Free Picks: Chicago White Sox vs Seattle Mariners

The Chicago White Sox (44-30) will host the Seattle Mariners (39-37) to continue their three-game series on Saturday, as the White Sox hope to keep climbing out of a recent five-game losing skid. They’ve been average at best on the road this season (17-18), while rocking the best home record in the American League (27-12). For its part, Seattle is six games under .500 on the road, having lost six of their past 10 away from T-Mobile Park.

With foul-mouthed antics and some confusing fastball variants, Lance Lynn wriggled his way into the AL Cy Young conversation over the course of the season’s first two-plus months. He’s still in that conversation, with a 7-3 record and a 2.14 ERA, but his past two starts have looked nothing like the form expected from a league’s top pitcher.

In his start on Saturday, with the White Sox as -217 money line favorites (10Bet) among the day’s MLB picks, Lynn has a chance to regain some of his mojo. His counterpart, Logan Gilbert, and the Mariners lag as +170 underdogs on the money line (10Bet).

We can probably cut Lynn some slack for taking a couple of losses in his past two starts, with nine earned runs allowed over 10 innings in that span. He had to go up against two of baseball’s best teams in the Rays (AL East leaders, reigning AL champions) and Astros (AL West leaders). The Astros were a particularly tall task, given that they own a league-best .953 OPS over the past 15 days — no other team is within 100 points of that.

Prior to those two outings, Lynn had feasted on far less imposing competition: He allowed just four earned runs over 31 innings (1.16 ERA) in five starts against the Blue Jays, Tigers, Orioles, Cardinals and Twins. He hasn’t faced the Mariners since 2019, but that season he saw them four times and went 2-1 with a 2.42 ERA, which is encouraging.

If we can defend the Mariners for a second, though, it’s worth noting they’ve been on a great run recently. Entering Friday, they’d won eight of 10, including a four-game sweep of the Rays. Three of those wins over the Rays came in walk-off fashion, mind you, but still. Seattle is getting some good bounces these days.

We just don’t’ reckon that that’ll continue against Lynn and the White Sox. Lynn has been too dominant this year to allow his recent funk to extend to a third consecutive game. And even with Yermin Mercedes mired in a nasty month-long slump, the White Sox have enough pop elsewhere (might I interest you in reigning AL MVP Jose Abreu?) to make the Mariners pay.

We’ll take the White Sox on the money line in this BetPicks prediction, banking on a bounce back from Lance Lynn to carry Chicago in a game that might not feature a ton of scoring.

• Chicago is 6-4 on the money line in its past 10
• The OVER has cashed in five of the White Sox’s past seven games
• Seattle is 8-2 on the money line in its past 10
• The UNDER has cashed in four of the Mariners’ past five games