MLB Picks

Kansas City Royals vs. Pittsburgh Pirates – 9/11/20 MLB Pick, Odds, and Prediction


2020-09-11 20:05:00 EDT

The Pittsburgh Pirates and the Kansas City Royals meet in MLB action from Kauffman Stadium on Friday night.

The Pittsburgh Pirates come into this game looking to rebound from an 8-1 beatdown loss at the hands of the White Sox last time out. Gregory Polanco had the lone RBI for Pittsburgh while Colin Moran had a double and Adam Frazier, JT Riddle and Josh Bell all had base hits as the Pirates managed to crank out just four hits as a team in the losing effort. JT Brubaker allowed seven runs on seven hits with five strikeouts over 5.1 innings of work, taking the loss to fall to 1-1 this season. Steven Brault will start here and is 0-2 with a 4.37 ERA and 20 strikeouts this season. This will be Brault’s first career start against Kansas City.

The Kansas City Royals will look to build on an 11-1 win over the Cleveland Indians on Thursday. Maikel Franco led the charge, going 3 for 5 with a home run, a double and five RBIs while Adalberto Mondesi had a home run and three RBIs. Edward Olivares had a solo home run while Hunter Dozier and Whit Merrifield each had an RBI to finish off the scoring for the Royals in the win with Merrifield going 3 for 5 at the dish with a double as well. Cam Gallagher went 2 for 3 and Nicky Lopez added a base hit as well in the victory. Brady Singer got the win to improve to 2-4 on the year after giving up just one hit in eight shutout innings, striking out eight on the way to the win. Kris Bubic will start here and is 0-5 with a 4.89 ERA and 31 strikeouts this season. This will be Bubic’s first career start against Pittsburgh.

Pittsburgh is 18-38 in their last 56 games overall and 4-10 in their last 14 series-opening games while the under is 3-0-1 in their last 4 games as an underdog. Kansas City is 3-7 in their last 10 games overall and 20-48 in their last 68 games following a win while the under is 14-3 in their last 17 interleague home games against a left-handed starter. Pittsburgh is 7-2 in the last 9 meetings between these two teams.

I get why the total would be going down as you have two teams that are probably going to be watching the playoffs on tv in a couple of weeks and who have had a history of troubles in the scoring department at times this season. I think we see some more of that here as Brault’s been alright as a starter and I think that Bubic will want to put a good foot forward here, so I’ll side with the under as my free play 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.

Chris Ruffolo's Free Pick: Under 9

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Chris Ruffolo

Chris joined the Sports Chat Place team in August 2016 and has a proven system that combines multiple analytical and situational statistics and trends to give out thousands of winning picks over the last three years with winning records across all of the top leagues, Follow Chris Ruffolo on Twitter @ruffthepickdawg

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