Many sports betting enthusiasts can’t wait for football or basketball season, but there’s no shortage of serious handicappers that consider baseball season the best time of the year.  One of the big reasons for that is the many midweek daytime wagering opportunities and we’ve got one today in the National League between NL Central rivals Pittsburgh and St. Louis.  The Pirates are 3-2 so far in 2011 while the Cards are 2-3.

Pittsburgh Pirates (Correia) at St. Louis Cardinals (Carpenter)
April 6, 2011  10:45 AM  Pacific

Another great thing about baseball betting is the way the schedule is formatted into multiple game series.  This allows us to handicap baseball in much the same way as hockey, looking for value moneyline positions and good matchups but with the added advantage of multiple opportunities to capitalize on them in a short span of time.  If you’ve ready our hockey analysis you’ve no doubt seen where he keep coming back to a profitable concept by saying ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’.  In baseball, you get the opportunity to do that several times within a matter of days.

That’s exactly what we’re doing here in this daytime matchup between the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates.  Cards have had a tendency to start slow and the Pirates are being priced based on their dismal performance in 2010.  Pittsburgh baseball fans might not be lining up for World Series tickets just yet, but the vintage 2011 Pirates are going to be a much improved team and could be one of the big surprises of the year if their bumper crop of talented young players all mature at the same time.

The Pirates’ pitching is still a big question mark the team has a ton of brutally talented youngsters with four everyday starters 25 and younger who all have All Star potential. Second baseman Neil Walker, outfielder Jose Tabata, third baseman Pedro Alvarez and center fielder Andrew McCutchen have superstar potential and at very least could be solid players for years to come.  In this game the Pirates will go with Kevin Correia who acquired from San Diego in the offseason.  Correia may not by a Cy Young candidate, but he’s a solid pro that will give Pittsburgh a chance to win a lot of games this year.   The Cards will counter with Chris Carpenter who pitched well in his first start of the year but didn’t figure in the verdict as St. Louis lost to San Diego 5-3 on opening day.

St. Louis is still without LF Matt Holliday who underwent an emergency appendectomy late last week and the team could be ‘looking ahead’ to their first road trip of the year which opens with a three game set against the World Champion San Francisco Giants.  Pirates cashed a ticket for us on Monday and we’ll take a huge price with them here based on the rep of Cards’ starter Carpenter.

Bet Pittsburgh Pirates (Correia) +180 over St. Louis Cardinals (Carpenter)

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