At least as a Yankee fan I can say that I think they are because the Yanks swept them for the season. Also...they gave up a 12-2 lead to Oakland of all teams.
Phillies -130
Risking 2.6 units to win 2 units
Former Athletics face off in this one. Blanton has been outstanding lately. And so have the Phillies. To get them at such a cheap price is insane. The Phillies have won 9 in a row and 13 of their last 14. The Cubs had won 4 in a row coming into this series but that was against the Nationals so you can't really praise them for that. On to Harden. He seems to not be able to string nice starts together. In his last 10 starts, he had an outing where he gave up 2 runs just to give up 4 in his next start. After that he gave up another 2, but then 6 after that. 2 starts later...he shut down the Pirates and gave up 1 run, that was followed by 7 runs against the Brewers, then 4 against the Cards. Most recently he shut out the Nationals. Lets see...Nationals...Phillies. Who has the better offense? I'll take the Phillies. And the Phillies have hit righties at a .307 clip in their last 10(excluding Monday's game). Gotta go with the hottest team in baseball.
Mets/Nationals Under 9 -105
Risking 2.1 units to win 2 units
Despite the early scoring by the Mets in Monday's game, the total still went under. That makes the under 8-1-1 this season. And some of those games had the big hitters in it too. Now Perez has been pitching decent since coming off the DL. Not awful though. As for Lannan, I don't need to get into that. We all know he's a solid pitcher at home with his 2.25 ERA and he also loves pitching against his hometown team the Mets. He has a 3.21 ERA in 14 innings against them this season, both games going under. Now the Mets have not scored 5+ runs in back to back games since June 21st and 22nd against the Rays and Cards where they score 6 runs in each of those games, but in the game against the Rays, they had Beltran(who although didn't get any RBIs, he is still a threat in the lineup), and of course both games had Sheffield. And to top it off, Lannan has pitched to 14 unders and only 5 overs this season.
Athletics -130 (POD)
Risking 3.9 units to win 3 units
Braden is a great pitcher. Only twice in his 19 starts has he given up more than 3 earned runs. He gave up 6 to the Jays way back on May 16th, and had his worst outing where he gave up 6 runs at home to the Angels. You have to believe he wants revenge and to bounce back, especially seeing that he pitched that poorly at home. And you have to feel for Swarzak. He was called up, pitched well, sent back down, called back up, was about to go back down until Slowey went to the DL so he'll be staying up for a while. The question is...how long can he last? His career high, pitches wise, is only 103. After Monday's wonderful game, we know the Twins' bullpen consists of Joe Nathan and thats about it. And as you always hear, you sleep so much better at night after a win like this and can't sleep after a loss like this. Especially the way the Twins lose with Morneau being called out at home when he was clearly safe. I think the Twins come out sluggish and won't recover from that loss and take another one here.
2nd Half
14-5 +20.35 units
3-2 POD +3.35
BOL All. Have A Great Day.