Baseball Betting Beat
By Doug Upstone
Before the Los Angeles Dodgers are anointed a World Series slot out of the National League, a potential deadly flaw is emerging. There is still plenty of time for manager Joe Torre’s team to pull away from this nasty grouping, yet it certainly is water cooler fodder.
Coming into the season, the Dodgers pitching was the big question mark. No established ace was viewed, with Chad Billingsley (10-5, 3.76) expected to accept the role, before his 25th birthday. The rest of the rotation was up in the air and despite the team’s success, Los Angeles still has issues. Billingsley and Randy Wolf (5-4, 3.45) have 21 starts and young Clayton Kershaw (8-5, 2.95) has been given the ball 19 times. Beyond that, things become a little fuzzy, like many of the everyday inhabitants of Venice Beach.
Hiroki Kuroda has 10 starts wrapped around an injury. Eric Stults made nine before hitting the DL and Jeff Weaver and Eric Milton have five a piece. The Dodgers have even tried oft-injured Jason Schmidt recently, trying to extract innings for salary, since wins are 50-50 prop at best.
This leads to the Dodgers being 28th in baseball in quality starts (six or more innings, three or fewer earned runs) with 41. Only Washington and Baltimore have fewer quality starts. Since 2002, only three teams have finished with winning records if they finished in the bottom five of this category and none made the playoffs. While a winning record and postseason entry certainly appear in the Dodgers future, possibly playing at .642 clip might not. The Dodgers bullpen is second only to Oakland in innings used at 3.42 per game and they might have a few tired arms when August and September roll around. This could mean excellent underdog opportunities, especially if the offense hits a slump.
Sportbet.com had projected Houston for 73.5 wins for the 2009 campaign. The Astros are well ahead of that pace with 49-46 (+4.5 units) record, yet don’t count that money as winnings just yet. Houston started the year 6-12, however recent 11-3 stretch have brought them back to respectability and into NL Central boat race. Houston has the oldest everyday starting lineup and starting pitching staff in the National League.
The ‘Stros numbers have this club opening up a can of commonplace. They are 10th in runs scored in the senior circuit, 12th in home runs, 14th in walks and 8th in on-base and slugging percentages. About the only aspect of Houston’s offense that stands out is they are second in baseball in fewest strikeouts.
Because owner Drayton McLane set limits on expenditures, while wanting to keep his aging assets, general manager Ed Wade made a trip to the junkyard to try to piece together starting pitching staff beyond Roy Oswalt and Wandy Rodriquez. Digging thru the scrapheap, he found 37-year Brian Moehler (7-5, 4.92 ERA), Russ Ortiz (2-3, 5.02), whose like a pesky rash that won’t go away and Mike Hampton (5-7, 4.63), who left New York Mets for Colorado in 2000, not because of money (wink-wink), but because he and his wife liked the school system in Denver area. (Oh that makes more sense now)
Houston will be depending on three golden oldies in the starting staff, a veteran lineup that has been through the baseball wars. They could be mentally tough and persevere or physically challenged by season’s end and fall apart. Let’s speculate the season total of 73.5 comes into play for the year is out.
All indications are Toronto will deal Roy Halladay. The Blue Jays front office better be prepared to make the right deal, or they will fall even further behind the three teams into front of them in the AL East, in the short and long term. For every Josh Beckett to Boston (along with Mike Lowell and Guillermo Mota) for essentially Hanley Ramirez and Anibal Sanchez trade, is Tim Hudson to Atlanta for three baseball cards with the pictures of Dan Meyer, Juan Cruz and Charles Thomas.
If or when Halladay is dealt, that makes 24-year old Ricky Romero (8-4, 3.25) the ace of the Blue Jays staff. Toronto will play 29 of remaining 66 games starting Friday against Boston, Tampa Bay and the Yankees, along with eight other matchups versus AL Division leaders Detroit and Los Angeles. This could be a birdbath full of opportunities to play against the Jays.