Young Gun vs. Veteran Ace – Oakland at Texas
BetUS MLB betting odds: Rangers -145, Athletics +125, Total 10
Southpaw rookie Brett Anderson (0-2, 5.89 ERA) goes for Oakland in this one, while the Rangers counter with right-handed veteran Kevin Millwood (1-2, 2.10 ERA).
Here are some of the MLB Baseball betting trends as they relate to this matchup:
(Numbers may go back to last season)
* OAK has lost five of its last seven games
* OAK has played five of its last seven games UNDER the total
* OAK has lost four of its last five road games
* TEX has played 12 of its last 18 games OVER the total
* TEX has played four of its last five games UNDER the total
* TEX has lost four of its last six home games
* TEX has played seven of its last eight home games OVER the total
In the HEAD-TO-HEAD sports betting trends:
* Five of the last seven meetings have gone UNDER the total
* TEX has won nine of the last 12 meetings as the home team
Kevin Millwood has had some good seasons, making the All-Star team in 1999 when he was with the Atlanta Braves, a season where he finished third in the Cy Young balloting. In 2005 he led the American League in ERA as a Cleveland Indian. He’s won 18 games a couple of times. This year, after working hard in the off-season, he is off to one of his best starts to date. Through his first four appearances, he has a 2.10 ERA and .083 WHIP ratio (walks + hits per innings pitched), allowing just 19 hits in 30 innings. He is doing whatever a staff ace should be doing. Yet he has only one win, and could you believe that with a team that can score runs like the Rangers (6.1 per game), he’s actually been a hard luck pitcher with little offensive support!
That’s right. The Rangers, after beating Cleveland 9-1 in Millwood’s Opening Day outing, have tallied exactly six runs in his last three starts. He went seven scoreless innings against Detroit on April 12, and his team still lost. He went the full nine against Kansas City on April 18, giving up two runs and five hits, and Texas got shut out. Take a look at his two starts in 2008 against this Oakland team, where he allowed only three earned runs in 13 innings, and his teammates scored just six runs for him.
Brett Anderson, as we mentioned on April 10 when he made his first big league start, has been regarded as perhaps the top pitching prospect in the Oakland organization. The son of the baseball coach at Oklahoma State, he was also #7 in all of baseball by the prestigious Baseball America magazine, as well as a member of Team USA in the Olympics. He has struggled, as some might expect from a 21-year-old, taking it on the chin a couple of times, but he did quiet the Red Sox’ bats on April 15, holding Boston to two runs in seven innings before his bullpen blew it up. Anderson is going to be very keyed up for this start, though, as he is from Midland, Texas, and will have quite a few people at this game.
Anderson will be inspired, and if the same thing happens with Millwood as has been the case so far, we’re looking at UNDER ten runs as it is posted in the BetUS American League baseball sports betting odds.
JAY’S PLAY: UNDER 10 (-115) **
(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)
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