Houston Faces Kansas City in Tuesday’s Game as MLB Betting Favorites

The Houston Astros are starting to resemble last year’s dominant World Series champion Chicago Cubs as the Astros enter their series in Kansas City on an MLB-high 10-game winning streak and with by far the best record in baseball. The Astros took out their local rivals, the Texas Rangers, with much ease this past weekend, winning a 3 game series. For Kansas City, they had a pretty good weekend as well, hosting the Cleveland Indians in a 3 game series this past weekend, ending it at 2-1. The MLB lines for Tuesday’s Game 2 of this series will be up in the air until Kansas City names its pitcher.

Houston at Kansas City MLB Betting Preview & TV Info

Four homers, seven runs, and ten straight wins. #EarnIt pic.twitter.com/20ytdgzlRg

— Houston Astros (@astros) June 4, 2017

When: Tuesday, June 6, 8:15 PM ET Where: Kauffman Stadium, KC Probable pitchers (away/home): David Paulino/TBA TV: MLB Extra Innings Stream: MLB.tv Radio: Houston / Kansas Opening MLB Lines: Astros favored by TBA

Why Bet On Houston?

Entering Monday, the red-hot Astros were riding a 10-game winning streak, tied with the Rangers (May 9-19) for the longest in the majors this season. No Astros team has won 11 games in a row since a 12-game streak in 2004 (Aug. 27-Sept. 8). The club record is 12, set twice (also: 1999). George Springer’s three multi-home run games this season match Giancarlo Stanton, Jay Bruce and Brett Gardner for most in the majors. Springer had a two-homer game on Sunday in a win over Texas. The Astros currently lead the AL West by 13.5 games. Only 1 other club in Astros history held a divisional lead of at least 12.5 games at any point in a season: the 1998 Astros, who finished the year 102-60 and 12.5 games ahead of CHC on Sept. 28. That club also held a 13.0 game lead for one day on Sept. 27. RHP Lance McCullers Jr. was named the AL May Pitcher of the Month and SS Carlos Correa was named the AL Player of the Month. It’s the 1st time that the Astros have Player and Pitcher of the Month award winners in the same month. The last AL team to do this: Boston in May of 2010 (Ortiz and Lester). Houston will start David Paulino on the mound Tuesday to give Joe Musgrove more time to recover from shoulder discomfort. Musgrove hasn’t thrown since being placed on the 10-day disabled list May 30. “We’re just not ready to ramp up Musgrove yet,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “He’s feeling better than when we put him on the DL. We’re going to push him back continually and see where he fits later in the week.” In his first spot start for Musgrove, Paulino allowed two runs through four innings in a 17-6 win against the Minnesota Twins on May 31. The 6-7 righthander struck out eight and surrendered five hits and one walk. He complemented a fastball that averaged 93 mph with a heavy dosage of breaking balls and a mostly effective changeup.

Why Bet On Kansas City?

The Royals took two of three in Houston during the season’s first week, one blown save away from a sweep. Whit Merrifield went 3-for- 4 to extend his hitting streak to 19 games in Sunday’s 8-0 loss to Cleveland. That’s the longest hit streak in MLB this season. Merrifield was the lone bright spot for an otherwise non-existent Royals offense. Those three hits bumped his average over .300 and for the season as a whole, the 28-year-old second baseman is now slashing .307/.360/.496 with six homers, 15 RBI, six stolen bases and 18 runs scored across 39 games played. KC third baseman Mike Moustakas has stopped going the opposite way. He is pulling the ball now at a rate higher than at any other time in his career. According to batted ball data from Inside Edge, Moustakas is pulling nearly 48 percent of all balls put in play. That’s way up from his breakout 2015 season when he pulled the ball 39 percent of the time. In fact, his current rate is just off his career high pull rate of 51 percent, just one year prior in 2014. With a .513 slugging percentage and .259 ISO, those numbers are in line with his performance in 2016. What’s different is he is no longer taking the ball to the opposite field. Kansas City has sent down outfielder Jorge Soler, the guy they got from the Cubs in the Wade Davis trade. Soler was hitting just .164/.292/.273 with one homer, three RBI and a 19/10 K/BB ratio in 65 plate appearances with the Royals. He’ll work through his issues in the minors before returning later in the season. Outfielder Billy Burns was recalled from Triple-A. The Royals don’t know as of this writing who their starting pitcher will be Tuesday. They will need a spot starter with Danny Duffy out for six to eight weeks, and Nathan Karns’ recovery from arm soreness coming along slowly. The logical choice would be a spot start Chris Young, but the Royals could bring somebody up from the minors as well.

Houston at Kansas City MLB Betting Pick: Houston Astros

Tough to make a call until knowing who the Royals’ pitcher, but it likely will be a bullpen by committee type thing.