Baseball Betting Picks: Atlanta Braves at Washington Nationals
Added on Aug 21, 2012 by Jack Thurman in
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The Washington Nationals drew first blood in this big NL East matchup and the teams are back for round two on Tuesday night. Washington outlasted Atlanta in 13 innings, winning on an error by second baseman Dan Uggla. The Nationals have won 8 of their last 11 while the the Braves have been treading water of late winning just 6 of their last 11.
Atlanta Braves at Washington Nationals
August 21, 2012 4:05 PM Pacific
We talked about a couple of concepts in yesterday’s handicap that apply once again in this game. Not overreacting to short term samples is a perfect place to begin our analysis of today’s game. The Braves lost and with it our play, but it’s hard to feel bad about the handicap. The game went to extra innings and ended on an unearned run. We suggested in Monday’s write up that we were looking for a ‘coin flip’ between a pair of evenly matched sides and that’s what we got.
That’s a good place to begin the handicap of this game. The fundamental situation we outlined yesterday hasn’t changed–Atlanta and Washington have been playing great baseball during the past couple of months. Both are one of only 5 teams with 70 wins on the season and the National League East is the only division in baseball with two of them. We made the point yesterday that the underdog should be the play throughout this series and that hasn’t changed. In fact, we like today’s pitching matchup even better than yesterday’s as we’re able to back the Braves’ recently acquired lefthander Paul Maholm as an underdog. Maholm was impressive while toiling away for a hapless Cubs team earlier this summer and he’s been exceptional since coming to Atlanta. In his first three starts in a Braves uniform he’s got a 1.57 ERA. Of course the guy he’s facing tonight–Stephen Strasburg–is no slouch either but it’s well known that he’s on a ‘pitch count’. In his recent starts he’s only gone 6 innings. In any case, Atlanta has brutalized right handed pitchers this year (+18.5 units). Once again we’ve got a very even matchup between two excellent teams. No matter how you slice up their situational performance you find profits and usually double digit profits. For that reason we’ll take the dog and the value.
Bet Atlanta Braves (Maholm) +135 over Washington (Strasburg)
