Thursday, June 7th

6:10 Atlanta @ Miami

Thursday night is the last game of the series for the Atlanta Braves and Miami Marlins.  Atlanta has won the two previous games in this series and are 3 – 1 in the 2012 season.  Tonight Miami is in hopes of preventing the sweep with Mark Buehrle on the mound against Mike Minor for the Atlanta Braves.

Mark Buehrle comes into tonight with a 5 – 5 record and a 3.53 ERA.  He has pitched better as of late with a 3 – 1 record in his last five starts.  His ERA during that same period has been a little higher with a 4.41 ERA.  Buehrle has benefited greatly from the bats of the Miami Marlins.  He has been giving up some runs, but the offense seems to pick it up with Buehrle on the mound.  Miami on a whole has been a lot better as of late going 10 – 6 in their last 16 games against good competition.  They took the series against Philadelphia and swept a strong Washington team in their last two series.

The real story is going to be the pitcher in the other dugout: Mike Minor.  Minor has had some rough starts as of late.  In his last five starts he has had a 9.95 ERA while only pitching an average of 5 innings of work per starting.  One of those last five starts was against the Miami Marlins at home and in that start he gave up six runs in 4 2/3 innings.   In fact, the last time that Mike Minor has had an outing giving up less than 4 runs is all the way back on April 24^th when Atlanta was at the Los Angeles Dodgers. Since Minor has not been able to go into the later innings it has also stretched the bullpen during his starts giving up 8 runs in his last 5 starts.

Tonight we should expect the same play that has been true for by both clubs.  Minor will continue to struggle finding any consistency in his pitching and will allow Miami to jump starts their offense.  Miami will still surrender a few runs to Atlanta, but it will not be enough to make back the hole that was created by them earlier. Miami will not want to lose too much ground on a strong NL East and will need a victory to help avoid losing second place in the division to Atlanta.

Projected score: Atlanta 4 – Miami 6

Pick: Good Play Miami (-132)