Bryan Power

10* Oakland (9:40 ET): Well, hopefully the “third time's the charm” here as the Mariners have certainly made me look foolish in the first two games of this series. They’ve beaten the A’s by scores of 4-2 and 5-2 to pull even for second place in the American League West. Both clubs have 82-69 records and are three games out of the Wild Card. But, as stated here numerous times before, the Mariners being in playoff contention is nothing short of miraculous. They’ve been outscored by 57 runs this season, a differential that’s indicative of a team you’d expect to have 69 wins, not 82. No other team in MLB has exceeded their expected win total by more than six. Seattle is +13! They are the only AL team to have a winning record and a negative run differential. 

The A’s had won five straight games coming into this series and I expected them to keep rolling. They had revenge for a previous series sweep at the hands of the Mariners. With the results of the L2 days, they’ve now lost seven straight times to the M’s despite never giving up more than five runs in any of those contests. They need to get the offense going tonight and I predict they will as they face Seattle starter Chris Flexen, who has a somewhat misleading 19-9 TSR. Despite being 6-1 on the road, Flexen has a 4.32 ERA and 1.40 WHIP in those 13 games. 

The Mariners have the lowest team batting average in all of MLB (.225) plus they are 28th in OBP (.302), 26th in slugging (.384) and 27th in OPS. So that’s bottom five in the four key offensive categories. So there’s no reason that Cole Irvin, the A’s starter for tonight, shouldn’t pitch well here. Irvin did surrender four runs in his last start, but three were unearned. In his most recent home start, Irvin gave up just two runs in seven innings and had eight strikeouts, matching his 2nd highest total of 2021. 10* Oakland

10* Under Elche/Villarreal (4:00 ET): It’s pretty hard to fathom that Villarreal is still winless at this point of the La Liga season. But on the bright side, they also have yet to lose a match. The Yellow Submarine have drawn four straight times to open 2021/22, leaving them in 14th place and six points out of Champions League position. It’s a far cry from last year’s 7th place finish where I thought they were pretty much on par with the top four. 

Now Elche is a side that I thought was lucky to escape relegation last season. They had the lowest xPt total in all of La Liga - by a pretty wide margin - and ended up just two points clear of the drop zone, in 17th place. The gap between them and 13th place was larger than the gap between them and the foot of the table. Shockingly, they are currently two points ahead of Villarreal at the moment and 12th in the table, having taken six points from this season’s first five matches. They are unbeaten in their last three, having drawn both Sevilla and Levante with a 1-0 win over Getafe sandwiched in between. 

These are two of the lowest scoring sides in all of La Liga. Three of Villarreal’s four draws have been 0-0 with the only goals scored and conceded coming in a 2-2 final with Atletico Madrid when they gave up an own goal in stoppage time. With one game in hand compared to most of the league, the tendency is to say there’s no reason for LY’s Europa League winners to panic. But they also haven’t won since defeating Manchester United last May. It was a winless preseason. They will be without Gerard Moreno, their biggest attacking threat, on Wednesday and that’s a significant loss. As for Elche, there have been only six total goals scored in their five fixtures thus far and none have seen more than two goals scored. 10* Under Elche/Villarreal