Baseball Betting: Phillies vs. Rays Odds & Predictions: June 24th 2009

Philadelphia Phillies vs. Tampa Bay Rays u9.0 (105) - Wed June 24th 2009 7:05p
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RHP Joe Blanton gets the starting nod from manager Charlie Manuel on Wednesday evening. The righty was touched up for four runs in 5.1 innings pitched against Toronto in his last outing, but it was really his worst outing in about a month. Though the Phillies haven’t won any of Blanton’s L/3 starts, they had won six of his previous seven before that. Since a rough month of April, Blanton has settled down dramatically. He is 4-1 with a 4.15 ERA and a 1.26 WHIP. Save for walking six Nats on May 15th, the righty hasn’t walked more than two batters in a game since April 27th, and he has a fantastic K/9 ratio of 7.87 for the season. Blanton hasn’t had much luck against the Rays in his career though, as he owns a 6.05 ERA in eight career starts.

Manager Joe Maddon will look to get back in the win column with arguably his strongest pitcher, RHP Matt Garza. Garza is only 4-5 on the season and hasn’t won a game since May 16th, but he also has only gotten more than three runs of support from his team once in that stretch. In fact, that “4” is the magic number for the Rays when Garza is on the hill. They are 6-0 this year when scoring at least four runs for the righty, but 0-8 when they don’t. After two straight seasons where the home run ball wasn’t an issue, the righty has been lit up for eight dingers in his L/5 starts, which has Maddon very concerned. Still, he’s primarily a ground ball pitcher, and has a very low WHIP (1.20) and opposing batting average (.216) to show for it.

Both arms have the ability of throwing a lot of donuts on the board in a hurry, so expect to see runs in this game be at a premium, particularly off of the starters. Garza has only had one of his L/9 starts go over the ‘total’, and that streak should stay intact tonight against a team that couldn’t hit its way out of a paper bag before exploding for ten runs last night.