Baseball betting free picks every day at Oddsbay.com!  Up today, we’ve got an important battle in the American League West as the Los Angeles Angels host the Texas Rangers.

TEXAS RANGERS (HARDEN) AT LOS ANGELES ANGELS (HAREN) 6:05 PM PACIFIC

Big AL West battle between the first place Texas Rangers and the second place LA Angels, but why are the Halos a -150 favorite?  That’s due exclusively to the fact that their starter, Dan Haren, was one of the ‘in demand’ pitchers traded off of teams going nowhere (in his case Arizona) to a contender.  Haren is a very good pitcher, but his numbers this season aren’t particularly overwhelming—his teams have lost 14 of his 22 starts and he’s got a 4.57 ERA on the year.  True, the bulk of that was with a bumbling Arizona team but it’s never a slam dunk that a good pitcher will be able to dominate simply with a move to a better team.  Haren lost his first start with the Angels, and consider Roy Oswalt’s shelling in his first start in Philadelphia.

Haren not only didn’t pitch particularly well in his first start in Anaheim, but he was hit in the arm by a line drive and had to come out of the game.  Subsequent tests have shown no physical damage, and he looked fine working in the bullpen yesterday but it’s definitely not a good thing.  Rich Harden of the Rangers is coming off the DL after a hamstring issue, and although his numbers this year haven’t been very impressive either (5.68 ERA) the pitching matchup isn’t as one sided as the price on this game would suggest.

LA is good, though not dominant, at home with a 28-24 record (-3.4 units).  The Rangers have a winning record on the road (24-22 +3.6 units) and have been in much better form of late.  They enter this game having won 6 of their last 10, though they’re just 13-13 in the month of July.  That’s still better than Anaheim, who has lost 7 of 10 (even after picking up a win in the series opener last night) and is a woeful 9-16 -8.4 units in July.  The Angels have also struggled against good teams of late—since the All Star Break they’re 3-10 against teams with winning records while the Rangers have excelled against tough opposition with 10-4 mark against teams with winning records in the second half of the season.

Haren is a good pitcher who’ll eventually be a valuable addition to the Angels staff, but he’s not good enough to justify this price in this matchup.  We’ll back the Rangers as decent sized road underdogs.

PLAY TEXAS (HARDEN) +140 OVER LA ANGELS (HAREN)

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