{"id":14714,"date":"2011-04-06T14:33:42","date_gmt":"2011-04-06T19:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14714"},"modified":"2011-04-06T14:33:42","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T19:33:42","slug":"mlb-picks-boston-red-sox-at-cleveland-indians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/mlb-picks-boston-red-sox-at-cleveland-indians-14714\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Picks: Boston Red Sox at Cleveland Indians"},"content":{"rendered":"

Boston Red Sox AT Cleveland Indians<\/strong>
\nApril 6, 2011 at 7:05 PM EST<\/strong>
\nRunline: Bos -1.5 (+105), Cle +1.5 (-125)<\/strong>
\nOpening Moneyline:\u00a0 Bos -155 \/ Cle +135<\/strong>
\nCurrent Moneyline:\u00a0 Bos -156 \/ Cle +146<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 9<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total: 9<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Matsuzaka is projected to improve his ERA by 0.47 this year according to Baseball Prospectus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For all the World Series aspirations, the Red Sox aren’t looking even like a playoff team at this point.\u00a0 Struggling along at 0-4, they are still favored by Vegas Oddsmakers, but even manager Terry Francona is frustrated at this point.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not a lot of fun,\u201d said Francona. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think anyone is going to feel sorry for us. We\u2019ve got to play the game right and things will work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The season began with Boston being unable to stop the Rangers from scoring, giving up 21 runs in the first two games.\u00a0 The offense was fair, but a team can’t win regularly giving up that many runs.<\/p>\n

Now the hitting has fallen off.\u00a0 The Red Sox had only 4 hits off Josh Tomlin and are batting a woeful .186 on the season, worse than the 0-5 Astros.\u00a0 Boston’s big signing Carl Crawford is struggling since getting his first two hits and is now 2 of 15 from the plate, with 6 of those 13 outs having been strikeouts.\u00a0 He also has no steals so far.\u00a0 \u201cWe need some kind of spark right now,\u201d Crawford said. \u201cIt\u2019s a little surprising, frustrating. We\u2019ve got high hopes for this season.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tonight the Red Sox do have one good thing going for them:\u00a0 Diasuke Matsuzaka.\u00a0 “Dice K” went 9-6 last season with a 4.69 ERA.\u00a0 Coming off of a loss last season, Matsuzaka was 5-1.\u00a0 Even better, against the Indians last year he gave up only one run over 16 innings to take both starts and continue his dominance over the Indians.\u00a0 His 4-1 record & 2.34 ERA against Cleveland has been testament to how much Cleveland players struggle against Matsuzaka and the other top right handed pitchers in the league.\u00a0 Matsuzaka’s PECOTA projections are 11-9 with a 4.22 ERA, a marked improvement in ERA over last season, but still nowhere near the 18-3 2.90 ERA dominance of 2008.<\/p>\n

Depite only getting 5 hits Tuesday, Cleveland managed to win, aided by Orlando Cabrera, Jack Hannahan and Carlos Santana driving in runs.\u00a0 \u201cFor us every team is the same,\u201d Cabrera said. \u201cCertainly they have great players over there and it seems like they\u2019re off to a slow start. We didn\u2019t play different. We played hard, scored runs and played good defense, and hopefully we can keep doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The total has gone OVER in 6 of Boston’s last 8 games and they are 1-4 SU in their last 5 games.\u00a0 Boston is 0-5 SU in their last 5 on the road and they are 2-5 SU in their last 7 games against the Cleveland Indians.\u00a0 Boston is also 17-8 SU in their last 25 against the Indians.<\/p>\n

Cleveland is 2-4 SU in their last 6 games and they are 9-4 SU in their last 13 games.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER In 12 of their last 17 games at home and they are 8-2 SU in their last 10 at home.\u00a0 Cleveland is 8-17 SU in their last 25 against the Red Sox and they are 5-2 SU in their last 7 games against Boston.<\/p>\n

Vegas and most baseball pundits realize that Matsuzaka makes Boston an easy favorite in this game.\u00a0 Despite the fact that the Red Sox are winless, having a stud pitcher on the mound that has a good track record against the team in question is a formula for snapping out of their slump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Boston Red Sox AT Cleveland Indians April 6, 2011 at 7:05 PM EST Runline: Bos -1.5 (+105), Cle +1.5 (-125) Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 Bos -155 \/ Cle +135 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 Bos -156 \/ Cle +146 Opening Total: 9 Current Total: 9 For all the World Series aspirations, the Red Sox aren’t looking even like a playoff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":4472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[69,57],"class_list":["post-14714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-cleveland-indians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14714"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14716,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14714\/revisions\/14716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}