Today's Taste: Best College baseball Bets (4/6/23)

MLB is off to such a strong start for me thus far this season, and we’ve really been hitting our stride on the college side over the last couple weeks. As much as I love the MLB, I’m so wrapped up in the NCAA Baseball whirlwind right now. A lot of people say they love college football and basketball better than the NFL and NBA, I think we can add baseball to that list. It’s a completely different game, and we’re getting unreal matchups for every weekend series. This Thursday features a loaded slate of a ton of College Baseball weekend series starting. Let’s lock down some winners.

 

#5 Arkansas Razorbacks (-115) @ Ole Miss Rebels (-115) | Over/Under NA 

 

Some of you may remember this was one hell of a series last June to determine who moved on to the College World Series Finals a season ago. In the final two contests, they were so evenly matched that it really was a coin flip. The Razorbacks took the first one 3-2, with Ole Miss securing their CWS Finals appearance by clinching a 2-0 victory behind a complete game shutout from Dylan Delucia. Ole Miss eventually went on to win the whole thing. A lot has changed since that point. Who has the edge this weekend?

 

23-5 Arkansas has looked amazing this season, currently sitting as the #5 ranked team in the nation. Despite losing a lot of key arms, they have found a way to win games. With all of the injuries to their pitching, manager Dave Van Horn made an executive decision to take his best starter, Hagen Smith, out of the weekend rotation in order to preserve him. With Smith now a key bullpen piece, lefty Hunter Hollan has assumed ace of the staff duties, pitching basically every weekend opener. That should be no different today. Prior to a brutal outing against Alabama last week (4 IP, 7 ER), Hollan had been sensational, allowing only seven earned runs in 32 innings. With a bounce back start looming, it is fair to say HH has the advantage against the Rebels today. 

 

Ole Miss is 1-8 in SEC play thus far, but what stood out was how poorly they played against Vanderbilt a few weeks ago. The Commodores are one of the few, if not the only, teams in the country that feature an entirely southpaw starting rotation. During that three-game sweep, Vandy limited Ole Miss to just four runs the entire series. So all of those lefty starters only allowed four runs in 20 innings to go along with just 11 hits. While the power of Ole Miss is the offense, it does not appear to be a good matchup for game one. To make matters worse, the Rebels are throwing Jack Doughtery, who holds a 5.79 ERA. I’ll take my chances with Ark.

 

The Rebels should take one game this series, but I highly doubt it is today.

 

 

Pick: Arkansas ML -115

 

#4 Vanderbilt Commodores (-190) @ Missouri Tigers (+155) | Over/Under NA 

 

Speaking of Vandy, there’s no team that has been better than them in the SEC than LSU. The ‘Dores are off to a scorching SEC-Best 9-0 start to their 2023 campaign, and 24-5 record. Additionally, Vandy is on a 12-game win streak. This team has been playing lights out so far. 

 

For Vandy, their ace has been amazing this season. Through six starts, Carter Holton has pitched to a 2.59 ERA with 35 punchies in 31.1 innings. He also has three quality starts out of his last four tries. The Vandy Boys represent the sixth-best ERA in the nation right now with a 3.21 mark, which has been the anchor to their recent success. Furthermore, the offense has heated up like lightning rod, plating at least 25 runs in each of their last three weekend series. Facing Mizzou’s freshman starter, Logan Lunceford, could be just another day at the office since he is turning in his first weekend start of his career. 

 

The world has come crashing down on the Tigers since that weekend sweep of the Tennessee Volunteers a few weeks ago. Since then, they have been swept in consecutive series against South Carolina and Kentucky, being outscored a total of 47-16. Aside from one of those six games, they have not plated more than five runs in any other contest. While Lunceford has been strong on paper, he has not seen a team of this caliber, ever. The kid does have some strikeout stuff with a 36 K total in only 22.1 IP. There is some strikeout proneness in this Vandy lineup (197 K’s in 1,002 At-bats). That would be the key for Mizzou. Short of that, this could be a tall task indeed. 

 

Vandy has a good chance to sweep another series this weekend. However, if they were to lose one, I would probably say it’s game three on Saturday with Mizzou’s best starter, Chandler Murphy, on the mound. I typically don’t like laying -190 for a ML pick, but this is one of my best plays on the Thursday slate. Vandy is also a good leg in a parlay.

 

Pick: Vandy ML -190