Courtesy of OddsShark (@OddsShark)
The Los Angeles Dodgers (45-21) have the biggest divisional lead in baseball heading into the start of their interleague series against the Los Angeles Angels (3¬1-35) on Monday, and one of the key players fueling their success will take the mound in the series opener.
The Dodgers and Hyun-Jin Ryu (9-1, 1.35 ERA) are listed as consensus -170 road favorites (bet $170 to win $100) at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com for Monday night as he goes for his seventh consecutive victory for the National League West leaders, who are up 11 games on both the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks in the division.
Dodgers at Angels | OddsShark Matchup Report
Ryu has been outstanding during his current personal six-game winning streak, failing to allow a single run in five of the outings as his ERA has dropped from 2.55. In his last two starts, the 32-year-old South Korean has pitched 14.2 scoreless innings, scattering seven hits with only one walk and nine strikeouts combined in a pair of shutouts. In fact, the Dodgers have outscored opponents by a dominant 41-5 margin in those six games too, totaling six runs or more five times and blanking them four times as well.
Meanwhile, the Angels are simply hoping to enjoy some more recent success in this rivalry with five wins in the past nine meetings in the series, according to the OddsShark MLB Database. That might not seem overly impressive, but they have won two of the last four as underdogs, with eight of the previous 10 meetings also finishing UNDER the total.
The bigger issue for the Angels going into this series is their play over the past week, going 2-5 in seven games after losing two of three to the Seattle Mariners.
The Angels will send 23-year-old righty Griffin Canning (2-2, 3.52 ERA) to the hill as decent home dogs again in this spot, although he has pitched well lately like Ryu. Canning surrendered four runs and seven hits to the Oakland Athletics last time out on Tuesday in a 4-2 loss, but he had given up a total of two runs and nine hits in his previous three starts combined with three walks and nine strikeouts, and two of them resulted in wins.
This short two-game series between Los Angeles teams wraps up on Tuesday night, with the Dodgers’ Kenta Maeda (7-2, 3.48 ERA) scheduled to face the Angels’ Felix Pena (3-1, 4.53 ERA). Maeda went five innings against the Diamondbacks last time out, allowing one run.
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