July 25 – When the first pitch is thrown in the Detroit Tigers vs. Cleveland Indians Wednesday night MLB matchup, the Tigers will be trying to reverse a troubling trend…non-stop losing.
After peeling off an impressive string of 10 straight wins over the Indians, Detroit has stumbled badly, losing six of their last seven vs. this AL Central rival. That includes last night’s 3-2 defeat in the series opener. So, what’s up?
Truthfully, not much…chalk it up to more of a statistical aberration more than a strong trend of the Tigers not being able to beat the Indians. The fact is, Detroit’s been playing very good ball and although Cleveland has hung a few losses on them lately, the record will start to even out.
We think that “evening out” starts tonight. The Tigers hand the ball to Max Scherzer, who boasts a 3-0 mark (2.88 ERA) in his last four starts. He was in particularly fine form in his last start, whiffing nine and only giving up a single run in a 5-1 win over the Angels. Worth noting is that game marked the seventh time this season Scherzer has struck out nine or more. We are a bit worried about his road numbers (4.99 ERA), but we’ll accept that risk in this one.
He’ll go up against a less-than-imposing Derek Lowe, who has struggled pretty much all season. Lowe’s ERA is approaching double digits in his last 10 starts (8.31 to be exact).
In this setup, we like the fact the Tigers lost last night and now get a clear pitching edge. We’re looking for the Tiger lineup to give Lowe some real problems.
MLB Picks: We are taking the Detroit Tigers, laying the -1 run (with Pinnacle Sports), clearing off most of the juice to make this a reasonable price.
The pick is Detroit -1 (-113).
Good luck and be sure to join us in our Sports Handicapping Forum