Winnipeg fell behind early at Boston, but the Jets eventually gained control and ended up skating pasty the Bruins in comfortable fashion as the Thursday free play. Let’s head to the MLB playoffs for the Friday comp.
CUBS (Lester) @ CARDINALS (Lackey)
Take: UNDER 6.5 -115
In case you haven’t noticed, runs have not been easy to come by thus far in the baseball post-season, and home field has been a big disadvantage out of the gate. Not only have all four visitors been winners, none of the home teams have even enjoyed a brief lead. I imagine some of that will change today, but my focus as the Cubs and Cardinals get started is on the Total.
This is a matchup of two veteran pitchers who have each tasted a good deal of success in October. Former Boston teammates Jon Lester and John Lackey will now be adversaries, and I look at this game as one where scoring has a great chance to again be at a premium.
The big stage will not be an issue for either guy. Both Lester and Lackey have experience this atmosphere many times and each has managed to flourish more often than not. I make both pitchers favorites to do so again today.
There’s no way I can document this, but there’s no question in my mind based on all these years of viewing that veteran pitchers, especially high level ones, usually get a great strike zone in the playoffs. If that’s the case here as I suspect it should be, that’s bad news for the batters and great news for Lester and Lackey, who are each quite adept at avoiding the center of the strike zone.
The two starters are in solid form heading in, with Lester enjoying a stellar September and aside from a shaky tuneup start to close the regular season, that’s a ditto for Lackey. The Cardinals are not exactly robust against good southpaws and Lackey doesn’t figure to be a treat for the Cubs.
There’s even some small sample history here, for what that’s worth. The Under is 3-1-1 when Lackey starts vs. St. Louis and it’s 4-0 when Lackey faces the Cubs. Of course, for every positive trend one can usually balance the sheet with a negative one. In this case the Over has been a big winner recently when the Cubs play the Cardinals at St. Louis.
My main take here is that I trust the old pros to come up big like they usually do come playoff time. I’ll look for Lester and Lackey to put up their share of zeroes while avoiding the crooked numbers and I’ll take the Cubs and Cardinals to keep this one Under the number.
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My CFB 3* Game Of Week goes tonight!
And today is the last day for early bird discount on my NHL Season Access!