Minnesota Twins vs. Kansas City Royals – 8/15/20 MLB Game 1 Pick, Odds, and Prediction

The Kansas City Royals and the Minnesota Twins meet in an AL Central division matchup from Target Field on Friday.

The Kansas City Royals will try to build off of a 5-4 win over Cincinnati in their last game. Salvador Perez led the Royals with three RBIs, going 3 for 5 with a solo home run and a double while Whit Merrifield had a double and an RBI and Ryan O’Hearn added an RBI as well in the victory for KC. Ryan McBrook added a base hit as well to cap off Kansas City’s offense as the Royals had just five hits as a team in the winning effort. Brad Keller got the win to improve to 2-0 on the year after thiteming six shutout innings, giving up just two hits while striking out three on the way to the win. Trevor Rosenthal closed out the 9th for his 4th save of the season. Jakob Junis will start this one and is 0-0 with a 4.00 ERA and 4 strikeouts this season. In his career, Junis is 0-1 with a 4.23 ERA and 42 strikeouts against Minnesota.

The Minnesota Twins will try to build off of a 12-2 win over Milwaukee in their last game. Byron Buxton, Marwin Gonzalez and Nelson Cruz each had a pair of RBIs with Buxton belting a pair of solo home runs while Gonzalez went 2 for 4 with a double. Miguel Sano had a solo home run as well while Jake Cave had a double and an RBI. Luis Arraez, Eddie Rosario and Jorge Polanco each had an RBI as well while Mitch Garver went 3 for 6 at the dish to finish off Minnesota’s offense as a team in the win. Kenta Maeda got the win to improve to 3-0 after allowing two runs on five hits while striking out five over 6.2 innings of work. Jake Odorizzi will start this one and is 0-0 with a 6.00 ERA and 2 strikeotus this season. In his career, Odorizzi is  3-5 with a 4.94 ERA and 55 strikeouts against Kansas City.

Kansas City is 5-1 in their last 6 games overall and 47-98 in their last 145 road games while the under is 10-1 in their last 11 Friday games. Minnesota is 5-0 in their last 5 home games and 5-2 in their last 7 games following a win while the under is 6-0 in their last 6 series-opening games. Kansas City is 4-0 in the last 4 meetings between these two teams and the under is 5-1 in the last 6 meetings.

These two teams just met last weekend, so there’s definitely a sense of familiarity between the two sides and the respective starting pitcher. With that said, I think Odorizzi is probably going to go deeper in his second start and Junis was serviceable in his start against the Twins as well. I expect a lower scoring game so I’ll take the under as my free pick for this game but my stronger play is on the side and I have that available as a premium pick that you can find here.