Pittsburgh Pirates at San Francisco Giants

Pittsburgh shows up at 21-17, winners of 4 of their last 5, and they're catching a Giants team that has lost 8 of its last 9 and looks more lost by the day. San Francisco is 14-23 under first-year manager Tony Vitello, and the vibes around Oracle Park right now are somewhere between funeral and yard sale.

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	R	H	E
PIT	0	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	2	5	0
SF	0	1	0	1	0	0	3	0	—	5	12	0

Carmen Mlodzinski gets the ball for the Pirates carrying a 4.76 ERA but coming off a career-high 10-strikeout outing against the Reds last weekend (he also gave up 5 runs in 5.1, so it's a mixed bag). The Giants are listing TBD opposite him, which is its own statement when your ace, Logan Webb, just turned in his shortest start of the year hampered by a knee issue and called himself, in his words, dogs**t after the Padres tagged him for 6 runs in 4 innings.

Webb says the knee isn't serious and Vitello agrees, but he's still day-to-day on the injury report and the rotation behind him is being held together with tape. The bigger Giants problem is the lineup. Rafael Devers and Willy Adames have been black holes, the bullpen is a MASH unit, and Luis Arraez is banged up too. There's a reason the SF Standard ran a piece this week about the highest-paid Giants being put on notice.

The market still sees this as a coin flip — Giants -107 at home, Pirates -103, total sitting at 7.5. That feels generous to San Francisco given how they've actually played, but Oracle Park suppresses runs and the Pirates are road favorites on the runline at -1.5, which is always a tough ask. DK money is split pretty evenly on the moneyline; the over is where the public is piling in (70% of bets).

If you trust the underlying form over the closing line, Pittsburgh is the play. Giants fans have to hope a no-name fill-in starter gives them length, the bullpen holds, and somebody other than Heliot Ramos remembers how to hit. Otherwise this turns into another rough Friday night by the Bay.

Sources