Free Mlb Pick - August 14, 2008

We split our picks yesterday to finish 3-3 for a .5-unit loss. Today we fire-back with four more picks.

Today's MLB Baseball Picks:

Game: Tampa Bay at Oakland (3:35 PM Eastern)
Pick: 3 units on Tampa Bay -138 (moneyline) (risk 3 to win 2.2)

Until there is a NY logo or a B logo on the caps of the Rays, this team will continue to offer value. If the Red Sox or the Yankees were on the road represented by a 72-47 record, this moneyline would be substantially higher than this. Oakland remains a team that has become hitless, and has bred loss after loss, after maintaining wildcard thoughts for the first half of the season. The A's have sunk to new lows and the end looks likely in October when the golf clubs replace the baseball bats. The A's are just 4-22 over their last 26 games and have truly mailed it in. This is an offense that hasn't been north of four runs scored in 15 consecutive games. Worse than that, they have produced just two runs or less in 11 of the last 15. You aren’t going to find the win column with that kind of offensive production. The Rays have even begun to win on the road where they have now cashed eight of their last 12, and we will ride the value in this one and take the Rays over the A's on the road.

We love the value on this moneyline as the oddsmakers have put way too much emphasis on Jake Peavy here. The fact is that the Padres are a team winning at a rate of just 38.3% of their games. How much does Peavy add to the overall performance of his team? There is simply no value. The Padres are 8-12 in Peavy's 20 starts on the season, or a 40% win rate against 38.3% overall. Milwaukee is one of the hottest teams in baseball, winners of eight straight games, scoring seven runs a game, with not a single game under five runs during the winning streak. Ben Sheets negates anything that Peavy provides the Padres. He has allowed two runs over his last 15 innings of work, and on the season the Brewers are winning better than two of every three games he starts. The Brewers get the call here.

One thing about Washington is that they have their moments during the course of the season where they string some surprises together, but when they go bad, they really go bad. They are bad right now. The Nats are in the doldrums of a seven-game losing streak. Once the losing starts with this team it seems endless. Their latest losing skid has reached nine-games, and they've reached a nine-game losing streak earlier in the season as well. That leaves the Nats 0-12 in their last 12 games against teams with a winning record and 9-33 in their last 42. So we look at the odds posted here at 1.5 to 1 and salivate as the reality is they have cashed about one in four in this type of matchup. The reality is that as the season has gone on, even less than that. The Mets for the road win.

These teams are about as evenly matched as it gets. Both teams have similar home and away marks with St. Louis taking two of the first three, it sure seems fitting that evenly matched teams will split a four-game series. The Marlins have been a good team all season with a matchup of two average pitchers where the total is in the range of 8.5 to 10. They have been 55-40 in this scenario, and an even better 44-26 when the total either nine or 9.5. They have also become a much better team the longer they have been on a home stand, as they have turned-in a 28-15 mark from their fourth game on during a home stand. Olsen has also been at his best against teams from the NL Central, where the Marlins own a 16-4 mark in his starts. The only thing that looks even after further analysis is the moneyline, so we will take the Marlins who have several valued trends for this one.

Results: 2-2

MLB Baseball Picks Resources:

• View baseball picks blog here.
• Check out our updated MLB odds lines and spreads.
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• Check out our updated 2008 baseball prior pick season results.
• Here we show our 2008 season baseball handicapping preview.
• Read our betting baseball here.
• Hop over to our mlb handicapping here.
• View our updated sports betting mlb.
• View Baseball Game-of-Day-Preview here.
• Don't forget to visit our MLB prior predictions.

Check out the last five MLB Baseball Picks Newsletters:

MLB-Baseball-Picks-August-13-2008
This game is about who's hot and who's not. The Birds certainly aren't the hot team coming into this one. They have dropped three straight including the first two in this series. They have...

MLB-Baseball-Picks-August-12-2008
No one could have predicted that Kyle Lohse would be sitting at 13-4 for the Cardinals at this point. The Cards took a flier on him as a free agent and it has paid huge dividends for them. Lohse had a...

MLB-Baseball-Picks-August-11-2008
If the Nats were going to steal one in this series they missed their opportunity. They took a 4-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth, and ended up on the losing end, dropping their third straight here...

MLB-Baseball-Picks-August-10-2008
We were on the Red Sox last night as they notched the win. We're flipping over to Chicago for game three in this four game series. Yesterday's loss was costly for Chicago as they lost Jose Con...

MLB-Baseball-Picks-August-09-2008
It is hard to pass this one up. As good as Roy Halladay has been of late, Paul Byrd has been even better. Byrd is pitching to a 0.90 ERA over his last three starts and getting this kind of dog value w...