jeff benton
0-2 yesterday...17-20-1 MINUS 110 dimes since my debut...win one day, lose the next, ridiculous handicapper right now..he upgraded from horrible to bad.
tonight Giants -1.5 runs +110.
Tuesday's Action 15 Dime: GIANTS on the run-line (- 1 1/2 runs vs. Pirates) ... NOTE: List Matt Cain (San Francisco) and Paul Maholm (Pirates) as the starting pitchers. If either does NOT start, this play is VOID!
Giants (-1½ runs)
Credit the Giants for taking advantage of a soft schedule to begin the season. They swept the crappy Astros to start the year, then took two of three at home against the Braves (who didn’t have Chipper Jones the entire series), then kicked off a three-game series against the Pirates with Monday’s easy 9-3 victory.
It’s not just that San Francisco is 6-1 to start the season, which is impressive in and of itself. But the Giants are crushing opponents, with five of the six wins coming by multiple runs (only exception was a 5-4 extra-inning win over Atlanta). And in their six wins, the Giants have outscored the opposition 38-16.
Expected to struggle offensively, San Francisco is averaging 5.7 runs per game and batting .294 as a team, including .339 against left-handed pitching (tonight, they face mediocre southpaw Paul Maholm). And of course the pitching staff, anchored my two-time reigning Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum, has lived up to its billing, posting a 2.82 team ERA.
Tonight, former All-Star Matt Cain takes the ball for the second time this season and faces a Pirates offense that has gone cold since a season-opening 11-5 win over the Dodgers. Pittsburgh has scored just 22 runs in its last six games, losing four of the last five. And look at the final scores of those four defeats: 10-2, 9-1, 15-6 and 9-3. In fact, the Pirates enter this game with a 7.82 team ERA!
Back to Cain. He had one tough inning at Houston in his season opener, but still pitched decently, giving up four runs (three earned) on six hits with no walks and five strikeouts in 6 2/3 innings. Most importantly, the Giants rolled to a 10-4 victory. Last year, Cain got off to a tremendous start to the season, going 12-2 with a 2.12 ERA in 21 starts through the end of July. That included a pair of July victories over the Pirates in which Cain gave up a combined one run on eight hits over 16 innings (0.56 ERA), with four walks against 12 strikeouts.
Those two wins by Cain are part of the Giants’ current five-game winning streak against the Pirates. They’ve also defeated Pittsburgh six straight times in San Francisco.
Bottom line: The only way the Giants fail to win this game by at least two runs is if Pirates starter Maholm throws an absolute gem and matches Cain pitch for pitch. The odds of that happening seem low, when considering Maholm got rocked in his 2010 debut giving up four runs in six innings of Thursday’s 10-2 home loss to the Dodgers – just as he was rocked for four runs in six innings of a 4-2 loss in San Francisco last July. And here’s the capper: Going back to Maholm’s July 27 outing in the Bay Area, the Pirates are 3-9 in the lefty’s last 12 trips to the mound. All nine losses were by multiple runs, including three road defeats by a combined score of 20-6.