Yankees vs. Orioles prediction and odds for Friday, April 7 (Take Yanks at discount)

The Yankees and Orioles get the weekend series started after a Thursday rainout.

Baltimore is looking to take a step forward this year, and this would be an early season statement for the young ball club, but the team is running into the reigning AL East champion Yankees, who will hope to get a better outing from Clarke Schmidt, despite earlier rumors of right-hander Jhony Brito taking his spot after being recalled from the minors.

Let's check out the odds and assess the team's chances of grabbing a quality start and win on Friday night:

Yankees vs. Orioles odds, run line and total

Yankees vs. Orioles prediction and pick

Kremer only pitched three innings in his first start last week, allowing five earned runs including a pair of home runs. That's going to be an issue against the powerful lineup of the Yankees that have Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton sitting in the middle of it. Overall, New York is eighth in slugging percentage.

Interestingly enough, the Orioles are just ahead of them in seventh in that metric, proving to be a rock solid hitting club thus far. However, I'm going to buy low on the Yanks to have more success than Kremer on Friday afternoon.

The real difference comes with the Yankees bullpen, which was third in the bigs last season and should outpace the Orioles pen that was closer to league average last season.

Overall, I'm going to take the Yankees as small road favorites. They are the more complete team and they'll show it on Friday.

PICK: Yankees ML -130

Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.