MLB Betting Tips: Dodgers and Padres to slug it out

By Saturday morning we will know who will take on the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series, but which of the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres will progress?

Friday night’s all-or-nothing Dodger Stadium clash promises to be extraordinary (live on TNT Sports 2 from 01:00 BST Saturday), and here are my MLB Betting Tips.

Today’s MLB Odds

NL Division Series Game 5: San Diego Padres @ Los Angeles Dodgers Odds (01:08 BST Saturday)

The odds here are captivating in themselves. With each team having won one and lost one both home and away, there’s not much of a tell in what we have seen so far.

It is the Dodgers, as the number-one ranked team in the NL, who have the slight favouritism with Betfred. They are 8/11, with the Padres 11/10. You can get the exact same odds for the win in seven innings, and also for the five-inning market.

First 5 innings: Padres and under 4.5 runs @ 18/5

This tip is all about the starting pitching match-up. Yu Darvish goes to the hill for the Padres, with his sensational outing in Game 2 (7.0 IP, 3H, 1ER, 2BB, 3K) fresh in the mind.

Opposing him is Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who thrilled many in his first season in MLB but pitched just 16 innings after mid-June due to tricep tightness and then got knocked around in Game 1 against the Padres (3.0IP, 5H, 5ER, 2BB, 1K).

That could well be negated to an extent if Dave Roberts decides that the Japanese will be nothing more than the opener in a bullpen game, but I can’t help but thinking that the Padres get the edge in the opening innings behind the dangerous Darvish.

The under/over half of this bet is a judgement call based on the belief that the slightest sign of trouble for Yamamoto sends Roberts to the ‘pen for some stability.

At 18/5, it’s an implied probability of 21.7% which I consider to be on the generous side.

Both Teams to Score 3 or More @ 23/20

When all is said and done in this one, I expect a fair few runs on the board. It might look like an oxymoron putting this one together with my five-inning tip, but there promises to be late damage considering the batting line-ups on show.

Darvish’s postseason career record (5-6, 3.88 ERA) shows there’s a measure of consistency but also a history of not quite keeping it all together long enough to go deep.

His 65 innings pitched in 12 starts averages out at a little over five innings per outing, and I don’t see him going much deeper than that in an elimination game.

Just look at some of the hitting prowess on display here too… There’s Freddie Freeman, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Fernando Tatis, David Peralta, Manny Machado and Jurickson Profar. And that’s just a cross-section of the line-ups.

So it may well start cagey, but I’m expecting this one to explode in the later innings to bring in the 23/20 shout. The odds imply a 46.5% probability, which I’m happy to take on.

You can read all our latest MLB Betting Tips at our dedicated Betfred Insights content hub.