Baseball Preview: Minnesota Twins at Tampa Bay Rays

Added on Apr 14, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

We’ll head to the American League for the next Friday night baseball play as the Minnesota Twins head to the ‘Cigar City’ to take on the Tampa Bay Rays. Both teams are off to a disappointing start in the 2011 season posting identical 4-8 records heading into Thursday night action.

Minnesota Twins (Blackburn) at Tampa Bay Rays (Davis)
April 15, 2011 4:10 PM Pacific

The Twins have struggled at the plate in the early part of the season and are near the bottom of the MLB rankings in most significant batting statistical categories. Their pitching hasn’t been much to write home about either–they currently rank #22 in team ERA (4.64). The Rays are actually hitting the ball worse than the Twins–at least on their home field. Heading into Thursday night’s series opener in the Rays are 0-5 at Tropicana Field with a brutal .136 batting average and scoring a paltry 1.4 runs per game.

A good way to find value in early season baseball handicapping is to look past the big name pitchers for some of the lower rotation starters that are putting up good numbers. That’s exactly what we have here with the Twins’ Nick Blackburn–despite his 1-1 record he’s pitched extremely well with a 0.77 ERA. He’s coming off a loss in what was a spectacular performance–Blackburn went six innings at home against Oakland allowing only 5 hits and 1 ER but received no support from his teammates and ended up on the wrong end of a 1-0 decision. Tampa’s Wade Davis hasn’t been in very good form in the early part of the season–he’s 0-2 with a 4.38 ERA. He hasn’t received much in the way of run support with Tampa scoring a total of only 3 runs in his two starts (that’s 1.5 per game for you mathematically challenged readers) but he’s still not been anywhere near sharp enough on a team that won’t beat anyone at the plate even when they’re playing well.

Overall, we’d rather have our money on the Twins due in large part to Blackburn’s excellent early season form. With the Rays’ struggling to hit the ball and score runs to this point he could be downright dominating here. In addition, we’ll play the Under as we don’t expect either team to score a lot of runs.

Bet Minnesota Twins (Blackburn) +110 over Tampa Bay Rays (Davis)
Bet Minnesota/Tampa Bay Under 8′ -120