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College Baseball Odds, Pick & Prediction Today: Saturday, June 22
College Baseball Odds, Pick & Prediction Today: Tennessee vs. Texas A&M | June 22
Texas A&M Aggies vs. Tennessee Volunteers
TAMU: +140 | UTK: -184
Game Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
Where: Omaha, Neb.
Odds via FanDuel
If you’re the Texas A&M Aggies, you need to come away from LHP Ryan Prager’s start with a win. It’s non-negotiable, especially after the injury to LHP Shane Sdao. Prager has been the team’s best starter by a wide margin. He is probably the best starting pitcher left in Omaha and may have been the best to make it here.
College baseball isn’t much different from professional baseball when it comes to game theory and managerial decision-making — if you go down early in a non-elimination game, it makes sense to fold early and save good bullpen arms. However, college baseball does vary significantly from professional baseball in of the quality of those bullpen arms.
The importance of that distinction was rendered abundantly clear in the last College World Series: the final scores of the three-game final series were 4-3 (Game 1, LSU), 24-4 (Game 2, Florida) and 18-4 (Game 3, LSU). If things get out of hand early, they probably will only get worse
For betting purposes, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to play an underdog on the run line unless you expect them to lead early but potentially give up a late-game comeback — or you expect a low-scoring game all around. With such tight bullpens, a team trailing by a one-to-three run margin would be incurring more risk than usual by using a good bullpen arm late.
In addition to having just one legitimate, trustworthy starter due to injury, Texas A&M also lost its best bat, Stanford transfer Braden Montgomery, to a different injury. Montgomery recorded a team-high 1.187 OPS with 27 home runs, edging out teammate Jace LaViolette, who posted a 1.184 with 28 home runs. LaViolette is now nursing an injury of his own that limited his mobility last weekend.
The Aggies are in dire straits. Game 1 of this series means a whole lot more to their chances of winning than it does for the Volunteers’ — at least in my view. I expect the Aggies to respond accordingly, leaving it all on the line in this spot. We’re backing them to win today.
But we’re not playing the Aggies on the moneyline for +140. Instead, for the reasons outlined above, we’re backing them to win by a 1.5-run margin for +210 at DraftKings. If the Aggies’ odds of winning are just 41.7%, I don’t buy that their odds of winning by multiple runs are just 32.3%. Sure, the Vols are the home team and will get the last at-bats, but if they can plate several runs early, I suspect Tony Vitello and the Vols will start thinking about Sunday.
This series isn’t like the opening round of the College World Series — we’re playing two (or three) back-to-back games. While the Vols could get away with being aggressive with the pen in their late-game comeback against Florida State, I doubt Vitello is as risk tolerant in the same spot this series. While I freely concede the Vols should win this game, Texas A&M’s odds of winning by two or more runs are higher than the books would have you believe.
College Baseball Pick Today for Texas A&M-Tennessee: Texas A&M -1.5 +210 at DraftKings
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