National League Championship Series Betting for October 12, 2014
The San Francisco Giants got the National League Championship series off to a great start last night behind a stellar performance from lefthander Madison Bumgarner. Game 2 will take place in St. Louis tonight before the best of 7 series shifts to Northern California for Games 3 and 4. The winner of this series will advance to the World Series where they’ll face either the Kansas City Royals or Baltimore Orioles.
San Francisco will start Jake Peavy this evening and the veteran righthander has looked very good since coming over from the Boston Red Sox at the trade deadline. Peavy couldn’t get a break in Boston–he didn’t always pitch well but when he did he didn’t get run support. That’s changed in San Francisco and Peavy has been especially effective in the Giants’ late season and postseason run. In his last three games Peavy has allowed just 3 earned runs in 17 2/3 innings with 10 strikeouts. The Giants have won all three of those games. Peavy is an infamous ‘red ass’ and such a fiery competitor that the higher the stakes in a game the more effective he is. That’s good news for the Giants and not so good news for the Cardinals.
St. Louis will oppose Peavy with right hander Lance Lynn. Historically, Lynn has been very good early in the season but has lost effectiveness later in the year. That hasn’t really been the case this season. Lynn has put up good numbers over the entire campaign and particularly at home where he’s got a 2.50 and the Cards have won 12 of his 18 starts. He’s not pitched as well in his recent assignments with a 3.50 ERA in his last three games–all three St. Louis losses.
Our strategy throughout the baseball postseason has been to find opportunities to take plus money prices on undervalued dogs and/or overvalued favorites. That’s what we’ll do here–in addition, we’re not sure that the Giants are just the ‘right side’ in this series. They’ve played their best baseball when it counts the most and have the pitching, experience and chemistry to be World Series Champions. This current iteration of the Cardinals looks like they’ll come close but not win once again this year.
BET SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS +120 OVER ST. LOUIS CARDINALS
