Padres, Darvish Will Upset Mariners As Road 'Dogs

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The San Diego Padres (77-64) start an interleague back-to-back vs. the Seattle Mariners (79-61) Tuesday at T-Mobile Park. The Mariners beat the Padres in a back-to-back July 4-5 in San Diego by a combined score of 14-4 in those two meetings.

Both teams are in the thick of a playoff race. San Diego is two games in front of the Milwaukee Brewers for the final NL wild card seed. Seattle holds the AL's first wild card spot and is six games in front of the Baltimore Orioles.

Padres-Mariners features a matchup between both teams' aces. The Padres send out RHP Yu Darvish (13-7, 3.31 ERA) to face Mariners starting RHP Logan Gilbert (12-5, 3.23 ERA).

Let's BET the SAN DIEGO PADRES (-105) at PointsBet Sportsbook based on betting market analysis and we're getting a good price on this starting pitching matchup.

Betting Deets (PointsBet)

San Diego Padres RHP Yu Darvish (Ed Zurga/Getty Images)

Darvish > Gilbert & 'Reverse Line Movement'

The bottom line here is Gilbert is getting a little pricey and Darvish is a touch underrated. FanGraphs power ranks Darvish as the 15th-best starter in baseball and Gilbert is 34th.

Furthermore, Darvish has pitched very well vs. active Mariners hitters in a fairly large sample size. Darvish has a 32.7% K-rate in 110 plate appearances against Seattle's projected lineup, per Statcast.

To put that into perspective, Darvish has a 24.9% K-rate this season and the MLB average K-rate is 21.4%. Mariners batters have a .190/.262/.297 expected batting average, wOBA and slugging percentage slash line vs. Darvish.

Darvish's advanced numbers are better than Gilbert's. He ranks higher in WAR (3.3-2.7), expected ERA (4.12-3.73) and K-BB% (19.9-16.3%), according to FanGraphs. Also, Darvish grades higher in K%, BB%, exit velocity, hard-hit rate, swing-and-miss rates and expected slash line, per Statcast.

The sketchy line movement in the betting market gives me more confidence in San Diego's ML as well. For instance, according to Pregame.com and VegasInsider.com, a majority of the action is on the Mariners.

But, Seattle's ML has shrunk from the opener despite all the pro-Mariners money. It would appear as though the oddsmakers could be laying a trap by making Seattle's ML cheaper.

BET the SAN DIEGO PADRES (-105) at PointsBet Sportsbook and I'd bet San Diego's ML all the way up to -125.