Orioles vs Padres Odds & Prediction: Betting Value on Baltimore

The Baltimore Orioles are quickly heating back up, taking two of three in Seattle over the weekend and now heading into San Diego to attempt to pad their lead in the AL East.

Can their prized pitching prospect continue to trend upward against a graying veteran?

Let's dig into this one in our Orioles vs. Padres preview and prediction.

Grayson Rodriguez may have finally arrived in the big leagues. In three starts since being called back up from Triple-A, the prized pitching prospect has recorded a 3.45 ERA in 28 2/3 innings and has shown some marked improvements in his game.

While Rodriguez has sacrificed some strikeouts in his first five outings since re-debuting, he's traded them in for many more ground balls. Rodriguez has rolled 'em up at a 58% clip or better in four of those aforementioned five starts, besting his 46.7% ground ball rate at Triple-A this year.

The right-hander has always been able to strike guys out at elite rates at every level, but when he experienced the drop in strikeouts every young pitcher deals with when getting promoted, he had few other ways to get outs.

He's spent the past couple of months learning how to get ground-ball outs, and it's working wonders. Just to put it in context, his ground-ball rate in his three outings prior to demotion was roughly 26%. He's been hovering around 60% since coming back up.

The Orioles' offense has sputtered a bit over the last week, recording a 69 wRC+ on account of a horrible .203 batting average. They're still sporting a pretty decent .168 ISO, so all hope is certainly not lost here, and the return of Cedric Mullins is sure to turn things around.

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I've credited Yu Darvish all season with remaining stable at age 36 despite some troubling trends, but his strikeout numbers have really started to take a hit lately. His K-rate is now lower than it was in 2022 at 25%, representing a fourth straight year where he's experienced a drop.

His barrel rate has been a bit better this season, but at 7.6% he's still worse than the league average and his .236 xBA is also his worst since he produced a .233 in 2017.

Things haven't been all that bad for Darvish, who had a solid 3.62 ERA in July and who's allowed just two earned runs in the month of August, but with waning strikeout numbers and diminishing returns in the ground ball department (33.3% GB% or worse in three of his last four starts) I'm not overly confident in him against a competent offense like Baltimore.

This Padres' offense ahs also cooled down a bit over the last week, posting an 83 wRC+ and hitting just .234. San Diego has clubbed just four home runs during that span and has struck out 25.9% of the time, and worst of all it has ranked dead last with a 27.7% fly ball rate.

That's simply not the identity of this team, and the fact that the Padres are hitting .234 with a high ground-ball rate is all the proof required.

I'm a big believer in Rodriguez 2.0, and against an offense which has struggled mightily in the past week I think he should look rather dominant.

San Diego is going to help the rookie out a ton if it continues to put the ball on the ground and strike out at these rates, and on the other hand Darvish should be in trouble against an Orioles team which has been able to hit for power.

That's always been Darvish's biggest weakness in his older years, ranking among the worst in baseball three years running in the home run department.

I give the Orioles an excellent chance to win here and I'll take them down to +110. The best line as of this writing is +130 at WynnBet.