Welcome back college baseball fans! Today is an exciting day as it is Major League Baseball's opening day of the 2024 season! As exciting as that is, we have equally exciting conference series starting early this week with Easter Sunday upon us. We missed our last 2-leg pairing, let's hit this one and have a nice bounce back!
Give Us The Commodores Back At Home
Vanderbilt (20-6, 3-3 SEC) is hosting Missouri (10-15, 1-5 SEC), with a very good chance for the home sweep in this series. Missouri is possibly the worst SEC team this season, while Vanderbilt is going to fight their best to stay towards the top of this daunting conference.
I absolutely love Vanderbilt at home in this series and tonight, even if it isn't behind their usual Friday starter, Carter Holton. Vanderbilt is starting Greyson Carter, allowing a .245 batting average with a 6.23 ERA, across just 13.1 innings in 5 appearances and 1 start. Carter's ERA is a tad blown up from 1 outing where he allowed 4 ER in 1 inning pitched vs Illinois St.
Against Auburn last week, he went 3 innings, allowing 3 hits, 1 run, 0 walks, and 4 strikeouts. Vanderbilt is 16-3 at home and coming off a sweep at the hands of South Carolina on the road. Now they get to come back home, where their bats should wake back up and their pitching should continue to hold steady.
Don't Let This Team Get On Base
Vandy is hitting .305 as a team, with 7 regular batters over .300 and another right at .297. This team can hit with 269 hits, and when they get on base, they can pulverize you. If Missouri allows base runners, it will be a long series as Vanderbilt has successfully stolen 55 of 61 attempts.
RJ Austin (.356 avg) and Alan Espinal (.344 avg) should continue to pace the team with hits. Missouri's starter Rustad does hold an impressive .215 batting average against, but has also allowed 19 runs on 23 hits, and I do believe Vandy will find a way to get base runners in against him, and Missouri's group of relievers. Missouri has a couple good top end relievers but give us the Commodores to take game 1 of this series and set the tone with another SEC win.
Give Us Hagen Smith All Day
This may be a great game today, and we head down to Fayetteville, Arkansas, and we are backing the #1 team in the country, and the best pitcher currently in the country. The best pitcher could have an argument around it, as there are a lot of talented aces in college, but Hagen Smith has led this team with a 1.24 ERA across 29 innings of work, allowing just .116 batting average, 11 hits, 10 walks, and 62 strikeouts.
Behind him is a group of possibly the best relievers in the country, as they boast a 2.50 ERA as a team. Smith has not allowed more than 4 hits in any game this year and we can expect him to go 6 innings again today.
He faced LSU twice last year and they won both games he pitched in, but he is on a different level this year. I am trusting their usually reliable offense to get it done here as well.
Arkansas Bats Will Be Enough
Arkansas, batting .279 as a team, avoids LSU's top two pitchers, Holman and Jump, as LSU decided to start them Friday and Saturday. Arkansas isn't a team known to pound out 10-15 runs a game, with their pitching holding steady 5-8 runs has been enough for them most of the year. They get timely hits from McLaughlin, Diggs, Holt, and Sprague-Lotl, all hitting above .300.
Having said that, they have put up double digits in 6 games against lesser competition. At time of this writing there is no update on who LSU is going to pitch today, Thatcher Hurd, their usual Sunday pitcher has not been good and looks like they may give him a weekend off from starting, so I expect it to be Anderson or Coleman.
Coleman has been tougher to hit against with a .148 batting average, but does tend to walk batters, allowing 12 walks in 15 innings. This could be a bullpen game for LSU, and they have a decent bullpen. I expect this to be a close game, but Arkansas bats at home behind Smith, should be able to get the job done on this usual "Friday" night game.
Normally we try to push our 2-leg pairings to plus money, but having said that, we like this pairing together a lot today and will take a little juice with it. Hope everyone has a great March Madness Thursday as well! Happy Sweet Sixteen!
Today's Best Bet: Vanderbilt ML + Arkansas ML (-120) at DraftKings
