Pick’em Contest – New York Mets at St. Louis Cardinals

New York Mets (6-6) at St. Louis Cardinals (8-5)

Tuesday, April 21

BetOnline MLB betting odds: PICK’EM (-110 each way), Total 9

Southpaw Oliver Perez takes the hill for the Mets, while Todd Wellemeyer, a righty, gets the starting assignment for the Cardinals.

Here are some of the MLB Baseball betting trends as they relate to this matchup:

(Numbers may go back to last season)

* NY has won four of its last six games

* NY has lost three of its last four road games

* STL has won seven of its last ten games

* STL has played its last five games OVER the total

* STL has won five of its last six home games

In the HEAD-TO-HEAD MLB betting trends:

* NY has won four of the last six meetings

* Five of the last six meetings have gone OVER the total

* NY has won five of the last seven meetings as the road team

* Four of the last five meetings in St Louis have gone OVER the total

St. Louis has not had a lot of problems scoring runs. The Cards are third in the National League with 5.9 runs a game. Albert Pujols, last year’s MVP, may be hitting only .298 but he has four homers and 14 RBI’s in 13 games. The real hot guy, however, is Ryan Ludwick, who has played only ten games, but has 15 RBI’s, a .405 average and an .833 slugging percentage. In six of ten games he has had more than one hit. That is powerhouse stuff.

The Mets have not had nearly the level of success the Cards have had scoring runs, averaging almost a run and a half less per game. One of the reasons is that this has been a lousy team when converting opportunities with men in scoring position. New York is hitting just .236 in that category and was an awful 2-for-13 in Sunday’s game against Milwaukee. The newcomer, Gary Sheffield, who just hit his 500th career homer, said "Once we jell as a team, I think we’ll start driving in runs and giving our pitchers a big cushion to work with." That is probably true, since the Mets have too many proven hitters not to produce in decent numbers sooner or later. The problem is that we have to guess when they are ready to make things happen, because it hasn’t come yet in this disappointing 6-6 start.

Oliver Perez has not fared badly his last couple of times out against the Cardinals, but those outings have not come lately. In fact his last start against St. Louis was back in June of 2007, when he gave up two runs in 6-1/3 innings of a loss to the Cards. He rebounded from a very bad outing against Cincinnati to hold the Padres to one run over six innings on April 15. Todd Wellemeyer, his opposite number here, shut down the D-Backs on seven hits, allowing one run in seven innings on April 13.

It’s likely he’ll get better support, which makes the Cards a good play in this pick’em situation as the home team. We’re going in that direction with St. Louis in the BetOnline Sportsbook.

JAY’S PLAY: ST. LOUIS (-110) ***

(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)