St. Louis vs CINCINNATI
St. Louis -103 over CINCINNATI

BEST LINES: Pinnacle -103 Bet365 -105 SportsInteraction -105 5DIMES -105

Posted at 10:45 AM EST. 

12:35 PM EST. The Cardinals have dropped six in a row including the first three games of this four-game series. The Cards bullpen is overworked, their offense is weak and their stock is low. While we’re generally not in favor of getting behind cold teams, we’ll make an exception here because Mike Leake is an extreme groundball pitcher at a hitter’s park while Scott Feldman is an extreme stiff at a hitter’s park. Thus, when Leake is evenly priced against Feldman, you can pencil us in.

Coming off a rough 2016 campaign, Leake has been terrific over the first 10 weeks of the season. His skills have remained extremely consistent throughout his career (he was pretty unlucky last year) and has been a little fortunate with both his home run per fly ball rate and strand rate so far in 2017. Leake doesn't offer a great deal of upside since his strikeout totals are pretty modest, but he does a great job of limiting both the walks and fly-balls. Leake’s 57% groundball rate is among the best in the game. Mike Leake is not going to dazzle but he’s well on his way to earning significant profits this year and on his worst day, he’s a better option in an evenly priced game than Feldman is. Leake’s 2.64/3.52 ERA/xERA is rock solid.

Scott Feldman spent the vast majority of the 2016 season working out of the bullpen, as he made just five starts on the year. He's back in a starting role in Cincinnati and with a couple other starters on the DL, his grasp on the role is pretty secure for now, which is great for us because we get to fade him for now. Feldman’s swing and miss rate in his last start was 3%. He throws 87 MPH, which works for guys that can locate well but Feldman is not among that group. He’s walked 25 batters and struck out 50 in 62 frames. A 2-1 strikeout to walk ratio is trouble waiting to happen. His swing and miss rate on the year is 6% and his 35% line-drive rate is more signs of trouble looming. We’ve never been terribly enamoured with the starting pitcher version of Scott Feldman and his xERA column (4.75 xERA) tells us not to expect much, ever. With pedestrian stuff, he’s always prone to get blown up, thus our interest level in him remains unchanged. Fade Feldman.

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Our Pick

St. Louis -103 (Risking 2.06 units - To Win: 2.00)

Baltimore -1½ +124 over L.A. Angels
San Francisco +100 over San Diego
Toronto +120 over Tampa Bay
Washington +135 over Cincinnati
San Diego under 83½ -105
Boston under 79½ -110