MLB Baseball Betting Free Picks: New York Mets at Pittsburgh Pirates

Added on Aug 22, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

Baseball betting action on Sunday in the National League as the New York Mets conclude a three game weekend series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Neither team is going anywhere fast in the big picture, with New York 10 games out of first place in the NL East and Pittsburgh 9 games behind them. The Mets won the first two game of this series and will look for the sweep in this afternoon tilt at PNC Park.

New York Mets (Santana) at Pittsburgh Pirates (Duke)
August 22, 2010—10:35 AM Pacific

Sometimes in sports betting you just have to ‘hold your nose’ and make the ugly play. It may be painful on a superficial level, but when it’s a solid contrarian position backed up by statistical data it’ll be profitable in the long run. That’s the case in this game. The Pirates aren’t a very good team and they’re not in very good form. They’ve lost 5 straight, 9 of ten and 15 of 20. Despite this, we’re getting them in one of their few profitable situations here and with the talented Johan Santana on the mount opposing them we’re getting them at a good price.

Even with New York’s rain shortened win on Saturday, Pittsburgh has turned a solid profit against lefthanded pitching this year. 17-20 may not look like much, but at the underdog prices the Pirates always get that’s +6.4 units of profit. At home, they’re 11-9 +7.3 units against southpaws. The Mets have been a horrible road team all year (25-39 -12.3 units) while despite their overall struggles the Pirates are right around break even at PNC Park (27-34 -0.1 unit).

In a head to head matchup between starting pitchers Zach Duke and Johan Santana there’s no comparison—Duke is a garden variety big leaguer while Santana has All Star level talent. The Mets offense isn’t very good, however, and that could make Duke look like an All Star here. YTD New York has the third worst team batting average in the National League and even with 12 runs in the first two games of this series they’re only averaging 2.6 runs per game in the past 12 contests. Lack of run support has killed Santana on the road—despite a solid 2.88 ERA away from home the Mets have only won 5 of his 14 away starts. Good chance for the Pirates to get off the losing streak here.

Bet Pittsburgh (Duke) +155 over New York (Santana)