Baseball Betting Picks: Arizona Diamondbacks at Philadelphia Phillies

Added on Aug 05, 2012 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

The last of a weekend series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia Phillies is set for Sunday and the two teams involved have drastically different goals for the remainder of the regular season. The Diamondbacks are trying to pull into contention in the NL West and enter play on Sunday three games behind division leading San Francisco. The Phillies’ goals are far less ambitious–they’re trying to get out of last place in the NL East and are just 1/2 back of 4th place Miami.

Arizona Diamondbacks at Philadelphia Phillies
August 5, 2012 10:35 PM Pacific

The Phillies won yesterday behind a solid performance from Roy Halladay but nothing has changed–there isn’t a more disappointing team in baseball than Philadelphia. No matter how you slice it the Phillies have lost a ton of money this year in nearly every betting situation. Overall, the Phillies are -24.1 units on the season. At home they’re -19.8 units on the year, against right handed starters they’re -10.4 units on the year. Against opponents with winning records they’re -22.7 units on the year. Cliff Lee has pitched better in his recent starts but he’s been in horrible form this year–the Phillies have lost 5 of his 7 home starts and 12 of his 18 starts overall.

The Arizona Diamondbacks have been up and down this year but they’ve been playing better baseball of late. That’s about all that you really need to work with against this horrible Phillies team. Despite all of the evidence to the contrary, there appears to be a sentiment in the marketplace that this team is capable of a ‘turnaround’ or at least making a strong run to the end of the season. In reality, there’s very little to suggest this is true–the Phillies have been getting decent pitching but their offense has struggled. The fact of the matter is that despite the name on the uniform this isn’t a very good team, but they continue to be priced otherwise. As long as that’s the case we’ll gladly play against them until they give us reason to do otherwise. To this point in the season, there really haven’t been any long term ‘buy’ signals surrounding this Phillies team.

Bet Arizona Diamondbacks (Cahill) +125 over Philadelphia Phillies (Lee)