Sports Betting Overview
This series is one of those “good news/bad news” series for each team. The good news for the MLB baseball betting fans in Boston is that the Red Sox have a home series against the Seattle Mariners. The bad MLB baseball news for the Seattle Mariners is that they have to go to Boston to play a series against the Red Sox. The Mariners are just not playing well. After a start to the season that was bringing visions of the playoffs to the hearts and minds of Mariners’ fans, Seattle has dropped like a stone in the AL West and is quickly writing themselves out of the playoff picture.
The MLB news in Boston has been much better. The Red Sox have won eight of their last 10 games and are 28-17 at home. Boston holds a one and a half game lead over the New York Yankees in the AL East pennant race, and that race is quickly becoming a two-team battle as the Tampa Bay Rays fade further and further into the distance. The Red Sox can be the second team in the majors, behind the Philadelphia Phillies, to win 60 games this season if they can beat the Mariners in this opening game of the series. Judging by the way the Mariners have been playing lately, the Red Sox should be able to hit the 60-win milestone without much problem.
Seattle Mariners
The problem for the Mariners is that they just cannot hit the baseball. The Mariners are last in all of baseball in almost every offensive category there is. They cannot make contact with the ball, they cannot score runs and they are not efficient on the base paths. Pitching in front of this offensive disaster for this game is “King” Felix Hernandez. When you have a pitcher like Hernandez who has a good 3.26 ERA for the season but an 8-8 record, you know your team cannot score runs. Hernandez can sometimes cause his own problems by allowing four and five earned runs in a game. But the Seattle ace has been victimized by a poor offense behind him, and it will haunt him again in Fenway.
Boston Red Sox
Red Sox starting pitcher for this game John Lackey simply has to start getting his game together if the Sox are going to win the World Series this year. Lackey is one of the weak links on an otherwise solid starting rotation. Lackey is 7-8 on the season with a 6.70 ERA. He has been battling injuries and has been extremely inconsistent. In his last 10 starts, Lackey is 5-5 with a 7.23 ERA. In that stretch, he has allowed five or more earned runs four times and has only made it past the fifth inning twice. Lackey is a far cry from his 19-9 season of 2007, and the Red Sox are going to have to make some tough decisions as the playoffs get closer if Lackey cannot get his control back.
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The Bottom Line
Bad Boston pitching in this game is irrelevant because the Mariners’ hitting is even worse. The Mariners will need to make wholesale changes on offense if they want to compete next season. As for this game, the Mariners have little to no chance of walking away with a win.
Pick: Boston Red Sox
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