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Play of Day --- Phillies + 125
My Best Bet play of the day will be the Phillies getting the +125 over the Red Sox today.
The Phillies start Jamie Moyer who continues to pitch well in his late 40's. Moyer became the oldest pitcher to ever pitch a shut out ealier this year, but even beyond that he has been good in all but one outing this year.
Moyer comes in tonight with a 6-5 record and a 3.98 ERA in 11 starts. He has thrown 72 innings, so he is giving the Phillies a strong 6 1/2 innings per start. He has given up 64 hits in those 72 innings while allowing 14 walks and recording 33 strikeouts.
By comparison, Red Sox starter John Lackey has struggled pretty bad this year. He has a 4.92 ERA in 12 starts. He has thrown a total of 74 innings in those 12 starts. In those 74 innings, Lackey has given up 87 hits and 35 Walks.
So in pretty much the same number of innings pitched ( 74 vs 72 ), Lackey has given up 23 more hits and walked 21 more batters. In fact, Lackey has walked 2.5 batters for every 1 batter that Moyer has walked. I think Lackeys lack of control will be a big factor as the Phillies need to work the count deep, get some free passes and get Lackeys pitch count up.
Once this game goes to the bullpen, I think the Phillies have a massive advantage. The Red Sox bullpen has struggled all year and continues to be used too much. Red Sox starters are just putting way too much on this bullpen than it can handle. Last night, The Red Sox bullpen went 2 2/3 innings, giving up 4 hits, 4 walks, a total of 9 base runners, and 2 Earned Runs. The Bullpen took a blown save and a loss.
The Previous night ( Wednesday ), The Red Sox bullpen went 1 inning giving up 7 hits, 5 walks, a total of 12 base runners, and 4 runs. So on Wednesday, facing one of the worst offenses in baseball the Cleveland Indians, the Red Sox offense faced 15 batters and got 3 outs.
The Bullpen brings Bonser who has no actual ERA as he has giving upsome earned runs but has not recorded an out, so you cant compute an actual ERA.
Then comes J. Nelson who has an ERA of 9.72, Ramirez with an ERA of 5.48, and Bard the one bright spot if you want to call it that. Bard has a 2.48 ERA but just a 1-2 record and blew a save and got a loss last night as the Indians offense smoked him.
The Red Sox offense looks OK and I am sure some think they will hit Lefty Moyer. But this offense is not what it has been in years past. Kevin Youkalis does hit .316 and Beltre at .332 and Victor Martinez hits .297 so they do bring some good averages and some power. Still the lineup has some weak spots too. The first three Scutaro, Pedroia, and Ortiz and only hitting .278, .251, and .236 so its hard for them to get much going at the top of the lineup.
The Phillies bullpen comes in quite rested as they were rained out on Wednesday and last night Roy Halladay gave them 8 strong innings. So the bullpen has seen 1 inning of action over the last 3 days, and it has faced 4 batters during the same time strecth that the Red Sox bullpen has facd 53 batters.
The Phillies offense has had periods of not scoring a lot of runs. I think that happens to every team when they face great pitching, but that isnt the case today. The Phillies lineup is packed full of good hitters at the top 6, then the bottom 3 tail off as it does with most teams.
The only advantage I see for the Red Sox here is that Lackey is a decent hitter for a pitcher and Moyer will probably be an easy out. Even so, I doubt Lackey gets a hit off Moyer.
The Play is the Phillies plus the 125, with the better pitcher, better bullpen and imo better bats.
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Originally Posted by supplykim
