River City Sharps
Pirates -125
Pittsburgh has won their last 3 out of 4 and the Cubbies have lost their last 3 out of 4. Hamels will go again for Chicago after a good outing last time out vs the Pirates. He held them to just 2 runs, but the Pirates are swinging the bats better and will look to continue their hot play over the Cubs as they are 3-1 against them already this season.
OC Dooley
Chicago Cubs +110
It was not all that long ago when virtually every Cubs telecast was available to viewers across the country on superstation WGN but due to a pair of different outlets their appearances are now limited. This evening marks the initial WGN televised primetime game for the Cubs and it involves an unusual handicapping situation regarding their starting pitcher. Jason Hammel has pitched 216 games at the major league level wearing uniforms of four different organizations and started in every single ballpark except a pair. Tonight Hammel makes his initial assignment inside venerable Wrigley Field which has been around for 100 years. If his appearance is anything like the TWO HIT gem of last Thursday on the highway, Hammel will be successful once again in a Cubs uniform. Since this game is on WGN most the country will get to watch Chicago leadoff-man Emilio Bonifacio who is hitting at even .500 at the plate will compiling 5 STEALS all against the Pirates. Admittedly last night Pittsburgh won a 7-6 thriller at Wrigley Field in a game where they batted around in the very first inning, however they actually blew a pair of leads. Here is an approaching 60-PERCENT SYSTEM (47-35 since 1997) which plays ON underdogs like the Cubs “revenging” a loss against an opponent of ONE RUN in margin, a bad team from a year ago facing an opponent who had a winning record. That system favors the Cubs and their new starter Jason Hammel who in the past three seasons has been golden (10-2) when taking the mound in the month of APRIL
Andre Gomes
Chicago Bulls -2.5
The Timberwolves are coming from a pretty nice win vs. SAS last night, but unfortunately (for them), it has been tough to sustain the same level of effort in consecutive days as they are 0-7 ATS in L7 spots of b2b games.
Without K. Martin and C. Budinger, the Wolves don't have a lot of perimeter shooting on their current roster… they went just 5-15 3pts last night and are shooting just 23-78 from 3pts (29.5%) in L4 games.
They were able to defeat the Spurs mostly because of their huge edge on the boards w/ 57.4% reb/rate%! The Spurs simply didn't "show" any kind of energy last night…
This kind of "physical edge" for the Wolves simply won't happen against the Bulls tonight! CHI is playing some great basketball as of late and against a MIN's offense that can't hurt from the outside, I expect the Bulls to be pretty decent defensively.
MIN won the first H2H @CHI early on the but note that both Hinrich & Noah didn't play that game and we all know the importance of these two players for the Bulls (especially Noah). I expect the Bulls to be more "physical" than the Wolves and my fair line for this contest is CHI-6.