{"id":16043,"date":"2011-06-09T13:31:13","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T18:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=16043"},"modified":"2011-06-09T13:31:13","modified_gmt":"2011-06-09T18:31:13","slug":"happs-home-saint-louis-faces-houston-in-last-game-of-3-game-set-betting-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/happs-home-saint-louis-faces-houston-in-last-game-of-3-game-set-betting-preview-16043\/","title":{"rendered":"Happ’s Home: Saint Louis Faces Houston in Last Game of 3 Game Set – Betting Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint Louis Cardinals (37-26) AT Houston Astros (24-38)<\/strong>
\nJune 9, 2011 at 8:05 PM EST<\/strong>
\nOpening Line:\u00a0 STL -125, HOU +105<\/strong>
\nCurrent Line:\u00a0 STL -114, HOU -105<\/strong>
\nOpening Total: 8.5<\/strong>
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 8.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

SP- STL: Lance Lynn; HOU: J.A. Happ<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Happ went 1-1 last season against Saint Louis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Houston came out to surprise the Cardinals on Wednesday night when Bud Norris carried a no hitter into the 7th inning, before allowing a Lance Berkman home run.\u00a0 It was the only run that the Cardinals scored, as Norris improved to 4-4 on the year.<\/p>\n

Lance Berkman compared Norris to Roger Clemens “with his aggressiveness and mound presence…That’s about as high of praise as I can give somebody.”<\/p>\n

Mark Melancon picked up the save opportunity in the win and it snapped a four game Cardinals’ winning streak.<\/p>\n

Tony La Russa didn’t see any mystery in the loss.\u00a0 “We got outplayed and outpitched, so they won the game.”\u00a0 It really doesn’t boil down to much less than that does it, La Russa?<\/p>\n

Since his win against the Mets on May 14th, J.A. Happ has gone 0-3, despite a fairly decent 3.13 ERA over that stretch.\u00a0 Over his last four appearances he is receiving 1.75 runs per game.\u00a0 He gave up only 3 runs in 6 innings last Friday against the Padres, but once again the Astros provided him with only 1 run.<\/p>\n

At home, Happ is 1-1 against the Cardinals with a 1.29 ERA.\u00a0 He threw a 2-hitter in the 3-0 shutout on August 30th.\u00a0 It was only Happ’s third career shutout.<\/p>\n

Lance Lynn hopes to improve on his disgusting 8.44 ERA for Houston.\u00a0 He’s only making his second major league start.\u00a0 On Thursday against the Giants he retired the first 10 batters and then proceeded to give up 5 runs in the next 5 1\/3rds inning, the reason for his ERA, of course.\u00a0 He was just happy to put the debut behind him.\u00a0 “I felt good and it’s good to get it (his first game) under my belt.”<\/p>\n

Lynn, despite his impressive frame, does not really rely on power.\u00a0 He capped off his minor league career last year with a 16 strikeout game, but his fastball is in the low 90s.\u00a0 Baseball Prospectus compared his upside to that of a “fourth starter,” so we’ll see how accurate that prediction may stand to be given that this is only his second major league start.\u00a0\u00a0 Baseball Prospectus also predicted a 4.39 ERA, but it’s way too early to guess if that is any where near correct, either.<\/p>\n

Some betting trends:<\/p>\n

The Saint Louis Cardinals are 4-1 SU in their last 5 games and the total has gone OVER in 15 of their last 23 on the road.\u00a0 The Cardinals are 7-3 SU in their last 10 on the road, while they have gone 5-1 SU in their last 6 in Houston.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER in 4 of the Cardinals’ last 5 games on the road against the Houston Astros.<\/p>\n

Houston is 1-4 SU in their last 5 games and the total has gone OVER in 4 of their last 6 games.\u00a0 It has also gone OVER in 8 of their last 11 at home and the Astros are 1-4 SU in their last 5 at home.\u00a0 The Astros are 1-5 SU in their last 6 games against the Saint Louis Cardinals and the total has gone OVER in 4 of the last 5 home games against Saint Louis.<\/p>\n

Given Happ’s success against the Cardinals last season, Houston looks good as an underdog bet in this game.\u00a0 Lynn is still inexperienced and it could leave the Cardinals vulnerable.\u00a0 This is all of course assuming that Happ gets any run support at all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saint Louis Cardinals (37-26) AT Houston Astros (24-38) June 9, 2011 at 8:05 PM EST Opening Line:\u00a0 STL -125, HOU +105 Current Line:\u00a0 STL -114, HOU -105 Opening Total: 8.5 Current Total:\u00a0 8.5 SP- STL: Lance Lynn; HOU: J.A. Happ Houston came out to surprise the Cardinals on Wednesday night when Bud Norris carried a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":15555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[1039,4834],"class_list":["post-16043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-houston-astros","tag-saint-louis-cardinals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043","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=16043"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16045,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16043\/revisions\/16045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}