Can Mariners’ Secret Pitching Weapon Finally Silence the Rangers?

It was a bit of a ho-hum kind of day yesterday as I split my plays. Betting against the Mets hasn’t been a favorable thing to do lately and I assumed Sonny Gray would’ve performed better. Not the end of the world as I was at least able to get a win on the other play to mitigate the damage. That’s essentially what it is about – winning as much as possible, and avoiding big losses. Tonight the Mariners take on the Rangers in a divisional matchup that is rather intriguing.

The Mariners enter tonight’s contest with a solid 19-12 record and are currently sitting in first place of the AL West. If you remember last year, they were in first for the majority of that season as well. I know Seattle has the pitching to get pretty much anywhere they want to go. The hitting is still something that is a bit suspect, but they are performing significantly better than last season. Unfortunately, their pitching staff isn’t throwing quite as well as last season and that means the balance is still about equal to what they were last year. I won’t say the team has an identity crisis, but it would be nice for them to figure out exactly what their calling card will be. Tonight, they put Luis Castillo on the hill. We’ve been on Castillo quite a bit since he headed out West and have seen good returns. Castillo is 3-2 with a 3.62 ERA, and a 1.39 WHIP. For the season, Castillo has allowed 13 earned runs in 32 innings, but he has allowed nine of those runs in 9.1 road innings. Rangers hitters are doing pretty well overall against him, hitting .266 in 79 at-bats. Josh Smith looks like he had a good game against him, but with just four at-bats, I’m not sure that I’m super worried it will happen again.

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