Game Day: Monday May, 11th

The weather is warming up around the country.  It makes a big difference for pitchers and players around the league.  The cold has players tight and even though pitchers are lighting up the radar guns at 98 mph early in the season, the hot sun has a way of keeping players loose and pitchers throwing heat without the concern that they may have when playing in the cold weather.  

This season is well underway, we are nearly 40 games in, a quarter of the way to October.  120 more games to play, plenty of opportunities to pick some winners for the Pickstreak blog.

A quick look at the standings this season and there is more parity around the league early.  The White Sox, Cardinals, Twins and Rockies are winning games.  The Giants, Mets, Red Sox, Phillies and Blue Jays all have losing records on the season. 

The moneylines should be tightened up as a result.  Heavy favorites are starting to look like bad bets but don't be all together fooled. The hot starts by the Cardinals, the Rays, the White Sox, they aren't likely to persist throughout the season.  

There should be some good value on aces against bad teams with winning records.  Namely Tampa and St. Louis.  Look out for Dylan Cease against Tampa.  The Rays play a three-game set with the Blue Jays this week.  Cease starts on Wedneaday.

St. Louis travels to Sacramento, opening a three-game series with the A's on Tuesday.  The A's don't have an ace on their staff but have gotten some good pitching from veterans Jeffrey Springs and Aaron Civale.  Jacob Wilson will miss the series with a shoulder injury and that dampens my outlook some but I still like the A's to win this series.  

Light schedule today, most Mondays teams are traveling after their weekend series.  Only six games on the slate.  The Yanks are losers of three in a row.  The lefty Ryan Weathers gets the start for New York at Camden Yards in Baltimore.  He'll face rookie Brandon Young.  That game is scheduled for 5:45 PM CDT.  

Perhaps a better matchup to ponder is Seattle's George Kirby against Houston's Peter Lambert.  Ill have to do some research on this one but at first glance I like Seattle.  George Kirby has some of the best stuff in MLB and Peter Lambert was pitching in Nippon last season.  Lambert has pitched well early.  I'll dig in some this afternoon to see if I can discover an edge in the splits.  

Interesting night game.  Giants at Dodgers.  It's still the biggest and best rivarly in the NL East.  Giants' rookie Trevor McDonald will be tested after throwing a gem in his debut last week.  Roki Sasaki hasn't been good for LA since arriving from Nippon.  He gets the start for LA.  He should be in the bullpen.  Im fact, he should be on a plane back to Japan.  It could be a good opportunity to bet a dog and rack some plus money.

One more week of preseason, let's see how it goes this week.  I'm going to try and get a full week of posts in this week.  Back this afternoon with Today's Pick.  

Stay tuned.