MLB Betting Preview: Detroit Tigers at Oakland Athletics

Added on Apr 14, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

AL baseball betting action in Northern California as the Oakland A’s host the Detroit Tigers. Oakland is 6-6 on the season while Detroit is 5-7 on the year. Both records are pending the outcome of the opening game of this series on Thursday night.

Detroit Tigers (Porcello) at Oakland Athletics (McCarthy)
April 15, 2011 7:05 PM Pacific

Heading into the 2011 season there were very high expectations for the Oakland Athletics’ talented young pitching staff and a dozen games in they’ve definitely delivered. Heading into Thursday night’s game the A’s had the third best team ERA in baseball at 2.90. Their hitting hasn’t been very good–they rank #21 in team batting average–but if they start swinging the bat better they’ll definitely win a lot of games given the quality of their pitching.

We’ve talked about the Detroit Tigers home/away tendencies in 2010 and while the jury is still out on whether or not they’ll show any improvement on the road in 2011 until they do we’ll look for opportunities to play on them at home and against them on the road. Detroit lost -19.70 units on the road in 2010 so we’ll subject them to a very high ‘burden of proof’ before we start to think about backing them away from the Motor City. They’ll start Rick Porcello here and he’s looked awful so far in 2011 with a record of 0-2 and a brutal 9.00 ERA.

The A’s start big (6’7″) Brandon McCarthy who has a 1-0 record and a 3.52 ERA. He didn’t look particularly sharp in his opening assignment of the year and didn’t factor into the decision but followed that up with a very nice performance. He did allow 9 hits in a 5-3 win at Minnesota but gave up only 2 earned runs while striking out 5 and walking none. Of course he might as well be Sandy Koufax compared to Porcello given his current form.

Bottom line–we’ll take the team with the better pitching against a proven road money loser. The A’s young pitching staff could make them a solid ‘under the radar’ play in the early going this season while we’ll keep bucking the Tigers away from home until they give us a very compelling reason to do otherwise.

Bet Oakland Athletics (McCarthy) -135 over Detroit Tigers (Porcello)