Cleveland Guardians (57-36) at Tampa Bay Rays (47-47)
Game Info: Saturday, July 13th, 2024 at 4:10 p.m. EST (Tropicana Field)
Betting Odds: Guardians ML (-115) - Over/Under (7.5)
Pick: Guardians ML (-115)
The Cleveland Guardians and the Tampa Bay Rays will play the second game of a three game weekend series here on Saturday night at Tropicana Field. With only two games remaining before the All-Star break, both teams will be looking to gain as much momentum as possible, with an impressive performance throughout this game and the remainder of the series on Sunday. Both Cleveland and Tampa Bay come into this game with aspirations of making the postseason this year and to do that they will need to put together a solid second-half of the season. They will have an opportunity to get off to a good start with a victory here in this one on Saturday afternoon. In the opening game of the series yesterday Tampa Bay picked up the victory over Cleveland.
Cleveland has been playing tremendous baseball throughout the first half of the season, but they do come into the second game of this series riding a little bit of a slump. They have now lost three games in a row, which has been a very rare thing for them this season, but they still maintain a respectable lead on top of the American League Central division. They will look to get back into the win column with their first victory of this series here on Saturday afternoon against Tampa Bay as they look to even this one up before heading into Sunday’s finale before the All-Star break.
Gavin Williams will make his third start of the regular season here on Saturday afternoon and he had a decent bounce back performance in his previous appearance. That is something he will look to tap into for the second consecutive game as he looks to put Cleveland back on track heading into the final game before the All-Star break. This feels like a must win game for a Cleveland team that has been slumping over the last week against the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay. If they want to maintain their lead over the division and keep some distance between themselves and Minnesota, they will have to have a strong finish to the month of July.
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Tampa Bay is a team that came into the season with aspirations of being a legitimate postseason contender but so far they have been hanging around the .500 mark throughout the year. They come into the middle game of this series at home with a record of 47-47 through their first 94 games of the season. They are coming off of the opening game of this series where they shut out a red hot Cleveland offense, and they look to replicate that performance here in game number two as well. Tampa Bay certainly has the pieces to be a competitive baseball team this season, but things have not went well for them both on and off the field when needed. That is something they will look to put behind them when the second half of the season starts next weekend.
Zack Littel gets the start for Tampa Bay in this game and he is having a rough season so he will need a quality performance to get back on track himself. He comes into this game with only three victories on his record with six losses and that is something he will need to change throughout the second half of the season if he wants to remain in the rotation. Tampa Bay comes into this game sitting in fourth place of the American League East division which practically takes them out of the division title race against teams like Baltimore and New York. So it seems very likely that they will need to settle for one of the three wildcard spots in the American League and for that to happen they will need to turn things around quickly.
Betting trends to consider in this matchup:
- Cleveland is 33-20 against teams at or below .500
- Tampa Bay is 21-24 against teams above .500
- Cleveland is 27-25 on the road
I look for this to be a much much better performance from Cleveland than we saw in the opening game of this series on Friday. As I look for Cleveland to bounce back and pick up a much-needed victory here in the second game of the series on Saturday. I look for Gavin Williams to put in an impressive performance on the mound here in this one to lead Cleveland to victory against Tampa Bay as well.
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