Daily Sports Betting Preview 7/29/2020: Serie A, MLB, The 5 Tournament

• Two interesting Serie A matches should be compelling for soccer bettors.
• The Washington Nationals have -164 odds against the underdog Toronto Blue Jays.
• Sacramento are -2 on the spread against Toronto in the finals of The 5 Tournament.

LAS VEGAS - Welcome to this midweek edition of the Daily Sports Betting Preview!

Today’s Preview starts out with a look at Serie A, as the 37th match week continues today.

Then, the Preview takes a look at some MLB action, as the season continues despite COVID concerns.

Finally, the Preview examines The 5 Tournament. With NBA basketball returning, tournaments like The 5 can hold bettors over for a couple of days.

There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Serie A Betting

Serie A has been won by Juventus, but that doesn’t mean the league has concluded all play for the season.

In fact, bettors will have their pick of eight different matches to wager on today, featuring many good teams.

Two are worth highlighting, so let’s start out with the match involving the champions of Italy, Juventus.

In this match, the champions face off against Cagliari, and are, naturally, significantly favored. Cagliari are the 14th ranked team in Serie A, and are in no danger of relegation.

Juventus have -185 odds to win the match, despite having very little to play for, while Cagliari has +500 odds to win the match, and a draw is +335.

Lazio is currently fourth place in the league, with 75 points, although they have played one full match less than third place Atalanta and second-place Inter Milan.

Brescia, on the other hand, is functionally done for the season, and not in a good way. They have 24 points in the league, second worst.

Brescia are locked into relegation, a full 12 points behind 17th place Genoa.

In that manner, the odds on this match are much more a reflection on Brescia than they are on Lazio.

Basically, while Lazio is a very talented team, these odds are more about how bad Brescia is than how good Lazio is.

There’s a lot to bet on for both of these games, and six more good ones to wager on in Serie A as well, so soccer bettors should keep an eye on that league today.

MLB Betting

Unfortunately, the MLB has managed to create a poor situation right off the bat in their reopening week.

The Miami Marlins have had nearly half the team confirmed positive for COVID-19, and this has caused their games to be put on hold.

Similarly, the team they faced off against for the first three games, the Philadelphia Phillies, have also had games paused for the time being.

The MLB’s handling of the pandemic has been suspect at best, with no bubble style restrictions and immediate problems becoming evident.

However, the rest of the teams in the league have not had such serious outbreaks, and as such, play continues for now.

MLB bettors would be wise to note that this is a day when some of the pitching rotations in the league start cycling around to the best pitchers again.

For example, Max Scherzer takes the mound for the Washington Nationals and Madison Bumgarner starts for the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Nationals are an interesting case - they were set to play against Miami this weekend and voted as a team against doing this.

They are currently waiting on a response to this decision from the league, which apparently either had no procedures in place or could not compel the Nationals to follow them.

Regardless, today they face off against the Toronto Blue Jays, behind the arm of Max Scherzer.

The Nationals are serious favorites in this game, and one has to imagine that a significant portion of that is due to Scherzer’s arm.

Scherzer is a true ace, one of the best pitchers in baseball, and that kind of pitcher can seriously impact the odds for a game.

In fact, the five inning line reflects this, in an interesting way.

Five inning lines are meant to serve as an approximation for starting pitcher matchups, with pitchers tending to rotate out around the fifth inning.

On this five inning line, the Nationals are only slightly more favored than over nine innings, but the Blue Jays have much shorter odds.

This almost seems like the sportsbooks hedging against paying out too much, but it could also be a reflection on Nate Pearson, who is a top prospect for the Blue Jays, getting his first start as a pitcher today.

Pearson is ranked as the eighth-best prospect in MLB, and he has his work cut out for him with the Nationals lineup, as well as an immense pitcher’s duel in front of him in the form of Scherzer.

That said, his team does have better odds in the five inning line than over the full nine, so that speaks to his talent.

The 5 Tournament Betting

The 5 Tournament continues today, with a championship matchup between Toronto and Sacramento, and it looks to be a compelling one.

Today’s matchup is for all the glory - the championship game of the tournament, between Sacramento and Toronto.

Sacramento was a top team during the round-robin play stage, while Toronto earned their place here by defeating Texas, who had the best record in the tournament.

On this spread, both teams have -115 odds, meaning they are relatively even once you handicap Toronto at +2.

Sacramento are favored in the matchup, as they should be - they were regarded as the second-best team going into the elimination rounds.

Even though Toronto knocked off Texas, the best team in the tournament, that could very well simply be due to having a good game.

Many basketball bettors are familiar with how tournaments like this tend to work - the best team doesn’t always win.

That said, if Toronto can knock off both Texas and Sacramento in straight games, nobody could say they didn’t earn it.

The game airs at 8:00 p.m. EST and is available on PPV.

Happy Betting!