MLB Baseball Betting for July 10, 2016
Sunday will end the first half of the Major League Baseball season. The All-Star Game will be played Tuesday night at 8:00 PM Eastern in San Diego, California.
WASHINGTON NATIONALS AT NEW YORK METS:
The Washington Nationals will be in first place in the NL East at the All Star Break. The only question is by how much. They got an excellent performance from right hander Max Scherzer on Saturday as they beat the Mets 6-1. Scherzer has been rounding into form lately and started to very much resemble the Cy Young level player that the Nationals expected when they acquired him. Scherzer pitched 7 innings of 3 hit baseball allowing 1 unearned run and striking out 9. What’s scary is that even if Scherzer maintains that form he won’t even be the best pitcher on his own team–that would be Stephen Strasburg who is not only having a ‘career year’ but a season of historic proportions.
The Nationals would be thrilled if they could get any type of decent performance out of today’s starter, left hander Gio Gonzalez. It wasn’t that long ago that Gonzalez was one of the best lefthanders in baseball in his final year with the Oakland A’s and first season with the Nationals. He’s been on a downward spiral ever since and it’s going to cost him in the pocketbook. He’s making $12 million for this year and has a club option for next year at $12 million–an option that the Nats will almost certainly decline. The Nationals had lost seven straight Gonzalez starts before the lefthander got a win on June 30. They were back to their losing ways in a 5-2 setback to the Milwaukee Brewers on June 5 (though in all fairness Gonzalez pitched reasonably well).For the season, the Nationals are 6-11 in Gonzalez’s 17 starts including 2-6 on the road. They’ve lost 2 of his last 3 starts with Gonzalez sporting an ugly 7.80 ERA and 1.800 WHIP. Most of the ugliness is due to a 6 ER in 3 innings outing on June 25 at Milwaukee. His two starts since that debacle have been fairly good performances.
The Mets will send lefthander Steven Matz and they’ve had decidedly more success with him on the hill than Washington has had with Gonzalez. New York has won 9 of 15 Matz starts this season including a 4-4 record at home. He’s got a 3.54 ERA overall but has a 5.94 ERA in his last three games–though the Mets won two of them. His last three numbers are somewhat deceiving–most of the damage came during an 8-6 New York win at Atlanta on June 24. New York took the win but Matz pitched only 4 1/3 innings allowing 6 earned runs.
A close matchup. Our first inclination is to go against Gonzalez but his form has been better of late and it’s not like the Mets are an offensive powerhouse. Matz has a better statline but conversely Washington has a better offense with which to deal with it. Head to head play is a big edge for the road team–Nationals have won 8 of 12 head to head this year including 4 of 6 at CitiField. We’ll take the short dog price on the road team.
BET WASHINGTON NATIONALS +110 OVER NEW YORK METS
PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES AT COLORADO ROCKIES
The Colorado Rockies likely can’t wait to see the first half of the Major League season end. The Phillies, meanwhile, would likely prefer to keep playing baseball lest they lose their strong near term momentum. Philadelphia has been one of the bigger turnaround stories of the first half. They got off to a fairly decent start and then nosedived. Until the past few weeks they were one of the worst teams in baseball but they enter this game having won 7 of 10. They now have a 10.5 game advantage over the last place Atlanta Braves but more impressively they’re now just 6 back of the third place Miami Marlins. If they can get some momentum going in the second half of the year they could go from doormat to postseason contender.
Colorado is in third place in the NL West but unless they start to get their act together they’ll be dropping like a stone. They’re 15 games back of the division leading San Francisco Giants, 8.5 games back of the second place Los Angeles Dodgers, just 2.5 games up on the fourth place San Diego Padres and 3 games out of last place–currently occupied by the Arizona Diamondbacks. The Rockies have lost 7 of 10 overall and have lost a ton of money at home this season at 19-20 -6 units. At one point, they took advantage of the high altitude in Denver and were one of the best home teams in baseball. In the last three years, however, they’re just 101-102 for a net loss of-9.5 units.
BET PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES +160 OVER COLORADO ROCKIES