The New York Mets and Washington Nationals series picks up at1 pmEastern, with Mets knuckleballer RA Dickey looking to become the majors’ first nine game winner of 2012
Dickey is tied with Philadelphia’s Cole Hamels and St. Louis right-hander Lance Lynn for the Major League lead in wins. Dodgers Chris Capuano also has eight wins after yesterday’s 6-5 win
Things were going well for the Mets last week. They’d won nine of 12 games, cracked the top 10 in scoring and moved into a tie atop the National League East standings. Then Monday hit like a bag of hammers.
New York lost the finale with St. Louis and suddenly finds themselves in a three-game slide, their third of the season. Washington has opened a two-game lead in the East and with the Subway Series on-deck; the Mets need a win to prevent slipping off the map.
ON THE HILL
RA Dickey (8-1, 2.69 ERA) has been the solution to three small losing streaks this season and he is 3-1 on the road with a 4.45 ERA but the Nationals have caused problems for him. In nine career starts, the righty is 2-4 and including a 1-3 record last season. New York only provided five total runs during his three losses and this year they’ve given Dickey 4.91 runs per game (RPG), but the Mets have now lost eight of nine to Washington.
Chien-Ming Wang (1-1, 6.43 ERA) gets the call for Washington and he struggled in his first start at Miami, giving up four runs in four innings of work. Wang is 2-2 lifetime vs. the Mets with a 4.99 ERA and last year gave up six earned runs in nine innings against New York. He lasted just four innings in an 8-5 loss at Nationals Park.
CAPPERS CORNER
Baseball odds opened at Mets -115 and sports betting shops currently offer New York -126 and 7.5 OV -119. New York is 17-9 in day games and has a 24-12 record against right-handers but they’ll need to play sharper defense. New York is tied for the fourth-most errors in the league (45) including five during the first two games of this series.
The wind is 6 mph out to right and home plate umpire Brian Knight has a slight bias to the over the past five years (39-35-1 O/U), with NL games averaging 9.3 RPG. The road team is 7-1 in Knight’s past eight games and his last 15 road favorites are 10-5.