Friday MLB Best Bet: Mets vs. Nationals

Written by Jake Thompson
Friday, 02 September 2011 03:20

The Mets and Nationals’ game on Friday has been selected as the MLB best bet of the day.

Friday’s MLB best bet between the Washington Nationals (63-72) and the New York Mets (66-69) is a good one to wager on, and I believe there is plenty of value in these odds.  The Nationals are at home and listed as tiny -106 favorites with the total set at 8 runs.  Although Washington has a strong 37-28 record at home, New York’s 36-33 road mark is not to be frowned upon.

These National League East teams meet up frequently and the home team has won 5 of the last 6 head-to-head meetings.  It hasn’t been that way all season however, with the road team winning 4 of the first 5 meetings this year.  The over was a winner in those first 5 games while the under has taken the money in 5 of the last 6.

Starting pitchers for today’s game will be right-hander R.A. Dickey (6-11, 1.26 WHIP, 3.57 ERA) going for the Mets and left-hander Ross Detwiler (2-4, 1.36 WHIP, 2.86 ERA) taking the mound for the Nationals.  These starters have been particularly sharp over the course of their last 3 starts, with Dickey’s 2.21 ERA over that time barely besting the nearly-as-impressive 2.41 ERA that Detwiler has amassed.

One problem that New York will run into here is their poor .245 average against southpaws this season.  The Mets haven’t hit well all season long but have shown a small amount of life lately while hitting .262 over their last 10 games.  Unfortunately for the underdogs is the fact that they’ve hit just .200 against lefties during that recent span of games.

The Nationals have hit .250 over their last 10 and are just not a high-scoring team.  Washington has scored a total of 11 runs over their last 5 games against the Mets and their .236 average this season doesn’t instill much confidence in their offensive output here.  The good news for the Nationals is that their bullpen (1.23 WHIP, 3.20 ERA) is fairly reliable while the Mets’ relief pitchers (1.39 WHIP, 4.15 ERA) have been erratic at best.

Detwiler makes the most of the Nationals’ home confines and he’s usually only hurt when teams start to clobber home runs off of him.  The Mets aren’t that type of squad and I have to believe that Washington is the play here.  Dickey has a strong history against the Nationals but he also only goes about 6 innings each time out while allowing 2 or 3 runs.  New York’s bullpen is good for some late runs and that should be all we need to seal the deal.

Mets 2

Nationals 6