MLB Baseball Betting for June 26, 2016
A full card of games for Sunday baseball action:
MLB BASEBALL BETTING FOR JUNE 26, 2016:
SAN DIEGO PADRES AT CINCINNATI REDS:
The San Diego Padres can wrap up the four game series sweep of the Cincinnati Reds on Sunday and if they can keep up their recent form might soon find themselves out of last place in the NL West. The Padres clobbered the Reds at the plate in the first two games of this series but won Saturday’s game with pitching as left hander Drew Pomeranz threw 7 innings of 3 hit shutout baseball in a 3-0 win. Pomeranz even hit his second career home run. There is some talk that Pomeranz could be traded at the deadline.
The Reds, meanwhile, are sinking deeper into the NL Central basement. They’re now 6.5 games back of the fourth place Milwaukee Brewers (who continued there somewhat bizarre mastery of the Washington Nationals on Saturday). Cincinnati has now lost 8 of 10 and there’s little to suggest a turnaround is imminent. Not even the presence of former Red great Pete Rose–he was added to the team’s Hall of Fame in a pregame ceremony–could give the team a boost. The local media in Cincy is resigned to another miserable season–one TV report asked the question ‘does anyone on this team deserve to go to the All Star game?‘
Things could improve for Cincinnati on Sunday as they actually h ave a favorable pitching matchup. The Padres will start Luis Perdomo and they’ve somehow managed to win 3 of the righthander’s 4 starts despite his downright brutal numbers. Perdomo is a ‘Rule 5 Rookie’ meaning the Padres got him for a song but have to keep him at the Major League level all season. Perdomo could eventually be a decent pitcher–he’s got Major League velocity but has struggled with control and pitch selection. Here’s what Padres’ manager Andy Green had to say about him after his most recent start:
“His sinker barely got hit. I think it’s just got to be a greater reliance on that pitch throughout the day. Big-league hitters, really good big-league hitters, have trouble with it. The kid’s close.”
Overall, Perdomo has a 8.83 ERA and a 10.29 road ERA in his four Major League Starts. If he can get a number of ‘ducks in a row’ he’s got the potential to be dominating. He’s only averaging 4 1/3 innings per start but has 19 strikeouts. A guy that is averaging more than a strikeout per inning is going to get a chance to ‘pan out’ especially when the team doesn’t have much money on the table. Worse case scenario, the Padres are out a hundred grand or so. Best case scenario, another Bartolo Colon has fallen in their lap.
The Reds will start Anthony Desclafani and his put up some decent numbers in only three starts this year. Desclafani spent the first couple of months of the season on the DL with a strained oblique muscle. In three starts he’s averaged 5 1/3 innings per with a 2.30 ERA. More importantly, the Reds have won two of those three games. He looked excellent in his last start at Texas going 7 innings giving up 2 runs on 5 hits and striking out 6. Depending on who you ask, he’s either ‘trade bait’ for the Reds or the guy to build the rotation around going forward.
It’s easy to look at the numbers put up by the starting pitchers and conclude that the Reds are the play. I’m not so sure. They’re just the kind of team that Perdomo could overpower and it wouldn’t surprise me to see Desclafani regress a bit at least in the short term. I’d rather take the price with a Padres team playing decent ball of late.
BET SAN DIEGO PADRES +130 OVER CINCINNATI REDS
WASHINGTON NATIONALS AT MILWAUKEE BREWERS:
The Washington Nationals are now officially in a bad way. On Saturday, they dropped a 6-5 decision to the Milwaukee Brewers and have now lost seven straight games. Adding insult to injury, the emotional lift they thought they were going to get from the return of Stephen Strasburg isn’t happening, at least not on Sunday. Strasburg will miss at least one more start with his upper back pain/dislocated rib issue. Tanner Roark will get the start instead and while he’s not a bad pitcher he would bring the much needed boost to the team’s spirits that Strasburg would have. Roark couldn’t be any worse than lefthander Gio Gonzalez was on Saturday. Gonzalez was at one point a top starter but his career is just imploding this season. Gonzalez hasn’t won a game in his last 9 starts and only lasted three innings here giving up 6 ER and hitting a couple of batters before he left.
Milwaukee will start right hander Jimmy Nelson on Sunday. Nelson has pitched reasonably well this season but the Brewers haven’t always held up their end of things. Overall, Nelson has a 3.80 ERA but the Brewers have lost 8 of his 15 starts. At home, he’s got a decent 2.62 ERA but Milwaukee is just 4-4. They’ve lost his last three starts and Nelson has a 5.79 ERA in that stretch but that’s somewhat of a deceiving stat. It’s all from a horrible start at San Francisco on June 15 where he lasted only 3 2/3 innings giving up 6 earned runs. In his other two starts in this timeframe he gave up a total of 3 earned runs in 10 1/3 innings of work but the Brewers lost both.
Once a team hits more than 5 straight losses you have to consider their emotional/mental state when handicapping their games. That’s a concern with me as far as Washington is concerned. They really look ‘snakebit’ at this juncture. That couldn’t come at a worse time as they head into the season with the Mets–their closest challenger in the NL East–on Monday. Until they show signs that things might be turning around I’m going against the Nats.
BET MILWAUKEE BREWERS +140 OVER WASHINGTON NATIONALS