MLB Betting Previews: Atlanta Braves at Philadelphia Phillies

Added on Sep 22, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

MLB

Baseball betting is coming to a close for the year but we’ve still got a few weeks to take our last shots for the season. We’ll take a look at a National League East matchup between the Atlanta Braves and Philadelphia Phillies from Citizens Bank Park. The Phillies have been one of the hottest teams in baseball since the All Star Break and are on the verge of putting the Braves away.

Atlanta Braves (Hanson) at Philadelphia Phillies (Oswalt)
September 22, 2010–4:05 PM Pacific

While you can debate how much importance ‘momentum’ plays in the postseason one thing is definitely not subject to dispute–getting hot at the right time of the year definitely helps teams make the playoffs in the first place. Philadelphia has started to play their best baseball of the season in the last couple of months, and they’ve used that surge to blow past the Atlanta Braves atop the NL East. Atlanta hasn’t been playing badly, but the Phillies just don’t lose very often anymore. Philadelphia has won 9 straight games and 17 of their last 20. Atlanta has been on the right side of the ‘Mendoza line’ during the past couple of weeks winning 7 of their last 13, and they’ve not been able to make up any ground in the divisional race. Now they’re staring at the prospect of being swept in a series that they hoped could propel them back into contention in the divisional battle.

Atlanta has struggled on the road all season long and in retrospect that deficiency may end up costing them the division title. They’ve been very good at Turner Field this year–at 52-23 they’ve got the best home record in baseball. On the road, however, they’re just 34-43 -13.6 units. The Phillies have been a high priced team all season (even when their performance didn’t justify it) but they’ve put the wins in the book at home going 52-28 for 6.2 units of profit. Roy Oswalt has been pitching very well of late, allowing only 5 ER in his last 3 starts (2.05 ERA). Tommy Hanson has been pitching reasonably well for Atlanta, but just hasn’t been getting much run support.

At a different stage of the season we might like Atlanta to avoid the sweep here, but given the disparity in recent form between the teams–and the Braves weak road play all year long–we’ll back the red hot home team. The Phillies are on the verge of relegating Atlanta to a wild card fight and we don’t see them letting up in this game.

Bet Philadelphia Phillies (Oswalt) -150 over Atlanta Braves (Hanson)