Baseball betting free picks every day at Oddsbay.com!  Up today, we’ve got National League action under the lights as the San Diego Padres takes on the Pittsburgh Pirates!

SAN DIEGO PADRES (LATOS) AT PITTSBURGH PIRATES (KARSTENS)

From the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ school of sports handicapping, we’ll go back to Pittsburgh again tonight and once again take a position on the NL West leading San Diego Padres.  As we mentioned in yesterday’s baseball betting free picks, the Padres haven’t really been accepted by the ‘public’ as an elite team.  San Diego has made a ton of money on the road (26-20 +12.4 units) and against righthanded starters (37-29 +9.8 units).  Pirates are 10-28 -11.7 units on the year against teams with winning records, and 20-46 -17.7 units against righthanded pitchers.   We have to lay a bigger price today, but we’re getting a very advantageous pitching matchup with Mat Latos on the hill for San Diego.  Much like the rest of the Padres, Latos is on the verge of becoming one of the top starting pitchers in the National League and the general public has yet to pick up on that fact.  Latos has a 2.45 ERA this year, and San Diego has won 12 of his 17 starts including 8 of 10 on the road.  His recent form has been exceptional—he’s allowed three earned runs in 19.5 innings of work in his last three starts.  He’s also shown an ability to shut down light hitting foes (Washington and Houston) and their recent uptick notwithstanding the Pirates definitely fit into that category.  Padres have owned the Pirates in head to head at Pittsburgh in recent years (7-2 +5.1 units) and we’ll gladly back the much better team with the much better pitcher in this spot.

PLAY SAN DIEGO (LATOS) -165 OVER PITTSBURGH (KARSTENS)

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