Baseball betting free picks every day at Oddsbay.com!  Up today, we’ve got a pair of National League games in nighttime action for your wagering pleasure and profit as the Braves play the Nationals and the Dodgers take on the Padres!

ATLANTA BRAVES (HANSON) AT WASHINGTON NATIONALS (STRASBURG) 4:05 PM PACIFIC

In the stock market, the mantra is ‘buy low/sell high’. If you do that, you’ll make money.  In sports betting, the path to profits is to ‘find the value’ and that’s what we’re going to do in this spot as the Atlanta Braves head to the Nation’s Capital to take on the Washington Nationals and their rookie phenom Steven Strasburg.  First things first—we like Strasburg a lot and he’s definitely ‘the real deal’.  Particularly impressive is his poise and pitch command for a player just 9 games into his major league career.  Barring injury, he’s going to be a force for years to come.  At this point, however, he’s overpriced in just about every situation.  He’s pitched exceptionally well since coming to the big leagues—you just can’t argue with a 2.32 ERA and 75 strikeouts in 9 games.  The problem is that we just don’t trust the rest of the Nationals to get the job done consistently.  True, Washington has won 6 of Strasburg’s 9 starts this year but that’s earned bettors less than a unit of profit (+0.9 unit to be exact).  At home the Nats are 3-2 in his starts for a 1.1 unit loss.

Atlanta hasn’t been much on the road this year despite a stellar record at Turner Field, but one thing they do very well is hit right handed pitching.  Atlanta is 40-25 +10.6 units against RHP and they start Tommy Hanson here who hasn’t got the best numbers but has been a very profitable investment for his financial backers.  The Braves have won 13 of Hanson’s 20 starts this season (+2.5 units) and 7 of 9 on the road (+4.8 units).  Atlanta had no trouble with Strasburg at Turner Field earlier this year, winning 5-0.  With all due respect to the talent of Strasburg, we’ll back the better team at a nice underdog price.

PLAY ATLANTA (HANSON) +125 OVER WASHINGTON (STRASBURG)

LOS ANGELES DODGERS (BILLINGSLEY) AT SAN DIEGO PADRES (GARLAND) 7:05 PM PACIFIC

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve no doubt notice that we love backing the San Diego Padres.  They’ve been a consistent winner this year but for whatever reason the betting public has yet to catch on that they’re ‘legit’ meaning that even as we hit the stretch run of the season they’re still available at reasonable prices in most situations.  San Diego is still in first place in the NL West but they’re watching the San Francisco Giants creep up in the rear view mirror just 3.5 games back.  For our purposes, however, that is a good thing since it keeps the Padres focused and so far they’ve responded well to the challenge winning 8 of their last 10 games.  They’ve been exceptional at Petco Park this season with a 30-19 +8.4 record and have stepped up against good competition—they’re 25-19 +11 units against teams with winning records.

The Dodgers have shown flashes of excellence this year, but they’ve been woefully inconsistent and are now at risk of falling out of the NL West race.  They did take 3 of 4 from the sputtering Mets over the weekend, but that says more about their opponent’s woes than about the Dodgers.  LA has lost 6 of 10 and sure doesn’t have the look of urgency you’d expect from a team trying to make themselves a factor in the divisional race.  LA has taken 4 of 5 meetings from San Diego this year, but to keep that in perspective all of those games were in early to mid May.  Rather than suggest any sort of head to head dominance, it’s more likely that the previous result will make this a ‘statement series’ for the Padres as they look to put away another NL West rival so they can focus on San Francisco.

LA’s Chad Billingsley has pitched well on the road this year with a 3.73 ERA and the Dodgers have won 6 of his 9 starts.  Jon Garland has been even better at home, however, with a 2.36 ERA and the Padres winning 7 of his 10 assignments.  The Dodgers have lost money on the road this year (21-25 -5.4 units) and have only one win against a plus .500 team in the month of July.  We’ll go with the red hot home team in this one and get a nice price in the process.

PLAY SAN DIEGO (GARLAND) -110 OVER LA DODGERS (BILLINGSLEY)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 at 7:45 am and is filed under articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.