No sweat with the Thursday free play as the Hawks blew out the worn down Celtics and closed out that opening round playoff series in the process. Here’s one on the diamond for this evening.
MARLINS (Conley) @ BREWERS (Davies)
Take: BREWERS +115
The Miami Marlins are a hot team right now, having just completed a four-game sweep at Chavez Ravine against the Dodgers. Generally speaking, I don’t like to get in the way of a team on a winning streak, but I’m going to try it here.
As far as the matchup goes, I give Adam Conley an edge over Zack Davies, albeit not much of one. The Brewers have loads of flaws and are a bad baseball team. But I kind of like their lineup against mid-level or worse starting pitchers, and whole I like Conley as a prospect, he’s in that group for now. Davies is a soft-**** who really needs to command his stuff to hang in. The good news is that Davies gets to face a lineup that hasn’t been all that potent for the most part and is now missing its main catalyst at the top of the order.
But the keys for me here are the scheduling and the intangibles. This is a potential flat spot as it is for Miami, having just swept the Dodgers in LA and now facing a far lesser rival in what is the eighth straight road game in three different cities for the Marlins. The fatigue factor could therefore be in play here.
Then there’s the Dee Gordon thing. Make no mistake, this one was a shocker that no one saw coming. Gordon is obviously a big loss physically, and I can only regard the news as a momentum breaker as far as the team is concerned. Instead of riding high off the great sweep against the Dodgers, the players Gordon left behind will now be catching the media heat for the next few days. That’s not their fault, of course, but Gordon won’t be there to have to face that music, and it’s a distraction.
I won’t put this one into the value category as Miami is still the better team with the more reliable starting pitcher. But it looks like a decent home dog spot to me, and I’ve decided to grab the price with the Brewers to get this one in the win column.
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My 2* MLB Best Bet is up for Friday.
And today is the last day for my discounted MLB Access and MLB/NBA Combo Access packages.