MLB Betting Free Picks: Pittsburgh Pirates at Milwaukee Brewers

Added on Aug 27, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

Baseball betting action on Friday in the National League as a couple of teams playing out the string matchup in Milwaukee as the Brewers host the Pittsburgh Pirates. Milwaukee is 14 games out of first place in the NL Central, while Pittsburgh is trying to avoid the ignominious distinction of having the worst record in baseball. They’ve got a shot at ending up with a better record than Baltimore, but they’re well off the pace in the NL Central 30 games out of first place.

Pittsburgh Pirates (McDonald) at Milwaukee Brewers (Narveson)
August 27, 2010—5:10 PM Pacific

We’ve done well with underdog plays in the past couple of days, so we’ll take a shot at another one here. There’s really not much to like about this Pittsburgh Pirates team. They’re -19.2 units overall, and on the road they’re 13-48 -23.2 units. They’ve lost 6 of their last 10 games but they have won their last two. Milwaukee isn’t any treasure as a betting interest either—they’re 59-69 -10 units overall and have a poor home record 30-35 -12.6 units. Milwaukee is 5-5 in their last 10 games, but enter this contest having lost four straight.

There’s only thing that Pittsburgh does reasonably well, and that’s hit left handed pitching. On the season, the Pirates are 18-20 +7.8 units against southpaws. In all fairness, most of that has been made at home but Milwaukee is a horrible home team and actually has a worst YTD ERA than Pittsburgh. The Pirates have a team ERA of 4.58, Milwaukee’s is 4.83. While this is a minimal distinction among bottom feeders, but it’s not like the Pirates won’t be able to put runners on base in this game.

Not surprisingly, neither pitcher is really a risk to dominate their opponent—James McDonald of the Pirates has a 4.55 ERA in five starts, while the Brewers’ Chris Narveson has a 5.56 ERA. Basically, we’ve got a situation with a bad home team starting a pitcher with an ERA of 5+ as a -170 home favorite and that’s an almost automatic go against. The fact that Pittsburgh has made money against lefthanders this year gives us an even better justification to hold our nose and take a price.

Bet Pittsburgh (McDonald) +160 over Milwaukee (Narveson)