Two Tickets, One Game In Sacramento

Four plays on Sunday, and two of them are sitting on the same patch of grass in West Sacramento. Mariners moneyline at -128 for 1 unit and Athletics team total under 4.5 at -145 for 1.5 units. Put them side by side and they stop looking like two opinions. They're one opinion written twice: Seattle wins and the A’s don't score much. That's worth pulling apart before first pitch, because at Sutter Health Park those two things have been welded together all season.

THE CARD

Orioles vs Blue Jays Moneyline Pick

Mets vs Yankees Team Total Pick

Mariners vs Athletics Moneyline Pick

Mariners vs Athletics Team Total Pick

Every price above is the price taken, and every unit figure is to win. The whole card risks 7.715 units to win 5.5, which needs 58.38 percent to break even. The two Sacramento tickets risk 3.455 of that, so 44.78 percent of the day lives in one ballgame.

THE BUILDING IS LOUD

Start with the park, because it's the first thing anybody sees when they look at an A’s team total. Through Saturday the Athletics have played 68 games at Sutter Health Park this season, April 3 through September 12. Those games have averaged 11.31 total runs. The A’s 75 road games have averaged 8.39. That's almost three extra runs a night in a Triple A ballpark that was never built to hold a big league lineup, and it's why a 4.5 on this team looks low at first glance.

Here's the part that gets missed. Almost all of that extra scoring belongs to the visitors. The A’s score 4.60 a game at Sutter and 3.84 on the road, a bump of about three quarters of a run. Their opponents score 6.71 in Sacramento and 4.55 when they host the A’s. The park adds runs, but it hands most of them to whoever is in the other dugout, and 44 of those 68 visiting lineups have scored five or more. (The six June home games in Las Vegas are left out of every Sutter number here.)

The full breakdown for the building, by season and by run type, is on our Sutter Health Park park factors page.

WHY THESE TWO TICKETS MOVE TOGETHER

The A’s are 24 and 44 at Sutter Health Park. Split those 68 games by the result and by whether the A’s got to five runs, and the pattern is about as clean as baseball gets:

A’s lost, scored four or fewer: 32 games. Both of today's tickets cash.
A’s won, scored five or more: 20 games. Both tickets lose.
A’s lost, scored five or more: 12 games. The moneyline wins, the under loses.
A’s won, scored four or fewer: 4 games. The under wins, the moneyline loses.

So 52 of 68 home games, 76.5 percent, landed with both tickets going the same way. At today's prices, both cashing is +2.5 units and both losing is -3.455. The split outcomes are small: the Mariners win with an A’s over nets -1.175, and an A’s win under five nets +0.22.

If you'd blindly bought this exact pair, at these exact prices, against every visitor who came through Sacramento this year, you'd be at -0.034 units a game. That's a coin flip with a small toll. Put another way, the pair doesn't have an edge just because it's the A’s at home. Whatever edge there is has to come from Seattle and from today's two starters.

SEATTLE IN SACRAMENTO

This is where the case gets built. The Mariners have played five games at Sutter Health Park this year and won four. The A’s scored 2, 1, 1, 6 and 1 in them. Seattle scored 9, 4, 9, 5 and 19. Four of the five would've cashed both tickets. The one that didn't was Friday night, a 6 to 5 A’s win, and Seattle answered with Saturday's 19 to 1.

There's a broader version of the same idea, and it's closer than the Seattle split. At Sutter, against the 15 staffs with the best run prevention in baseball, the A’s have scored four or fewer in 18 of 30 games, 60.0 percent. Against the bottom 15 it's 18 of 38, 47.4 percent. The under needs 59.18 percent at -145. The catch is honest and it's worth saying plainly: Seattle allows 4.44 runs a game, which ranks exactly 15th of 30. They're the last team inside that cut, not a shutdown staff.

THE TWO STARTERS

Jacob Lopez is the reason the moneyline is priced where it is. The lefty has made 21 starts with a 4.78 ERA over 111 innings, a 1.45 WHIP, 53 walks and 19 home runs. At home it's worse, a 5.20 ERA across 55.1 innings. He did handle Seattle once, 5.1 innings and two earned runs back on April 21, and the A’s won that one 5 to 2. Seattle's offense is also at its weakest against left handed starters, 3.88 runs a game in 49 of them against 4.15 against righties. That's the real counterpoint to the moneyline.

Bryce Miller carries a 4.22 ERA over 102.1 innings with a 1.14 WHIP, 101 strikeouts and 29 walks. The number that matters for the under is the length. His last three starts went 4.1, 4.2 and 3.2 innings, which means the A’s will probably see Seattle's bullpen by the fifth. On the road this year Miller sits at a 4.69 ERA and a 1.29 WHIP, and a righty isn't the A’s problem at home: they've scored 4.80 a game at Sutter against right handed starters.

WHAT WOULD MAKE THIS A BAD DAY

An A’s win with five or more runs. It's happened 20 times in 68 home games, 29.4 percent, and it takes both tickets down together for -3.455 units, nearly half the card's total risk. There's one more thing working against the under: this is a 1:05 pm start, and the 20 day games at Sutter have averaged 12.25 total runs, with the A’s held to four or fewer in only 9 of 20. Late summer sun in Sacramento isn't an under bettor's friend.

The other side of it is the recent trend. The A’s have been held to four or fewer in 20 of their last 34 games at Sutter, 58.8 percent, since June 21. That's right at the break even line, and Seattle has been the team doing the holding.