Baseball Betting Picks: Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs

Added on Aug 10, 2012 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

The Cincinnati Reds have found themselves in a funk at the worst possible time of the season. They’ve lost five straight games after spending much of July as the hottest team in baseball. They were feeling good after winning the first two games of a recent series against their closest divisional rival, the Pittsburgh Pirates. Since then, however, they’ve lost five straight games. They’ll try to get back on the winning track on Friday as they play game two of a four game weekend series against the Chicago Cubs who have lost 8 of their last 10 games.

Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs
August 10, 2012 11:20 AM Pacific

The Cubs managed to end their eight game losing streak on Thursday as they upset the Reds with some late inning heroics. That notwithstanding, we’re not really too concerned about Cincinnati at this point. As far as late season swoons go this one could have been much worse. In fact, they caught a break on Thursday as the Pittsburgh Pirates also lost keeping them 2.5 games out of first place. A bigger concern for both teams is that they’re about to have some company–the St. Louis Cardinals are now just 2.5 games out of second place and 5 games behind the NL East leading Reds.

Chicago has made a small profit at home this year, but we think the pitching matchup today favors Cincinnati with steady Homer Bailey getting the assignment for the visitor. Bailey has done his best work on the road this season posting a 2.63 ERA. More importantly, Cincinnati has won 8 of his 10 road starts. He’ll face recently acquired Justin Germano–he’s looked good in limited action as a starting pitcher this year but he did catch a couple of weaker hitting teams in his first starts as a Cub (Los Angeles, Pittsburgh).

In fact, Germano’s decent performance as a Cub gives us some value on the far superior team. Look for the Cubs to ‘right the ship’ as this series progresses this weekend and could easily take the next three games. We’ll back the visitor today and barring anything unforeseen will look to do so all weekend.

Bet Cincinnati Reds (Bailey) -140 over Chicago Cubs (Germano)