Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Indians Prediction and Pick
Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Indians Prediction and Pick
When: Wednesday, September 30, 2021 – 8:10 pm EST
Where: Kauffman Stadium
Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Indians Probable Pitchers:
- Indians: Zach Plesac (10-6, 4.54 ERA)
- Royals: Daniel Lynch (4-6, 5.40 ERA)
Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Indians Prediction
The Royals and Indians won’t be making the playoffs this season. But we have less than a week to go in the regular season and can still profit off these bad teams.
The Royals will pitch Daniel Lynch for the second straight time against the Cleveland Indians and the third time this season. In his first two starts, Lynch has a 5.91 ERA while allowing seven runs on eight hits with seven walks and one home run in 10.2 innings.
There’s reason to believe the Indians can do more damage against Lynch tonight.
Lynch has a 6.62 xFIP in the last 30 days with just 16.7 percent strikeouts and nine percent walks in the previous 30 days. In addition, he’s inducing just 27.3 percent ground balls and giving up 21.8 percent line drives along with 43.6 percent hard contact.
The left-hander doesn’t really face righties and has to deal with righties most times out. In his last 69 plate appearances against righties, Lynch has allowed a .397 wOBA and ISO of .305. He’s walking over 10 percent of righties and getting just 22.9 percent ground balls.
The Indians lineup has a .195 ISO against lefties in the last 30 days, along with a .324 wOBA. They’re not hitting that many line drives but have been able to limit ground balls against lefties.
Cleveland walks 7.1 percent of the time and strikes out 24.4 percent of the time. The Indians haven’t been all that consistent against lefties this season but have so much power in the lineup with elevated ISO numbers across the board.
The guys with elevated ISO numbers on the Indians against lefties include Jose Ramirez, Franmil Reyes, Yu Chang, Owen Miller, Austin Hedges, and Oscar Mercado. These guys aren’t patient at the plate and will swing the bat. However, when they connect, you can be sure it’ll be an extra-base hit.
At times, the Indians will bat a couple of lefties against other lefties. Still, currently, the Indians can put together a lineup of just right-handed bats against Lynch.
I’m confident the Indians will do the “smart” thing, and only bat righties against Lynch, like every other team have done, for the most part.
With a heavily right-handed lineup, let’s take the Indians to score three or more runs in the first five innings. This is a plus money bet, fading Daniel Lynch, who just hasn’t figured it out at the big league level just yet.
The only reason why the Indians struggle at the plate sometimes is due to their high strikeout rate. Lynch is not a strikeout threat on the mound and actually walks a high amount of batters instead. If the Indians remain patient, they might have some guys on base for the meat of the order to hit some big extra-base hits.
Kansas City Royals vs. Cleveland Indians Pick
- Indians Over 2.5 F5 TT (+105) at DraftKings
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Article Author
Jason grew up an avid sports fan. His passion for sports writing grew in high school and he developed a blog that was strictly for New York Sports. From his work, you will quickly realize that he loves looking at games from an analytical and numbers perspective and hopes to provide you with that same perspective in his articles.