[yisman]

Pittsburgh Pirates @ St. Louis Cardinals OVER 8.5 (5 Dimes)

The line has dropped in the early markets, to the point at which 8’s are becoming available, or at worst 8.5’s or no vig or a plus return. That is a very low bar for this setting, and we will take full advantage.

Although it took a big ninth inning from the Pirates to push last night’s game over the Total, when the counting was done the teams combined for 21 hits, eight walks, two batters hit by a pitch, and three errors, with 22 runners being left on base. We can expect more of the same tonight – neither Ian Snell nor Kyle Lohse bring any kind of dominating stuff to the table, and both the bullpens and the defenses rival the worst in the National League.

It is the defensive play that is not being factored properly here. The Pirates were 28th in the Major Leagues on our best set of ratings LY, with little reason to expect improvement, and while the Cardinals were actually a little better than average these are much different gloves now. A genuine case could be made that St. Louis currently sports the worst defensive lineup in The Show, especially if Skip Schumacher (six spring training errors) makes his debut at 2B tonight. That is going to cause problems for Lohse, who needs every bit of that defensive support to be successful, since he is not going to throw the ball by many hitters (only 5.35 K’s per 9 LY). And even more problems for Tony LaRussa’s “bullpen by committee”, which already saw Jason Motte implode in last night’s disaster in the 9th.

We do not need an offensive explosion here – if each team scratches out four runs it is mission accomplished, and that is not asking for much at all in what should be a sloppy affair.