MLB Baseball Betting: Chicago Cubs at San Diego Padres
As the Major League Baseball season winds down many handicappers start to focus on the teams that remain in postseason contention. On balance this is a good idea but sometimes there are decent wagering opportunities among the ‘bottom feeders’ in the sport. We think we’ve found one today as the San Diego Padres host the Chicago Cubs at Petco Park. The Cubs are mired in last place in the NL Central having dropped two games below the 4th place Milwaukee Brewers. The San Diego Padres have managed to avoid the NL West basement thanks to the horrible play of the defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants. Currently the Padres have a 2 game edge over the lowly Giants.
Chicago will start righthander Jeff Samardzija who is coming off one of his best starts of the season. In his last assignment the Cubs jumped on Jordan Zimmerman and the Washington Nationals right out of the gate which allowed Samardzija to pitch with a significant lead. He was commanding throughout and went on to pitch a complete game giving up 6 hits and 1 ER as the Cubs routed Washington 11-1. Nothing about his recent form suggested that effort was coming and in fact despite this game his L3 ERA is 6.87 with two Cubs losses. Samardzija has great stuff but doesn’t get much help from his teammates and he really struggles when he’s pitching from behind.
The Padres will go with lefthander Eric Stults who has been very good when pitching at home this season. Overall he’s got a respectable 3.70 ERA with 14 Padres wins in his 26 starts but at Petco Park he’s been exceptional with a 2.50 ERA and San Diego has won 9 of his 12 home assignments. Chicago struggles to generate offense against lefthanded pitching (.236 BA, 3.4 runs per game) and that could set Stults up for a very strong outing on Saturday night.
The Cubs are pretty much a pure ‘go against’ at this point and while the Padres aren’t much to write home about either they’ve played well at home for most of the season. Furthermore, the pitching matchup is much to our advantage. We’re getting the talented lefthander Stults who has been very good at home all year at a reasonable price. No way we can pass that up.
BET SAN DIEGO PADRES (STULTS) -120 OVER CHICAGO CUBS (SAMARDZIJA)