Cubs And Mets Team-Total Unders Plus Two Game Unders: A Four-Play Card

Four totals on Saturday, and every one of them is a bet on pitching and lineup weakness beating the board number. The flagship is a Dodgers-Mets under that stacks a true strikeout arm on top of a Mets lineup that just lost its best hitter. The two team totals isolate that same Mets weakness and a Cubs offense running into the best strikeout-to-walk arm in the sport. The fourth leans on the worst everyday bat in the American League. Six units across four unders.

Dodgers-Mets Under: Yamamoto, McLean And A Lineup Missing Soto

This is the flagship at two units, and it carries the best pitching matchup on the card. Los Angeles sends Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who is 10-6 with a 2.78 ERA and 113 strikeouts, into Citi Field against a Mets club that enters banged up in the one spot it could least afford. New York placed Juan Soto on the 10-day injured list with a strained left calf, pulling the best bat in the lineup out of a Saturday game against one of the National League's better starters.

New York counters with rookie right-hander Nolan McLean, who has been a legitimate find at 7-6 with a 3.34 ERA and 135 strikeouts, giving this game two pitchers who miss bats rather than a mismatch built on one dominant arm and one soft one. The market has the total split between 7.5 and 8 depending on the book, with early betting splits favoring the under near 53 percent. The Dodgers took the series opener 4-2 on Friday, and Los Angeles has been up and down since the All-Star break, five wins in its last seven, while the Mets have dropped six of nine and sit last in the NL East at 43-61. Two swing-and-miss arms and a Mets lineup down its best hitter is exactly the shape you want for a total under 7.5 at -125.

Cubs Team Total Under: Running Into Paul Skenes

Chicago is a good offense running into the best arm on the board. The Cubs sit 58-45, second in the NL Central and holding the top NL Wild Card spot, and they had scored 793 runs through the season's midpoint, a top-tier pace. None of that matters much on Saturday, because they draw Paul Skenes at PNC Park.

Skenes is 8-8 with a 3.57 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP, and the surface numbers understate him: his 11.03 strikeouts per nine ranks second in the majors and his WHIP is fifth-lowest among qualified starters. A pitcher missing bats at that rate caps even a strong lineup's ability to string together a big inning, and Chicago's own rotation is dealing with a long injured list of its own (Justin Steele, Cade Horton and Shelby Miller all out), which only adds to a night built around limiting Cubs runs rather than piling them up. At -111, Chicago staying at or under three runs against this arm is a clean 1.5-unit play.

Mets Team Total Under: The Soto Injury, Isolated

Same game, but this ticket isolates the Mets side specifically, and the injury is the whole thesis. Over their last 66 games (a 29-37 stretch), New York's offense has hit just .227 with a .652 OPS, one of the softer marks in the league even with Soto in the lineup. Now it loses him to a calf strain for at least the next 10 days, right as it faces a 2.78 ERA in Yamamoto.

Jorge Polanco is expected to pick up steady at-bats in Soto's place, but replacing that kind of middle-of-the-order production is not a like-for-like swap. A team that was already scuffling at the plate, without its best hitter, against one of the National League's better starters, is the textbook profile for a team total under. At -145, this is the shortest price on the card, but it is also the most straightforward: 1.5 units on New York staying under 3.5.

Mariners-Rangers Under: The Worst Bat In The Division

The smallest stake is arguably the cleanest matchup on paper once you look past the ERAs. Seattle sends Bryan Woo (7-6, 4.16 ERA, 1.09 WHIP over 110.1 innings) and Texas counters with Nathan Eovaldi (9-8, 4.21 ERA, 1.21 WHIP over 115.1 innings), neither of whom is dominant by the raw numbers. What makes this an under anyway is the Mariners lineup on the other side of it: Seattle has scored just 419 runs, 29th in the majors, and carries a .230 team batting average, 28th in the league.

Texas leads the AL West at 52-51, a game and a half up on Seattle, but the Rangers are a middle-of-the-road offense themselves, leaning on Jake Burger's 18 homers and Wyatt Langford's power rather than lineup-wide production. Add in the retractable roof at Globe Life Field, which takes wind and heat out of the equation, and a below-average bat on one side plus a moderate one on the other is enough to make a 7.5 total playable even with two four-ERA starters on the mound. Texas beat Seattle 5-4 on Friday, and the market has the under getting plus money in some shops despite the shaky pitching, a signal the book respects how little offense the Mariners bring. One unit at -115.

What Can Beat It

The Dodgers-Mets under needs both starters to hold form; Los Angeles has enough thump in its lineup that one mistake pitch to the middle of the order can push this total on its own, Soto or no Soto. The Cubs team total is the safest of the group on paper, but Chicago's lineup is deep enough that even a great Skenes start does not guarantee a shutdown, and one bad relief inning behind him could still get the Cubs to four. The Mets team total carries the same recent-form risk that any short-priced under does: Polanco or another bat could have a night, and 3.5 is not a huge number to clear. The Mariners-Rangers play is the one most exposed to a starter's off night, since neither Woo nor Eovaldi has been consistently sharp this year, and a bad four-inning outing from either can open the total up in a hurry.

None of these are locks, and the prices reflect that. The connective thread is roster and injury news working in the same direction as the pitching, not against it, which is the spot to lean on totals.

The Bottom Line

Six units on four unders, all built on the same idea: bet the side missing a bat or facing the tougher arm. The Dodgers-Mets under 7.5 at -125 is the flagship because it stacks two strikeout starters on a Mets lineup that just lost Juan Soto. The Cubs team total under 3.5 at -111 is a good offense running into the best strikeout-to-walk arm in the sport. The Mets team total under 3.5 at -145 isolates the Soto injury directly. And the Mariners-Rangers under 7.5 at -115 leans on the worst everyday bat in the AL West inside a dome that neutralizes the elements. Read the injuries and the arms, and the unders line up.

The full slate, including all four of these games, is on the MLB board, and the Dodgers-Mets matchup gets the long form on the Featured Game page. For verified betting records, visit the track record or the homepage.