June 17, 2008
Games of the Day
Lou Piniella returns to his home and previous managerial job as the Cubs take on the Rays in Tampa Bay. The leadoff with a great pitching matchup as Ryan Dempster faces Scott Kazmir. The fact that Dempster is 0-2 on the road despite a better ERA away from Wrigley says something about the Cubs offense. Kazmir is about 20 innings short of counting among the league leaders in ERA, but if he can maintain this level of play he should take over that role sometime in July.
Atlanta travels to another good hitters park as Tim Hudson faces Vicente Padilla in Texas. Chipper Jones is at .403 after a 2 for 4 game in Colorado, and will need a couple of hits or some walks to start above .400 after tonight's game. Hudson has a 6.23 career ERA in Arlington, and didn't get out of the third inning the one time he visited with Atlanta. Padilla's stats look worse than his ERA indicates. He makes the opposition look like power hitters, but most of that power comes with the bases empty.
St. Louis hosts cross-state rivals Kansas City, with the Cardinals clubhouse looking more like a rehab center. They'll face Kyle Davies, who is off to a good start since returning to the major league club. He's posting a 1.53 ERA despite nine walks in 17 2/3 innings. Joel Piniero does a much better job of limiting free passes, but opponents are hitting .326 with runners in scoring position against Joel.
The west coast offers three excellent matchups. Jerry Manuel gets to start his tenure with Johan Santana on the mound facing John Lackey. Both pitchers keep their walks low and their strikeouts high, and both can give up a home run.
Justin Duchscherer faces Brandon Webb as the Athletics travel to Arizona. Duchscherer is another pitcher, like Dempster, making a very successful move from relief to starting. Webb goes for his seventh win versus no losses at home.
Finally, Scott Olsen takes on Felix Hernandez in Seattle. Olsen's done a good job of removing base runners this season, inducing seven double plays while base runners are only 3 for 8 stealing. King Felix has not allowed an earned run in his last three starts, and only one run overall.
Enjoy!
Find the latest baseball betting odds at Bodog Sports!
Posted by David Pinto at
12:15 PM
|
Matchups
|
TrackBack (0)
The comment about the Rangers' ballpark shows how a park's reputation gets stuck, and stuck hard.
If you review the baseball-reference.com park factors, you'll see how the Texas ballpark has become exactly neutral over the past couple seasons. For most if its existence the ballpark really was good for hitters, but that effect has, for whatever reason, worn off after 2005.
The reason people don't realize this is that Ranger's games are so high-scoring. Texas has the best offense and the worst pitching in major league baseball. Literally. So Rangers' games tend to be very high-scoring, whether they're played at home, on the road, in the parking lot, or underground.
It wouldn't amaze me if tonight's Braves-Rangers game sees a lot of runs scored. But it's really not the park anymore. It's the Rangers.
AL goes 12-2 against the jv league and outscores them 80-43. 8 jv teams score 2 runs or less and 7 score 1 or 0 runs. 2 NL wins are romps though.