If you’re a baseball fan and you haven’t been paying attention to the World Baseball Classic, you’ve been missing out!
Lucky for you, there’s one last chance to be patriotic and join in on the fun as the United States takes on Japan tonight in the WBC Final.
This is one of the best possible championship matchups featuring teams LOADED with some of the very best players in the world. We might even see Shohei Ohtani pitch against Mike Trout!
There’s more than just entertainment value to be had in this game, though. WBC games don’t typically have many alternate lines or prop bets to pick from BUT there is still plenty of betting value here.
Let’s examine the odds of USA vs. Japan and how we might want to bet this ELECTRIC game.
USA vs. Japan odds, run line and total
USA vs. Japan predictions
The United States has been favored in every single game it’s played this season, and that doesn’t change for the WBC Final.
Team USA features a lineup that some have said is among the best ever created.
You start with Mookie Betts, end with Trea Turner and have players like Mike Trout, Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt in the heart of the order. That’s not even to mention players like Kyle Tucker, Tim Anderson and Kyle Schwarber. And oh yeah, we have guys like Pete Alonso coming off the BENCH.
You could stop reading now and take Team USA moneyline (-132) and I wouldn’t blame you, but you’ll want to keep going.
The United States is an absolute behemoth offensively, but it will be facing a Team Japan team featuring some of the most talented players in the entire tournament.
Luckily for Team USA, many of them pitched LAST NIGHT in a thrilling come-from-behind walk-off win for Japan over Mexico.
We know that 21-year-old pitching phenom Roki Sasaki is unlikely to pitch much, if at all, after throwing 64 high-intensity pitches Tuesday. The same stands – perhaps to a lesser degree – for back-to-back Pacific League MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw 52 pitches in relief of Sasaki.
Shota Imanaga, a hard-throwing lefty, will make the start for Japan. The 28-year-old went 12-4 with a 2.04 ERA with 151 strikeouts to 32 walks over 158 ⅔ innings this past season in the Pacific League. However, even without Sasaki and Yamamoto, Japan could turn to the likes of MLB pitchers Yu Darvish and Ohtani out of the bullpen to back up Imanaga.
Toeing the rubber for Team USA is a much less heralded, but still respectable Merrill Kelly. The 34-year-old righty went 13-8 with a 3.37 ERA with 177 strikeouts to 61 walks in 200 ⅓ innings last season with Arizona.
Kelly will have to face a lineup that includes Ohtani, St. Louis Cardinals player Lars Nootbaar, Japanese legend and new Boston Red Sox signee Masataka Yoshida and sluggers Munetaka Murakami (56 home runs last season) and Kazuma Okamoto (30+ home runs for five straight seasons), among others!
Kelly isn’t the most impressive pitcher on either roster, but the relievers backing him up – Devin Williams, Ryan Pressly, Daniel Bard, Jason Adam and others – can shut down just about any lineup.
Any way you slice it, Kelly vs. Imanaga is not the ideal pitching matchup most baseball fans would have circled for a championship game.
This is leading me to take the OVER 10.5 runs with confidence. Japan vs. Mexico looked PRIMED to hit the under with Pablo Sandoval dealing against Sasaki. But still, those two lineups found a way to score a combined 11 runs.
Tonight, two of the best lineups in the entire world will face off against pitchers who wouldn’t be selected to pitch in this spot if rest wasn’t a factor.
These teams have combined to average just under 17 runs per game in the WBC, sometimes facing better pitchers than who’s starting tonight’s game.
Bank on one of these teams’ offenses to get hot early, but count on Team USA to win the day with its historically good lineup, especially against a Japan team that’s not at full rest over its comeback win over Mexico.
Picks: Team USA moneyline and OVER 10.5 total runs scored
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Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.