Yesterday was bittersweet.

We finished the day in the green on our article picks. Teoscar Hernandez hit a home run to cash +500 and over 1.5 H/R/RBI (-105). That’s the sweet part.

We came up short with Machado as he hit two warning track flyouts. The crushing blow was losing our Padres futures. It was an incredible run and worth the value, but no dice. Congrats to the Dodgers; they were unbelievable on the mound. They deserve to move on, and I can’t wait to watch them take on the Mets.

Our total for the playoffs is up to +7.08 units in the green. I have two picks today for the last day of the divisional series. You all know I love plus money bets in the playoffs, and we have two more today.

All of these picks are on BetMGM. Use Promo Code: JUSTBASEBALL for a first bet offer up to $1500 in bonus bets if you lose your first wager.

Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Guardians @ 1:08 PM EST

Pitching Matchup: Tarik Skubal (2.39 ERA) vs. Matthew Boyd (2.72 ERA)

The last time these two teams played, both starting pitchers threw up zeros before handing it off to the bullpens. Tarik Skubals’ outing was much more fun to watch as he’s a rocket ship of a human being, but a zero is a zero, and Matthew Boyd matched him. It went down to the ninth, where Kerry Carpenter hit a three-run home run for a Detroit win.

We have different circumstances today but are met with the same line. The Guardians have more advantages today than they did the first time against Skubal, and now should no longer be plus money. Neither should these lines that they are giving to Matthew Boyd. This market feels so obsessed with Skubal that everyone forgets everything else.

That said, Tarik Skubal deserves market obsession. He’s a pitching cyborg who’s throwing like the best on the planet. However, he’s only one person, and you need an entire team to win. In this spot, I like the Guardians bullpen more, and their offense, especially with a banged up Kerry Carpenter.

The market is tossing Matthew Boyd to the side. Many assume he’ll only go a few innings before handing it off to the bullpen after allowing a run or two. I don’t see it this way; I think he can do exactly what he did last time: 4.2 shutout innings with five strikeouts. The Guardians won’t immediately go to their bullpen if Boyd is pitching well; why would they? If he’s getting hit up, obviously they will, but they’ve gotten a ton of work for the bullpen this series as well. They’ll ride the hot hand for at least four innings if he’s performing.

This total is at 5.5, so clearly, the Guardians are projected to perform against this Tigers offense. The same Tigers offense that finished the year ranked 23rd out of 30 teams against left-handed pitching by wRC+. Granted, the Tigers were a second-half team, but in the second half, they dropped to 26th against left-handed pitching.

The hardest hit ball Matthew Boyd gave up was a 100 MPH single to Justyn Henry-Malloy. For reference, seven balls were hit harder than that in this game, and Skubal gave up three. The top three hardest-hit balls for Detroit that day were against the Cleveland bullpen, not Matthew Boyd.

Because Matthew Boyd is good! He put up a 2.72 ERA with a 3.10 xERA with a strikeout rate at 27.7% this year! He’s got good stuff, and he doesn’t have a lot of innings under his belt this year, so his arm should be fresh, especially after throwing just 72 pitches on Monday.

The Tigers are rough against left-handed pitching because they have so much swing and miss in their game. This season, they had the seventh-highest strikeout rate against lefties at 24.6%. But this is a second-half team, and they struck out 30.7% of the time against lefties, the highest mark in the league. The next highest was the Rockies at 29.9%.

Matthew Boyd struck out five of these Tigers in 4.2 innings. The market expects him to get pulled; he doesn’t even have an outs-line. This often happens to the market in elimination games; Darvish was at 15.5 outs, heavily juiced to the under, and Yamamoto had a 13.5 outs line. Both went over because if the starter is performing, there isn’t much reason not to let him keep going.

I don’t expect the Guardians to hit Skubal much, if at all. One run if we are lucky. However, I don’t expect the Tigers to score more than a run against Boyd either, and then we’ll have a battle of the bullpens. Even the biggest Tigers fans in the world would give Cleveland the bullpen edge, especially when Holton and Brieske have thrown the most in the past three days among the key arms on both sides.

Kerry Carpenter limped off the field in the last game. He’s one of the best hitters in the sport against right-handed pitching, and once Boyd exits, it will be primarily righties for Cleveland. He’s such an important piece here, so if he’s not healthy, I wonder when the Tigers’ runs come in against the bullpen.

Also, don’t you think this Cleveland bullpen remembers that crushing blow from Game 3? I greatly respect this group; it’s the best unit left in the playoffs. I believe they’ll have a legacy performance today: straight zeros across the board.

The Guardians gained momentum in the last game as the bats finally came alive. The Guardians were the only team with 50 wins in the American League at home this year; this is the best spot they’ll have. Skubal is a game-changer, but Boyd and the bullpen should be able to replicate it, and then we get another shot at a thriller with home-field advantage and a plus number. What’s surrounding Skubal isn’t good enough for me without Carpenter to warrant a road favorite.

The line for Boyd should be 4.5 strikeouts, so at 3.5 and a plus number, that has to be a play for me. I make this game a pure pick-em, -110 on both sides. At +105, the Guardians are the side I’m on to move to the ALCS.

The Picks: Cleveland Guardians ML (+105) Risk 1 Unit, Matthew Boyd Over 3.5 Strikeouts (+100) Risk 1 Unit