Friday, June 8th

7:10 Houston @ Chicago White Sox

Friday night marks the beginning of interleague play for most of the teams in the MLB including Houston who will be playing at U.S. Cellular Field against the Chicago White Sox.

On the mound tonight for Houston is Wandy Rodriguez.  He comes into tonight with a 4 – 4 record and a 3.14 ERA on the season.  In his last 5 games he has pitched 31 innings giving up 16 runs for an ERA of 4.65.  This includes his last outing which he was roughed up pretty good against the Cincinnati Reds on June 2^nd where he gave up 7 earned runs in 5 innings.  That has by far been his worst outing with the worst being 4 earned runs before June 2^nd.  We should see Wandy Rodriguez get back to what he was doing before these last two games and pitch a great game tonight against the Chicago White Sox.

Gavin Floyd is the starting pitcher for the Chicago White Sox tonight.  Floyd has had a rough year with a 4- 5 record and a 5.32 ERA.  These stats hide the downward trend the Floyd is on track for.  In his last five games he has pitched 27 1/3 innings giving up 26 runs for an ERA of 8.56.  This includes a start with 7 2/3 innings pitched and no earned runs against the Kansas City Royals on May 11^th.  If you take that game out of the equation his ERA balloons to an 11.90.  Needless to say it looks like Gavin Floyd is losing his composure in these last few games and we should expect to see the slide continue tonight.

There are some concerns on the game and is the reasoning on posting this as an Underdog Special.  First of all, it’s Houston.  They are not a great team, with a record of almost 10 games below .500 we should not expect them to come into Chicago and take a Friday night game from a resurgent Chicago White Sox club that find themselves in the top of the division by 1.5 games.  The thing we do find in this game is value and that is the key.  To break even with a team that is at +135 we only need to hit 42.55% of our bets.  My expectations when releasing an Underdog Special is to go .500.  I find that with that type of winning percentage we will still be able to pick up some units on pure value from the teams.

Projected score: Houston 8 – Chicago White Sox 4

Pick: Underdog Special, Houston (+135)