Keagan Smith takes you through his preview, prediction, and pick for Monday’s matchup between the White Sox and Royals.
The Kansas City Royals (67-64) are surging while the Chicago White Sox (47-83) have showed surprising signs of life over the last month. Tonight, these two AL Central foes battle in the Windy City’s South Side as the visitors keep pushing for a Wild Card berth, but the home team certainly wants to play spoiler as they work to evaluate their talent over the season’s home stretch.
Here’s a White Sox vs. Royals prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook as this three-game series gets started on Monday.
White Sox vs. Royals prediction, preview
The White Sox saw their season effectively end a couple of months ago and expectations were never high to begin with. However, this team has actually demonstrated some shocking upside at the plate since the All-Star Game. In 97 contests before that point, Chicago ranked third-worst in scoring with 332 runs with baseball’s lowest cumulative OPS of .638. They entirely flipped the script after the break with 180 runs in 33 games, fourth-most, while ranking sixth in team OPS at .778. They’ve hit for a .269 average since then, third-best in baseball, and their 53 home runs are also tied for third-most. While just 15-18 even with a competent offense, the White Sox have something to build on here and are capable of competing as long as they produce some runs to make up for a poor pitching staff.
The Royals fought tooth and nail to counteract their own poor offense before the break. Their pitching staff was able to secure some wins despite the bats ranking 29th in scoring with 328 runs, even worse than Chicago. However, they’ve experienced a similar revival at the plate since the ASG. Kansas City ranks sixth in scoring with 178 runs, fifth in OPS at .784, and eighth in batting average at .254. They’re also tied for the third-most homers with 53 over that span as the bats finally woke up. With a 20-14 record since the break, the Royals suddenly find themselves just three games shy of an AL Wild Card spot as they chase the Seattle Mariners in the postseason race.
White Sox vs. Royals pick, best bet
The Royals are road favorites with -134 odds on the Moneyline via DraftKings Sportsbook. The White Sox enter as +110 underdogs with a run total of 8.5.
Chicago starts right-hander Shane Smith (4.12 ERA, 1.29 WHIP, 102 SO), a rookie with decent fastball velocity and a nice mix of breaking and off-speed balls. Kansas City’s starter, lefty Noah Cameron (2.53 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 83 SO) has excelled in his own rookie season, retiring plenty of batters by forcing soft contact to make up for a lack of punchouts.
This looks like a fun battle between underrated offenses which are both firing at the moment. However, the Royals do see a significant advantage on the mound thanks to Cameron, and he can likely limit the White Sox lineup’s power-hitting abilities. It’s worth noting Chicago does hit .243 with a .705 OPS against southpaws compared to a .230 average and .665 OPS vs. righties, but still — Kansas City’s rookie has put forth one heck of a debut campaign. Their bullpen also sees a slight advantage over that of the White Sox, though not a significant one. Yes, Chicago just won their last two games, but they don’t bring the same momentum into this contest as the Royals do either.
All things considered, this shapes up as a Kansas City win in my book.
Best bet: KC Royals ML (-134)
Click the odds on this bet to tail!
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source dknetwork.draftkings.com ’
