MLB Baseball Betting: Dodgers vs. Nationals Prediction: April 23rd 2010

Los Angeles Dodgers vs. Washington Nationals
Free Pick: Under 10 Runs
Courtesy of Mike Rose (Handicapperspicks.com)
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The Los Angeles Dodgers look to even up their record when they head east to the nation’s capitol for the second stop of their nine-game east coast road trip to face the Washington Nationals.

Though the Dodgers outscored the Cincinnati Reds 28-25 in the set, the lost the series 2-1. Mostly to blame for the series loss was the LA’s starting pitching staff that failed to get a real quality start in any of the three games. After posting a league leading staff ERA of 3.41 a year ago, the Dodgers starting unit has posted a whopping 5.52 ERA to date (#27/30).

Since dropping five of its first eight games to start the season, The Nationals have tallied victories in five of their next eight games played. They do however come off a loss on Thursday after they were shut down by Colorado starter Ubaldo Jimenez; the defeat earned them a split in the four-game series.

Knuckleballer Charlie Haeger gets the starting nod from manager Joe Torre for the third time this season tonight; the start will be his first career look at the Nats.

With Jason Marquis relegated to the DL after proving to be largely ineffective to start the year, Washington will call upon its farm and bring up Luis Altilano to make his MLB debut.

The 24-year old is considered to be one of the organization’s top minor-league pitchers.

The Dodgers and Nationals have been two of the best over MLB betting teams in the league throughout the first three weeks of the season. LA sports a 13-2 ATS mark towards the over, while Washington stands 10-6 ATS on the year.

That said; both line-ups will be without some of its major firepower as both LF Manny Ramirez and 3B Ryan Zimmerman won’t give it a go as they deal with nagging injuries.

Haeger can be a tough nut to crack for teams that have never seen his stuff before, and Atilano is an unknown commodity coming in.

Look for both of these hurlers to have both offenses guessing through the first two turns of the order and for both bullpens to actually have some success in the later innings.

Expecting this to be a high scorer is giving me the “Fools Gold vibe” with every freaking trend screaming to back the over. Buck the trend and look for a low scorer.

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