Major League Baseball

2023 MLB odds: How to bet Rangers-Diamondbacks Game 5; pick, prediction

Updated Nov. 1, 2023 12:28 p.m. ET

By Will Hill
FOX Sports MLB Betting Analyst

The trophy will be in the building for Game 5 of the World Series as the Rangers look to win their first championship in franchise history.

No Adolis Garcia, no problem: Rangers one win away from first World Series title

It's familiar territory, as they’ve been one win away before.

In 2011, the Rangers led the Cardinals 3-2 in the series and were not only a win away, but multiple times, they were just a strike away from closing it out.

They ultimately lost an epic but heartbreaking Game 6 and lost again in Game 7. Twelve years later, they are back in a position to win it all, needing just one victory with three chances to get it.

Game 5 will be a rematch of Game 1’s starting pitchers. Nate Eovaldi goes for the Rangers, and the Diamondbacks will counter with likely Cy Young runner-up Zac Gallen.

Oddsmakers have this game as a coin flip, as both teams are -110 to win, and the Over/Under for total runs scored is 8.5. Game 1 between these two pitchers was a classic, with the Rangers hitting a 2-run ninth-inning homer to tie it and then winning the game 6-5 with a solo homer in extra innings.

The Rangers are now an astounding 10-0 on the road this postseason, an incredible streak that the Diamondbacks will need to snap to stay alive and force a Game 6.

In what could be the final game of the baseball season, let’s try to find a winner.

Can Eovaldi go over 4.5 Ks?

I’m surprised the number is this low. Granted Eovaldi was not sharp in Game 1, but he still racked up eight strikeouts and is averaging over seven strikeouts per start in the postseason.

With a 3-1 lead, I don’t sense Rangers manager Bruce Bochy will be in a hurry to get Eovaldi out of the game early.

Bochy is a throwback, an old-school manager who is more apt to leave his starters in to work through jams, like in the fifth inning of Game 2 in the ALCS, when Eovaldi escaped a bases-loaded, nobody-out situation against the Astros.

Eovaldi has 36 strikeouts in roughly 30 innings this postseason and has gone over this 4.5 in four of his five October starts. I expect the veteran to work into the sixth inning as long as he’s pitching reasonably well, and if he does so, he should go over this strikeout total of 4.5.

PICK: Nate Eovaldi Over 4.5 strikeouts (-110, bet $10 to win $19.09)

Will Hill, a contributor on the Bear's Bets Podcast, has been betting on sports for over a decade. He is a betting analyst who has been a host on VSiN, as well as the Goldboys Network.