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The St. Louis Cardinals have shown the kind of fortitude that has made them immune to the loss of Albert Pujols, Chris Carpenter, and others over the last couple of seasons.
As Price Per head bettors know, they have hardly missed a beat under Mike Matheny after the retirement of Tony LaRussa. With 97 wins, they led the National League, The 97-game winners in the American League, the Boston Red Sox, dumped salaries toward the tail end of the 2012 season, then dumped their manager. With all of that, they started fresh in 2013 and stormed to the AL pennant, setting up a World Series between two of baseball's storied franchises.
In the Price Per Head baseball betting odds that are currently posted at WagerHome.com, the Red Sox, who have the home field advantage by virtue of the AL's win in this year's All-Star Game, are the favorites:
To Win World Series (Best of Seven)
Boston Red Sox -135
St. Louis Cardinals +115
The first game is Wednesday night at 8:05 PM ET, with the Red Sox and Jon Lester a -124 favorite over Adam Wainwright and the Cards (+104).
The objective of the Red Sox would seem pretty simple. They would like to wear down the opposing pitcher and exploit the other team's bullpen. They love to do that, and in fact, they saw far more pitches than any other team in the major leagues.
Meanwhile, they also would ideally like to get into the situation where it comes down to the proficiency of their closer.
That closer has rapidly become one of the best in the business. And who would have thought that could be the case after injuries knocked out two All-Stars, Joel Hanrahan and Andrew Bailey, who were supposed to get that done? The guy who came to the rescue was Koji Uehara, the 38-year-old who starred in Japan, was a former starting pitcher in the majors, then moved into a setup role and was inserted into the closer's spot and promptly set the world on fire. As WagerHome.com customers know, Uehara has been close to unhittable, allowing two earned runs in his last 58 innings. He has posted a WHIP ratio of 0.57, which is the lowest in baseball history for anyone with 50 or more innings pitched.
The thing is, to make Uehara a real factor in the game, you have to, more often that not, get a very good outing out of your starter, to put you in a situation where you're ahead. Can Boston get there? The Red Sox don't have a bad rotation at all; they got very good efforts from Jon Lester in Game 1 of the ALCS and John Lackey in Game 3. But in this post-season that rotation has a 4.29 ERA. That doesn't put these guys in the "stopper" category.
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The Cardinals have a couple of starting pitchers who have been absolute dynamite. Adam Wainwright, the Game 1 starter and baseball betting underdog at WagerHome.com, has allowed four earned runs and 19 hits in his last 28-1/3 innings, and he could have led the cards to their eighth straight win with him on the mound if not for the fact that Hyun-Jin Ryu was so brilliant for the Dodgers in Game 3 of the NLCS. Wainwright's regular season record was 19-9 with a 2.94 ERA, which will make him one of the top vote-getters for the Cy Young Award that is expected to go to Clayton Kershaw.
Then there's Michael Wacha, the towering right-hander out of Texas A&M who made nine major league starts in the regular season and has blown by everyone in the playoffs. Wacha has allowed eight hits and one earned run in 21 innings. And if you want to extend that a little further, when you include his last regular season start, he has now permitted nine hits in 29-2/3 innings. That's called dominance, as any WagerHome.com sportsbook customer can tell you.
The potential problem that the Red Sox want to create is the possibility of "breaking serve" on either of those guys in one or both of these first two games at Fenway Park, because then they can get to the more ordinary people in the rotation, like Joe Kelly and Lance Lynn. If they can see more pitches, they may be able to minimize the impact of those top two Cardinal starters, and that could constitute their edge. And folks, that is probably why they are the favorites in PPH baseball betting at WagerHome.
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