half. I don't know what happened, but it all went to hell. They dropped down in the standings (part of it was because of how good the Dodgers have been) as they experienced a really tough stretch of losing. Now they are heating back up and have launched themselves back into the Wild Card race even though the division is certainly out of reach. Good news for them is that they get to close this series out with Zac Gallen who has been a Cy Young candidate this year and has one of the best home ERA's in all of baseball. This season, in Arizona, Gallen has allowed just 17 earned runs over 85.1 innings, good for a 1.79 home ERA. He allowed five three starts ago against Flaherty's former team the Cardinals, and four against the Rays back in June, but aside from that, he's made 11 home starts and hasn't allowed more than two earned runs in any of them.

This game is a clear mismatch of pitching to me. I'm backing Gallen and I'm going for the run line in this game. I think the Diamondbacks should be able to hit Flaherty, a guy that is good, but not exactly lighting the world on fire. Take Arizona -1.5 in this game and let's get some nice plus money here. Feel free to do a first five/full game prop as well, or first five run line play too. I think they all cash.

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