MLB Free Pick (10/7) – Los Angeles Dodgers vs. St. Louis Cardinals
How can you have the best record in your league and be an underdog in your first-round series?
That’s the position that the 95-win Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves in as they take on the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series. Tonight’s Game 1 in L.A. will see potential NL Cy Young winner and feel-good story Chris Carpenter take the hill for the Cardinals, while Randy Wolf will start for the Dodgers.
Therein is why the Cardinals are not only favored tonight on the road, as the latest MLB odds have St. Louis at -138 and the Dodgers at +128, but baseball futures odds have the Cardinals as more of a favorite to win the NL pennant than the Dodgers.
The pitching matchups are heavily in the favor of the Cardinals for the first two games of the series, with their other Cy Young candidate, Adam Wainwright, going tomorrow night against Clayton Kershaw, who hasn’t won since July 18 despite seeing his ERA drop from 2.95 to 2.79 in that span.
So, Cardinals fans and players alike are no doubt expecting anything less than a split heading back to St. Louis, and they could take a big advantage out of the gate tonight by winning Game 1 with their ace on the hill.
Carpenter went 12-1 with a 2.13 ERA in his last 17 regular-season starts, and he finished the season second in the National League behind Wainwright in wins with 17, and he led the NL in ERA with a 2.24 mark, putting himself in position to win his second NL Cy Young award after missing most of the last two seasons – and a month this season – with various injury issues.
The other numbers stack up favorably for Carpenter as well. He’s 5-1 with a 2.53 ERA in eight postseason starts (all with the Cardinals), and he’s 2-0 with a 1.80 ERA in two starts against the Dodgers this season.
Sounds like a sure win for the Cardinals, right? Not so fast.
Wolf lost his last start of the regular season on Friday night against the Rockies, but he didn’t exactly pitch poorly (5 IP, 5 hits, 2 runs), and prior to that outing, he had gone 6-0 with a 2.46 ERA in his previous nine starts, stepping up when the wins started drying up for Chad Billingsley and Clayton Kershaw and earning the chance to start for the Dodgers tonight.
In the end though, I’m going with the Cardinals to take a 1-0 lead in this series. Wolf’s been excellent over the last couple of months, and he could shut down Pujols, Holliday, and Co., but there’s a reason why they’re the favorite tonight. Not only has Carpenter been a stud this season, but he’s also a stud in the postseason, and a large part of the Cardinals’ success this season was being one of the best road teams in the league.
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