White Sox vs Astros Picks and Predictions: Giolito Exposed by Houston's Hitting

Two American League giants engage in a three-game series tonight, as the Houston Astros take on the Chicago White Sox.

Though the Astros are just 5-5 over their last ten games, they’re still an impressive 39-24 and arrive at this three-game set off the strength of a series win over the divisional foe Rangers.

After a rough stretch of games, the White Sox have won six of their last ten, including a sweep of the Tigers. Chicago came into this season with high expectations, but it has fallen short so far, five games back in the AL Central with a 30-31 record. 

Read our MLB betting picks and predictions for Astros vs. White Sox to see which side we’ll be backing tonight.

White Sox vs Astros odds

This odds widget represents the best odds available for each betting market from regulated sportsbooks.

The Astros opened up as a commanding -190 favorite. Since then, the White Sox have seen some money, and the Astros have fallen to -178 in some places, with Chicago returning at +150. The total opened at 8 and has since fallen to 7.5.

Use the live odds widget above to track any future line movements right up until first pitch and be sure to check out the full MLB odds before placing your bets.

White Sox vs Astros predictions

• Prediction: Astros ML (-155)
• Prediction: Astros F5 TT Over 2.5 (+120)
• Best bet: Astros -1.5 (+135)

Picks made on 6/17/2022 at 12:00 p.m. ET.
Click on each pick to jump to the full analysis.

White Sox vs Astros game info

• Location: Minute Maid Park, Houston, TX
• Date: Friday, June 17, 2022
• First pitch: 8:10 p.m. ET
• TV: Apple TV+

White Sox vs Astros betting preview

Starting pitchers

Lucas Giolito (4-2, 3.88 ERA): Giolito is probably lucky to have some of the numbers he does. His barrel rate is one of the worst of any active pitcher, and his expected ERA is over a run higher than his actual ERA. When he faced some big bats, he had some problems. The Blue Jays are the best evidence, as they shelled him for six earned runs in just over four innings. 

Giolito has success when he can make teams chase and swing. His whiff rate and K rate are among the tops in the league. Giolito is a dominant fastball pitcher who uses his slider as a put-out pitch. 

Framber Valdez (6-3, 2.64 ERA): Valdez has excelled at getting soft contact on pitches this season. His ground-ball rate is a ridiculous 67%, down a bit from a season ago. His last start was his strongest season: a complete, seven-strikeout game against the Athletics where he surrendered just one earned run.

Weather

Be sure to monitor the gametime conditions with our MLB weather info.

Key injuries

White Sox: Jake Burger 3B (Out), Micheal Kopech SP (Out), Yasmani Grandal C (Out), Aaron Bummer RP (Out), Tim Anderson SS (Out), Eloy Jimenez LF (Out).
Astros: Jake Meyers CF (Out), Jeremy Pena SS (Out), Jake Odorizzi SP (Out), Lance McCullers SP (Out).
Find our latest MLB injury reports.

Betting trend to know

The White Sox are 3-14 in their last 17 meetings in Houston. Find more MLB betting trends for White Sox vs. Astros

White Sox vs Astros picks and predictions

Our side and total predictions are based upon our analysis of the line and total in this game. Our best bet is our favorite pick across all markets.

Moneyline analysis

My favorite play on the entire slate happens to be this game, and it’s backing the Astros to get the win. Houston is well-suited in this matchup from both a pitching and hitting standpoint. So, I am very confident in supporting them today. 

First, let’s look at the pitching advantage that the Astros have in this spot. 

Valdez has made a living throughout his career inducing groundballs. Some of the rates he’s put up yearly blow your mind. In the past three years that he’s had an average of 65.3% of hits go for ground balls, and at that same time, the league average is around 44%. 

A reasonably big issue for the White Sox in this matchup is that they hit many ground balls. Chicago is seventh in ground-ball rate, and it’s something that’s plagued it more recently with the absence of Tim Anderson. 

I’m having a hard time seeing them scoring much against Valdez when they feed directly into his strength, and that’s a problem against this Astros lineup. 

Houston doesn’t strike out much, and that’s something that Giolito relies on. The Astros hover right around eighth in chase rate and below the league average swing rate. Their overall contact numbers when they do swing are very solid. 

They profile very similar to the Toronto Blue Jays at the plate. They’ll take a decent amount of pitches and usually make hard contact when they swing. If we use that for the barometer here, Giolito is very much in trouble. 

His worst outing of the season came against Toronto, as the Jays got him hard for six earned runs through four innings, which could have been worse. The likes of Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, and Yordan Alvarez all profile very nicely here. That makes me think a similar story in Toronto could be on-tap. 

My projections seem to agree with my handicap, which is always good. They have the Houston Astros winning this matchup just over 68% of the time. That means the fair price of this one is closer to -210. So, even though we’re paying for some juice here, it feels like a bargain. 

Prediction: Astros moneyline (-155 at Caesars)

Over/Under analysis

I’m all about this pitching matchup for the Astros today and I’m going to target them again here. I’ve seen a lot of success playing first five team totals when I believe batters have a decisive advantage over a pitcher, and we’re going to do that here.

As previously mentioned, Houston already has a leg up on Giolito, given that it doesn’t strike out much. 

A few other pitchers they’ve faced this season fit the same bill of relying on strikeouts and they’ve fared well against most of those pitchers. 

I like them to continue that trend today, but the other thing that stands out here is Giolito’s issues with giving up hard contact. He’s in the bottom 15% of baseball in hard-hit rate, and again, that’s bad news when you’re facing this lineup. They’ve recently started to hit pitchers with those issues hard. Over the weekend, they met Taylor Hearn of the Rangers and lit him with a 52% hard-hit rate and three earned runs. Hearn has a better hard-hit rate than Giolito, so you can draw your conclusions on what that means. 

The Astros scored over three runs in the first five innings in four of their last six games. Routinely for them, the issues have been about finishing games rather than starting them. So, getting this at +120 feels like a misprice. My projections agree when they see this happening about 52% of the time. 

We’ll ride the recent wave that Houston has been on and see no reason not to. We have the pitching advantage, the batters, and the trends all working in our favor. 

Prediction: Astros first-five innings team total Over 2.5 (+120 at DraftKings)

Best bet

We’re not going to make this overly complicated. 

Some players have good matchups, such as Jose Altuve, Yordan Alverez, and others. I may sprinkle Jose Altuve to hit a home run because of the attractive price. Most of his long-balls have come against fly-ball pitchers, which he gets today. 

The best bet today is, by far, from the Astros, so we’re riding with that. However, we’re going to make it a bit interesting. 

Over 70% of Houston’s games this season have come by more than one run. Over its last ten games, only one game has been decided by one run or less. 

So, we have Houston with just over a 68% probability of winning here. If we use the Astros’ data on the season for winning games by over one run, we come up with a correlated likelihood of them winning today by more than one run at around 49%. That’s over a 7% edge on the current FanDuel price. I’ll happily take that plus money. 

Pick: Astros -1.5 (+135 at FanDuel)

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