If you’ve bet $100 against the Houston Astros in each of Gerrit Cole’s last 15 starts, you have lost $1,500. He will be on the hill for the Astros in Game 3 in The Bronx against the New York Yankees.
Cole will be opposed by Luis Severino, who has made just four total starts between the regular and postseason, but appears to be on his game. In 16 innings, he has surrendered just two runs, looking much healthier than when he posted a 5-6 record with a 5.57 ERA after the All-Star break in 2018.
Severino is backed up by a bullpen that has a 1.88 ERA this postseason and a lineup that has scored 32 runs in five games. With the likes of Giancarlo Stanton and Edwin Encarnacion having been injured much of the season, this is the first time the Yankees have truly had a consistent lineup.
All of that does no good with Cole going, though, as he has given up more than two earned runs just twice since the beginning of June. He reached 300 strikeouts this season in the second-fewest innings in baseball history, with only Randy Johnson beating him, and has won five games since the beginning of September in which the Astros give him four runs of support or fewer.
This game has all the makings of a good pitchers’ duel in which Cole has the upper hand. But if you don’t want to lay the big money-line price of the Astros, take the Under on the total, with Cole’s dominance paired with the way Severino and the Yankees’ bullpen are performing.
The Play: Yankees-Astros Game 3, Under 7¹/₂ runs.



