Baseball Betting Picks: Atlanta Braves at San Diego Padres

Added on Aug 27, 2012 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

This could be the time for the Atlanta Braves to make a move. The Washington Nationals are starting to show at least some semblance of weakness, having lost four games in a row. Atlanta is now 4.5 games back of the division leaders and with Washington idle today they could whittle into that deficit with a victory against the San Diego Padres. Padres have been playing good baseball of late–they’ve won 7 straight games–but are still 11 games under .500 and 12.5 games back of NL West leading San Francisco.

Atlanta Braves at San Diego Padres
August 27, 2012 7:05 PM Pacific

While we respect the Padres late season run–they’ve been a veritable ATM machine for baseball betting enthusiasts for the past month or more–we can’t get *too* impressed. That run came against the slumping Pirates at home and the erratic Diamondbacks on the road. They take a big step up in class here against an Atlanta Braves team that has amassed 73 wins this year and for the first time in recent memory is playing excellent baseball away from Turner Field. The Braves are 37-26 +14 units on the road this year–a far cry from the past couple of seasons where they were big money losers on the road. Padres have pulled ‘into the black’ at home during their late season surge but not by much–they’re now +0.9 units on the year at Petco Park.

A bigger issue for San Diego in this matchup could be the starting pitching–Padres will give the ball to youngster Casey Kelly who’ll make his MLB debut. That in itself isn’t a big concern but he’s drawn a tough adversary for his first game–Braves lefty Paul Maholm who is pitching as well as he has in his entire career. Maholm has a 1.86 ERA in his last three assignments to go along with a 0.826 WHIP and a 18 to 4 strikeouts to walks ratio. He’s also averaged 7 2/3 innings per start in that stretch, meaning that Atlanta can then hand the ball over to closer Craig Kimbrel. Kimbrel is arguably the best closer in the game in only his second season in the big leagues and is getting some media endorsement for the Cy Young Award. In any case, his YTD ERA of 1.15 along with a 0.640 WHIP along with 31 saves is seriously impressive.

Bet Atlanta Braves (Maholm) -140 over San Diego Padres (Kelly)