[clownpuncher]

Dave Malinsky

4* Orlando/Philly Under

[yisman]

He also has SF/Arizona OVER.

It is going to be a nice “summer” day in San Francisco, with the first pitch temperature in the upper 70's and a slight breeze blowing out to right field. That does not call for the cheap “8’s” that the betting markets reduced this game to in the early trading (you should be able to find one at no worse than -105).

Randy Johnson is off to an 0-2/11.42 start, and at this stage we have to wonder if that is all that there is left. He last only 8.2 innings through those two games, laboring through 175 pitches to merely get that far, and Mike Cameron, Yovani Gallardo (!), Orlando Hudson and Andre Ethier have already homered against him. And while his statistics were decent LY take note of how they got put together – of the 95 pitchers that worked at least 150 innings, his difficulty of batters faced was dead last at #95 (as always, we use On Base + Slugging as our preferred measure). Now he faces a lineup that is most familiar with his ways, and he will have a difficult time getting deep into this one. That opens the door against a mediocre Giant bullpen, one that also has particular late-game issues with closer Brian Wilson already throwing 41 pitches in working each game of this series.

Arizona counters with hard-throwing Max Scherzer, for a while. But maybe not for long. Scherzer only got 8.2 innings of work in the Cactus League, and went 4.2 in a AAA start and five frames in his lone outing with the Diamondbacks. That does not have him anywhere near the kind of rhythm and conditioning needed to make more than a couple of passes through a lineup, and note that he has yet to pitch beyond the 6th inning in his Major League career.

There are multiple ways to win this one – hitters that have been had-cuffed so far in this series can get some good early swings in the warm conditions against the fastballs that they are going to see, but even if Johnson and Scherzer can be effective at the start we do not expect either to be around when the 7th inning takes place. That means late opportunities against middle relief corps that are unimposing, and it does not ask us for much at all to top this low Total.