Baltimore Orioles at Los Angeles Dodgers Picks and Prediction for Sunday, June 21, 2026
Use Code WWWC The rubber match of this three-game interleague set closes out the weekend at Uniqlo Field at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles with a 10:10 PM ET first pitch, as the Baltimore Orioles (35-42) look to steal the series finale against the MLB-best Los Angeles Dodgers (49-27). Los Angeles opened the set with a 6-5 win Friday and will send Emmet Sheehan to the bump Sunday as they chase a fifth consecutive victory. The gulf between these two clubs heading into Sunday is stark, the Dodgers carry a league-best +144 run differential to the Orioles' -36, lead the NL West by nine games, and are two games clear of the second-best team in baseball, yet Baltimore has shown they are capable of stealing a game from anyone, including a sweep of Los Angeles in September just a season ago. Read on to find out who takes the series in our Orioles vs. Dodgers prediction. Don't go down on strikes! Get our top MLB Predictions and increase your bankroll!
This preview was written before Saturday night's game result was known.
Orioles Send Their Best: Young Has Been the Story of Their Season
The Baltimore Orioles are 9-1 in Brandon Young's 10 starts this season, and 23-36 in every other game, a split so stark it tells the entire story of an Orioles season that has lurched between competence and chaos depending entirely on which pitcher takes the mound. Young (5-2, 3.18 ERA) has been the organization's most pleasant surprise after posting a 6.24 ERA across 12 starts in his brutal 2025 rookie campaign, arriving in 2026 as an afterthought and becoming the one arm manager Craig Albernaz can depend on.
In 62.1 innings this season, Young has pitched to a 3.18 ERA with a 1.40 WHIP and a 3.04 BB/9, controlled, efficient performances that have kept Baltimore in games long enough for their offense to do the rest. Young's most recent appearance came out of the bullpen on Wednesday against Seattle, where he threw six innings and surrendered just three earned runs on four hits, a versatility that speaks to the Orioles' trust in his ability to handle innings regardless of the context. His 90th-percentile chase rate — inducing hitters to expand the zone, is the mechanical foundation of his success, and his four-pitch mix of four-seamer, sinker, curveball, and slider gives him the sequencing to navigate lineups multiple times through.
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The honest appraisal is that the Dodgers hit .271 on the road, the best mark in baseball, and slug .441 as a unit, with a lineup featuring Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman that has punished every pitcher who has come through Dodger Stadium without pristine command. The Dodgers are 23-6 against the bottom 10 teams in runs allowed this season, and Baltimore's pitching staff has allowed opponents to hit .260 against it, the third-highest mark in baseball. The matchup is a real one, but Young has been defying projection all season.
Sheehan Has the Stuff, but 2026 Has Been a Disappointment
Emmet Sheehan (3-4, 4.76 ERA) has been something of a disappointment for Dodgers fans this year after his breakout 2025 campaign, where he posted a 2.82 ERA across 73.1 innings, numbers that generated Cy Young buzz and established him as one of the National League's most exciting young arms. The 2026 version has been good but not great: the swing-and-miss ability is intact, and his tendency to get hitters to chase pitches out of the zone remains among the best in the league, but the ERA has ballooned and the consistency that defined his 2025 run has been elusive.
Sheehan's last outing against the White Sox saw him hold them scoreless through five innings before falling apart in the sixth, allowing a home run, a single, and a double before being pulled, with Jack Dreyer allowing his inherited runners to score in a 6-4 defeat that dropped him to 3-4. The pattern of strong early-inning work followed by a damaging inning has been the defining characteristic of his 2026 season, and it sets up an interesting tactical question for the Orioles: can they make him work into that vulnerable zone?
Sheehan relies on four pitches, four-seamer at 42.6% usage, slider at 31.6%, changeup at 16.0%, and curveball at 9.8%, an arsenal that generates elite swing-and-miss rates but has also allowed a .331 wOBA against this season. His exit velocity allowed at 88.9 and hard-hit rate of 38.6% tell a more encouraging Statcast story than the ERA would suggest, however, indicating some bad-luck sequencing has inflated his season numbers beyond what the underlying quality of contact would project.
The Dodgers' injury picture clouds an otherwise overwhelming lineup advantage. Will Smith has a stiff neck, Teoscar Hernández is nursing a hamstring strain, and the club is also missing Tyler Glasnow, Kiké Hernández, Blake Snell, and Evan Phillips, a collection of injuries that thins both the lineup and the bullpen. Even depleted, this is a different order than anything the Orioles have faced this week.
Orioles vs. Dodgers Picks
- Money Line Pick: Los Angeles Dodgers
Young has been remarkable, but the Dodgers at home against a .224 road-batting Orioles lineup is still the right side even at -144. The Dodgers are 45-0 when leading entering the ninth inning this season, a perfect record that underscores the organizational depth and bullpen reliability that makes even a Sheehan off-day survivable. Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman against a Young who generates average exit velocity of 89.1 at 41.3% hard-hit rate represents genuine risk, and Dodger Stadium's home atmosphere in a series finale after a Friday win gives Los Angeles every structural advantage. Take the Dodgers.
- Over/Under Pick: Under 8.5 Runs
The Dodgers have hit the game total Under in 26 of their last 45 home games, a lean that reflects Dodger Stadium's run-suppressing tendencies and the organization's elite pitching infrastructure. Sheehan's strikeout ability limits Baltimore's capacity to string together big innings, and the Orioles are 6-34 when scoring four runs or fewer this season, indicating a lineup that tends to either generate offense or go quiet with very little in between. Young has been efficient all season, and even in a loss the Orioles' starter gives them a chance to keep the game manageable. With injuries thinning the Dodger lineup, the ceiling on their run production is slightly lower than usual. Take the Under 8.5 runs.
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