Dave Price
Washington Nationals +124
Washington won't go down without a fight. I like the Nationals to extend this series behind a gem from Fister, who has a 2.41 ERA on the season and a 3.05 ERA on the road. It is also worth noting that he has an impressive 1.079 WHIP. The Giants are just 8-18 this season in home games versus NL starting pitchers with an ERA of 3.50 or lower. They are 4-12 this season in home contests versus NL starters with a WHIP of 1.150 or lower. Bumgarner has a 2.86 ERA on the season but a 4.03 ERA at home. The Giants are 5-11 in his last 16 starts as a home favorite of -110 to -150 and 1-5 in his last six starts versus the Nationals. The Giants are 1-4 in their last five Divisional Playoff home games and 1-4 in their last five home games versus the Nationals.
Steve Janus
Dodgers/Cardinals Under 7½
The books have set the mark too high on tonight's total, as I don't see either offense having much success in this one. St Louis will send out John Lackey, who has a 2.75 ERA over his last 3 starts. The Dodgers counter with Hyun-Jin Ryu, who is finally 100% after dealing with a shoulder problem. Ryu finished with a 3.03 ERA over 15 road starts during the regular season.
Both starters also have a strong history against their opponents. Lackey has a 1.96 ERA and 0.942 WHIP over 10 career starts against the Dodgers, while Ryu has a 1.29 ERA and 0.905 WHIP over 3 career starts against the Cardinals.
Key Trends/System - UNDER is 9-1 in Lackey's 10 career starts against the Dodgers, 3-0 in Ryu's 3 career starts against the Cardinals. UNDER is 13-2 in Lackey's last 15 playoff starts and 13-3 in the Cardinals last 16 after playing 7 more consecutive road games. Add it up and that's a 38-6 (86%) system telling us to BET THE UNDER 7.5!
Dana Lane
Washington Nationals vs. San Francisco Giants
Play: San Francisco Giants -129
I don't expect the Giants to relax even though they have a commanding 2-0 lead in the NLDS. They have a full understanding of how easy a team can regain confidence and win a series that they trail in. In 2012, the Giants lost their first two games to the Cincinnati Reds before roaring back to win the series. All three wins came on the road, the first team to win a best of five by winning three straight on the road. From that point the Giants own a 10 game postseason win streak. I don't like the Nationals chances especially when their climb starts with facing Giant starter Madison Bumgarner. Last Wednesday Bumgarner was flawless in pitching a four hit shut out of the Pittsburgh Pirates in an less than friendly environment. Figure in the 18 inning game that these two had the other night and it definitely favors the Giants who return home where they may be able to get proper rest. During the Giants post season win streak the Giant pitchers own a 0.90 ERA, having allowed 58 hits in 100 innings with 99 strikeouts and 27 walks. The Giants could own the third longest postseason win streak and the best ever since 1998-99. The Yankees won 12 straight. I'm backing the Giants and Bumgarner.
Randall the Handle
Seahawks (2-1) at Redskins (1-3)
Unless a team is from Oakland, it finds a way to redeem itself after embarrassing and humiliating losses. The Redskins were torched in prime time a week ago Thursday for all to see. Now they are back in the spotlight against the Super Bowl champions. Not only do they get a chance for redemption, they get to do it at home while getting 7½ points. Sure, the Seahawks are a better team, but let’s not forget they aren’t quite as formidable away from The Link. With Russell Wilson at QB, Seattle is a mortal 9-8 in away games with five of the nine wins being by less than six points. Seattle has had a week off, but the Redskins will have had 11 days off on a non-bye week as well, going from a Thursday to the following Monday. Despite the clunker against the Giants, Washington currently has a higher-rated passing offence and passing defence than the visiting champs. The Redskins have enough playmakers to keep this one interesting and, on the heels of that drubbing, we expect them to show their chops. TAKING: REDSKINS +7½
Mark Borchard
Los Angeles Dodgers -107
This series became heated quickly as Puig was nailed by Wainwright in Game 1. We have already seen many tense and dramatic moments and we are only through two games.
In Game 3 of the series, we have a match-up between a highly rated Hyun-Jin Ryu (the BaseWinner #5 rated starting pitcher out of 149) and John Lackey (BW#64).
The Dodgers are favored slightly at -107 but we have a heavier true line with LAD at -136.We will take the road team here with close to 20 points in value.
Our projected raw lineup numbers (calculated based on opposing pitcher handedness and projected at-bats) also gives the edge to the Dodgers.
Each team’s bullpens have been a bit shaky early in the playoffs. However, both units are better than average. They are similar in talent and in Basewinner ratings with LAD at #7 (in MLB) full pen and #13 high leverage pen ranking and STL at #10 in both sets of figs.
Vegas Butcher
Los Angeles Dodgers -120 1st Half
Through the 2nd half of the year, John Lackey ranked as my 111th pitcher out of 160. His K-rate dropped from 21% to 17%, his HR-rate increased from 1.0 to 1.2 HR/9, his GB-rate dropped from 47% to 41%, and his FIP increased from 3.5 to 4.2, a pretty large jump. It’s important to note that all of these increases happened with Lackey pitching 10 games in the National League, where there’s a ‘pitcher’ spot in the batting order and overall the offenses aren’t as potent. I’ve looked at Lackey’s performance since joining the Cardinals and he ended up with a 4.0 SIERA in those 10 games, a mark that would rank him among pitchers like AJ Burnett, Masterson, and Vidal Nuno. And it’s not like he was pitching against tough lineups. His opponents were CIN three times, CHC two times, MIL two times (Brewers were way below average offensively in the 2nd half of the year), SDP, PIT, and BAL. Only 2 of those 10 matchups were quality offenses, and the rest were all in the bottom-10. One issue that I’ve noticed is that Lackey’s velocity dropped. Prior to joining the Cardinals he averaged 92.1 MPH on his fastball. In the 10 games with the Cards, his average fastball was at 90.6, a 1.5 MPH drop which is absolutely huge. In his last 5 starts his average velocity was at 90.1, which is a full 2 MPH drop from his average prior to joining St Louis. Is Lackey injured? I know he needed to skip a start in the middle of September due to arm fatigue and it doesn’t look like he regained his velocity since. His velocity in his last regular season start was exactly 90.1, which is the average for his last 5 games on the mound. Typically when a pitcher loses this much off his fastball, that’s an indication that there’s an injury at play. Additionally, Lackey is a fastball/slider type of a pitcher, accounting for about 90% of his pitches from those two offerings. There are only 3 teams in MLB that rank in the top-10 offensively against BOTH the fastball and the slider. Facing them, Lackey recorded a 4.7 ERA against the Tigers (#4 FB / #3 SL) in 13.1 innings and a 9.1 ERA against the Orioles (#1 FB / #5 SL) in 21.2 innings. The third such MLB team with the same profile is LA Dodgers, who rank #9 against the Fastball and #2 against the Slider. In addition, this is the #1 offensive team in all of baseball over the course of the 2nd half of the season and a team that ranks #2 offensively against right-handed pitchers. I think this is a really bad matchup for Lackey.
But even if Lackey throws a great game, I think Dodgers have a strong edge on the mound as well. Ryu was my 4th rated starter in the 2nd half of the year, only behind Carrasco, Kluber, and Kershaw. He also has been absolutely filthy against the Cards in the last 2 years, allowing 3 ER’s in 21 innings of work with 18 K and only 2 BB. That’s a 1.3 ERA and 0.9 WHIP in 3 career starts against them. Cardinals have 4 lefties in the lineup tonight, and Ryu has a 2.5 FIP against left-handers, an elite mark. Plus consider that Grichuk has been terrible against lefties in his short career (.254 OBP vs .308 against righties) while Yadier Molina has been absolutely struggling to find his form (.281 wOBA + 78 wRC+ in 2nd half since returning from injury vs .329 wOBA + 110 wRC+ prior) at the plate, thus leaving Holliday + Peralta as potentially the only truly dangerous hitters for Ryu tonight. Ryu hasn’t pitched in a game since September 12th so I’m assuming he’ll be on some sort of a pitch-count tonight and I don’t expect him to go past the 6th inning. Since I don’t feel like sweating out this Dodgers bullpen for 3+ innings, I’ll back LA for the 1st 5 innings only.
OC Dooley
Cardinals +100
Due to shoulder problems tonight’s Los Angeles starter Hyun-Jin Ryu has been inactive which brings into question durability issues in this game-three of the National League Division series. He goes up against John Lackey who is just 3.2 innings away from C.C. Sabathia as baseball’s active leader in postseason victories. While with Boston a year ago Lackey picked up a winning decision in each postseason series played and has won a pair of World Series championship crowns including one in an Angels uniform.
It was back in September when St. Louis who acquired Lackey at the trade deadline gave him a “wake up call” by skipping over one of his scheduled assignments and the 35-year old has been effective ever since. Los Angeles visited St. Louis three times in last year’s NLCS and promptly went 0-3 with the offense being shutout twice along the way. In the past three years St. Louis when after a three-game span where the offense collectively has batted “.200 or worse” has been like gold (19-4) in front of the HOME fans