The San Francisco Giants have shown signs of life over the last week. They still sit at the bottom of the standings, but the Giants are at least playing better as they get set for their weekend series in the nation’s heartland against the NL Central leading St. Louis Cardinals. A couple losses against Boston leading into this series will have the Cardinals needing to bounce back at home where they’ve been worse than they have on the road since the start of 2016.
This series will be contested from Friday, May 19, 2017 through Sunday, May 21, 2017 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Saturday's clash is being shown live on FOX while the games on Friday and Sunday will be shown to those out of the local markets on the MLB Network.
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Pitching Matchups
Matt Moore gets his first start of his career in St. Louis for the Giants on Friday and will match up against Michael Wacha. Both pitchers have shown flashes of pure brilliance in their young career while both have also shown plenty of struggles and inconsistencies.
Questions persist for both arms. For Moore, he’s 2-4 with a 5.67 ERA and 1.543 WHIP this year. Those numbers are simply not good enough. He’s got a career 4.03 ERA painting the picture of a serviceable mid-rotation arm and he’s a former top-prospect, highlighting the immense upside still in that left-arm.
Moore’s last start was encouraging. He went 7.1 innings against a pretty good hitting Reds team, allowing one run, though he did scatter eight hits and three walks. That was just his third quality start this year and, interestingly, it was his third start of at least seven innings and only one run. When it’s good for Moore, it’s very good and when it’s bad, well, it means runs are coming in bunches.
Wacha’s numbers here in 2017 are much more encouraging on a high level. He’s 2-1 with a 3.19 ERA, but he will be making this start having not appeared in a game in 11 days. That was done intentionally to keep him fresh and limit innings due to his recent injury history, but that could allow Wacha to come out rusty, or perhaps too strong.
The Saturday matchup for this series will feature Jeff Samardzija against Carlos Martinez.
Samardzija, like Moore, has been a huge disappointment. He’s 1-5 overall with a 5.26 ERA, but the Giants as a team are 3-1 in his last four starts which haven’t exactly been dominating, but he has delivered three quality starts in those last four outings.
Samardzija’s career numbers at Busch Stadium—which includes a large sample size given his years in Chicago—have been just as mediocre as the rest of his stats. He’s made 10 appearances in St. Louis and has a 4.73 ERA in those outings.
As for Martinez, he’s now the Cardinals’ ace. His month of April was a struggle, but he’s now reeled off three straight wins with the Cards winning each of his last four starts. In May, he’s 3-0 with only six runs and 14 hits allowed in 20 innings.
Martinez is very much a strike out pitcher and can get himself out of jams with a big K. He’s averaging 10.5 Ks per nine.
Finishing up this series will be a couple of aging veterans on the mound. Both Matt Cain and Adam Wainwright have had great years in the past. For Waino, those are more recent than they are for Cain, but it’s Wainwright whose ERA is sitting above five. Cain’s 3-1 record with a 4.04 ERA in eight games has been a pleasant surprise for a rotation in desperate need of just that.
Betting Trends
The Dodgers snapped the Giants five game winning streak on Wednesday night. With Clayton Kershaw on the mound for Los Angeles, it’s to be expected.
While the streak is now dead, the more important consideration is: what exactly does the Giants’ better play over the last week mean?
They’ve won on the power of both pitching and hitting. With the pitching ruling in the Cincinnati series. They won a game 3-2 in 17 innings and then held the Reds to a single run the following night.
In that, the much-maligned bullpen stepped up. Then, this team used back-to-back eight run games by the offense to capture a couple more wins, closing out the Reds’ series and opening a three-game set with the Dodgers.
The offense disappeared again the last two games and the pitching went with it on Wednesday night.
It would seem much more prudent to bet against this offense ranked at the bottom of baseball in runs scored. They’ve shown a game of success here and there, but haven’t gotten off on a roll and even with this latest winning streak only had two good offensive games.
Buster Posey is the only reliable bat. He’s hitting .378 and has a 1.040 OPS, but he can only do so much. Sure, Brandon Belt has been better than average based on his OPS+, but he’s still hitting just .229. Meanwhile, the entire rest of the roster from starters to role players have been well below average. Christian Arroyo looks over matched after a couple good games to start his career. Even Brandon Crawford is hitting a mere .260 with a .290 OBP.
Home Woes
The Cardinals have now lost back-to-back games after getting swept in a two-game set against the Red Sox.
St. Louis is an average team at home, but very good on the road. This team swept its last road trip and took two of three from the Cubs upon returning home before the losses to the Sox.
The Cards are 11-11 at home this year and were 38-43 at home last season.
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