Baseball Betting Picks: Kansas City Royals at Minnesota Twins

Added on Apr 12, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

More Tuesday baseball betting action, this time in the American League as the Kansas City Royals head to the Twin Cities for a pair of games against the Minnesota Twins. The Twins have stumbled out of the gate so far in 2011 with a 3-6 record while the Royals have posted a surprising 6-3 mark.

Kansas City Royals (Francis) at Minnesota Twins (Duensing)
April 12, 2011 5:10 PM Pacific

The Minnesota Twins finished 94-68 last season but they weren’t content to ‘stand pat’ in the offseason as they continued to tinker with their roster in order to emphasize speed and defense in their spacious Target Field home ballpark. The Twins have prided themselves on winning consistently, and they’ve had 9 winning seasons in the last decade with an average of 84 wins a year. Depending on how a number of intriguing lineup moves pan out this could be an exceptional year for the team or they could regress somewhat.

Kansas City is counting on the enthusiasm created by new manager Ned Yost and hoping that a talented crop of y0ungsters starts to ‘pan out’ quickly. The Royals did a lot of things right last season—in particular, they hit for average with a .274 team batting average that ranked second in major leagues. On the other hand, they scored only 676 runs which ranked 20th in the MLB. Assuming that even some of the prospects are as good as billed and that the Royals cash in some of those hits for runs in 2011 there’s every reason to expect at least some improvement. This may be a team that is a year or two away, but it’s also possible to envision a scenario where the young players all start to pay dividends immediately in which case a winning season in Kansas City is within the realm of possibility.

In this matchup, however, we have to side with the home team. They were a profitable investment for their ‘financial backers’ overall in 2010 (+11.35 units) and they had little trouble with Kansas City. The Twins went 13-5 +525 against the Royals in 2010 and we expect them to continue their dominance this season. We’ll back Minnesota here and look for their performance to turn around in the coming weeks.

Bet Minnesota Twins (Duensing) -145 over Kansas City Royals (Francis)