10-6-14

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Ray Falco

Seattle

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Gilztips

St. Louis
Washington

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Topshelfpicks

Carson K

Nationals +125 If you're ever going to beat Bumgarner, it will be in SF.

Cardinals +107 Yes, Ryu pitched well last year vs. StL in the playoffs. Now lets see if he can handle the post-season pressure on the road.

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Josh Daniels

1* Redskins +8

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VegasButcher - #8: Los Angeles Dodgers (1st 5 innings ONLY) -120

Through the 2nd half of the year, John Lackey ranked as my 111th pitcher out of 160. His K-rate dropped from 21% to 17%, his HR-rate increased from 1.0 to 1.2 HR/9, his GB-rate dropped from 47% to 41%, and his FIP increased from 3.5 to 4.2, a pretty large jump. It’s important to note that all of these increases happened with Lackey pitching 10 games in the National League, where there’s a ‘pitcher’ spot in the batting order and overall the offenses aren’t as potent. I’ve looked at Lackey’s performance since joining the Cardinals and he ended up with a 4.0 SIERA in those 10 games, a mark that would rank him among pitchers like AJ Burnett, Masterson, and Vidal Nuno. And it’s not like he was pitching against tough lineups. His opponents were CIN three times, CHC two times, MIL two times (Brewers were way below average offensively in the 2nd half of the year), SDP, PIT, and BAL. Only 2 of those 10 matchups were quality offenses, and the rest were all in the bottom-10. One issue that I’ve noticed is that Lackey’s velocity dropped. Prior to joining the Cardinals he averaged 92.1 MPH on his fastball. In the 10 games with the Cards, his average fastball was at 90.6, a 1.5 MPH drop which is absolutely huge. In his last 5 starts his average velocity was at 90.1, which is a full 2 MPH drop from his average prior to joining St Louis. Is Lackey injured? I know he needed to skip a start in the middle of September due to arm fatigue and it doesn’t look like he regained his velocity since. His velocity in his last regular season start was exactly 90.1, which is the average for his last 5 games on the mound. Typically when a pitcher loses this much off his fastball, that’s an indication that there’s an injury at play. Additionally, Lackey is a fastball/slider type of a pitcher, accounting for about 90% of his pitches from those two offerings. There are only 3 teams in MLB that rank in the top-10 offensively against BOTH the fastball and the slider. Facing them, Lackey recorded a 4.7 ERA against the Tigers (#4 FB / #3 SL) in 13.1 innings and a 9.1 ERA against the Orioles (#1 FB / #5 SL) in 21.2 innings. The third such MLB team with the same profile is LA Dodgers, who rank #9 against the Fastball and #2 against the Slider. In addition, this is the #1 offensive team in all of baseball over the course of the 2nd half of the season and a team that ranks #2 offensively against right-handed pitchers. I think this is a really bad matchup for Lackey.

But even if Lackey throws a great game, I think Dodgers have a strong edge on the mound as well. Ryu was my 4th rated starter in the 2nd half of the year, only behind Carrasco, Kluber, and Kershaw. He also has been absolutely filthy against the Cards in the last 2 years, allowing 3 ER’s in 21 innings of work with 18 K and only 2 BB. That’s a 1.3 ERA and 0.9 WHIP in 3 career starts against them. Cardinals have 4 lefties in the lineup tonight, and Ryu has a 2.5 FIP against left-handers, an elite mark. Plus consider that Grichuk has been terrible against lefties in his short career (.254 OBP vs .308 against righties) while Yadier Molina has been absolutely struggling to find his form (.281 wOBA + 78 wRC+ in 2nd half since returning from injury vs .329 wOBA + 110 wRC+ prior) at the plate, thus leaving Holliday + Peralta as potentially the only truly dangerous hitters for Ryu tonight. Ryu hasn’t pitched in a game since September 12th so I’m assuming he’ll be on some sort of a pitch-count tonight and I don’t expect him to go past the 6th inning. Since I don’t feel like sweating out this Dodgers bullpen for 3+ innings, I’ll back LA for the 1st 5 innings only.

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Northcoast

Marqee

Sea/Wash over the total

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Kelso

2 team parlay

Seattle & Under Seattle/Wash

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Locksmith Sports

NFL:
Chairman's Play: - 5* Washington Redskins +7 -110

MLB
2* Dodgers
1* Nationals

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Northcoast

2* Seattle

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Tiger

Washington +7 -120

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SPORTS INSURANCE ADJUSTERS


Monday 10/6 NFL Service Plays

NFL


Seattle -7

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the analyzer
dodgers

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Andrew lang
20 g.o.m. Dodgers

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Sports Unlimited

Opinion under

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James Jones
MLB-St. Louis Cardinals ML+106...(3*)
NFL-Washington Redskins(+7)-113...(2*)