Tigers vs Rangers Props Picks & Best Bets for Sunday Night Baseball

Backing Tarik Skubal to bounce back is usually a profitable endeavor.

This is his second straight national TV start. The last was rough: the Mariners scored four runs in five innings. That’s rare for Skubal — only his third time this year allowing 4+ runs. After his previous rough start, he struck out 13 Twins. I’m focusing on that.

The Texas Rangers are a great matchup for Skubal to rack up strikeouts. Texas is already a high-strikeout team overall, and its numbers have recently increased, averaging 9.3 strikeouts over their last three games. 

Additionally, Skubal’s changeup — producing nearly a 50% whiff rate — should be even more potent, given that seven Rangers hitters have above-average strikeout rates against off-speed pitches.

Jacob Latz will jump into today in what is most likely a spot start while Nathan Eovaldi recovers from a minor back injury. This will be the left-hander’s third start of the season. The previous two have seen modest strikeout numbers from him, but the metrics support more.

This brings us to Latz’s value. From my perspective, he’s undervalued in this spot.

He’ll enter this game with a strikeout rate in the Top 40 percent of the majors but a whiff rate in the Top 10 percent. That screams that, from a purely strikeout perspective, he’s been a bit unlucky and that number should be on the rise. 

This is a decent place for that to start. The Detroit Tigers see an increase in their whiff and strikeout numbers when facing southpaws of around 5%. I don’t think that’s been accounted for enough in this number, and I’d play it down to my model-projected price of +115.

Gleyber Torres is building on a solid season a year ago with an increase in virtually every hitting metric in 2025 so far. Tonight, the matchup is a favorable one against such a heavy fastball-throwing pitcher.

As mentioned, Latz is a hugely reliant strikeout pitcher. The metrics surrounding him fit that to a T as well. When he isn’t getting strikeouts, he looks pretty vulnerable with a barrel and hard-hit rate sitting well below the major league average. The good thing for Torres is that he doesn’t strike out much. 

Torres has the lowest chase rate, the lowest whiff rate, and the lowest strikeout rate amongst Tigers players. That makes him a strong candidate to have success tonight. That holds even more true when you consider the pitching arsenal he’ll see. 

Latz throws the heater almost 60% of the time. Torres is one of the best fastball hitters on the Tigers roster, inside the Top 3 of hard-hit, batting average, and slugging percentage against the fastball.