I would normally shy away from a total this low, especially with the -125 attached to it, but this under here is gold IMO.

Here we have two great pitchers going on Sunday and two pretty weak offenses. This game looks like a 3-1 or 2-0 final to me. I dont think it even gets to 6, let alone the 8 that would be required to make this play a loser.

Its Livian Hernandez going for the Nationals. Everyone seems to be expecting Hernandez to collapse and start giving up big runs. However that hasnt happened as Hernandez continues to pitch about as well as anyone in the Major Leagues. He comes in tommorow with a 2.08 ERA but only a 4-3 record which is a testimant to the lack of run support the Nationals have been able to manage.

Still Hernandez has a 2.08 ERA, and has gone 61 innings in his 9 starts which is just short of 7 innings per outing. So I do expect him to go deep into the game tommorow, and I wouldnt be surprised at all to see him get into the 8th inning.

On the Other side of the ball, Jon Garland starts for the Padres and has a near identical ERA. Garland comes in with a 2.10 ERA just slightly above that of Hernandez. In his 10 starts, Garland has thrown for 60 innings which does comes out to only 6 innings per start. So I do expect to see the Padres bullpen for a few innings in this game.

Looking at the offenses. Neither offense is very good at all. Only 1 guy on either team is batting above the .300 mark. The Nationals' Guzman is batting .325. Other than that the Nationals lineup is laced with mid 200 hitters.

Morgan .249
Guzman .325
Dunn .261
ZimmerMan .290
Willingham .286
Desmond .270
Maxwell .121
Nieves .212

The Padres lineup looks even softer

Venable .236
Eckstein .299
Gonzalez .267
Headley .269
Torrealba .292
Salazar .250
Hairston .241

This just looks to me like 2 lineups that Hernandez and Garland will mow down, at least for the first 5 or 6 innings. Both teams also have decent middle relief so I dont expect the bullpens to come in and blow the under.

When it gets to the bullpens, the Nationals will come with Clippard who has a 1.93 ERA, and then closer Capps with a 2.96 ERA. The Padres on the other hand have Thatcher with a 2.16 ERA then Webb with a 1.50 ERA so unless this goes 3 or 4 relievers deep which I doubt I expect total domination by the pitching in this game.

To me, the 7 1/2 total under -125 is just trying to scare people off the under. Its rare to see such a low total and the juice going to the under as well. It might be tempting here to try the over at + 105 and I think thats what the trap is looking for.

Even with the heavy -125 chalk the play on this game is the under 7 1/2 as I doubt we see more than 5 total runs in this game.

Good Luck.