Baseball is here-ish!
Yesterday morning, the Seattle Mariners and Oakland Athletics technically kicked off the regular season but it wasn’t considered “Opening Day”-day because the game was played in Japan and didn’t start til before 6 a.m. The two players who benefitted most was Oakland catcher Kurt Suzuki and Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, who got a chance to play in front of their homeland. Ichiro snacked on Athletics starter Brandon McCarthy most of the game, opening with a single en route to a 4 for 5 day batting in the three hole.
For Game 2 this morning, odds of his total hits, runs, and rbi’s being over 2.5 according to bovada are +135, while odds of him under that are -165.
Mariners second baseman Dustin Ackley combined with Suzuki to be the only offense of the game with a home run and RBI single in extra innings.
Felix Hernandez and Brandon McCarthy were relatively polished, both going at least 7 innings with only one run surrendered. Tomorrow’s game will continue the Japan series at an even earlier 5:10 a.m. Thursday. Just as the first game was not aired live, Thursday morning’s game will not be shown by a network until the MLB network airs the games on a delayed schedule.
Expect more offense with Jason Vargas squaring off with Oakland’s Bartolo Colon. Vargas relies on his versatile repertoire rather than a fastball with velocity. Bovada’s MLB betting odds has the over/under for the total strikeouts set at four for Vargas with +105 for the over and -135 for the under while Colon is posted at 4.5 with an even over and -130 under. The moneyline has the division-leading Mariners favorites for the game at -110. The 8.5 run total over/under is set at -105 for the over and -125 for under. You can see more betting odds for this game on bovada.lv. Ichiro is playing in front of his home crowd, but it Seattle will likely have to rely on young hitters Justin Smoak and Jesus Montero more during the year. Breaking the over will probably depend on them bouncing back after flopping in the opener. Plus, the A’s are really bad at hitting baseballs.
Mariners vs. Athletics Betting Odds for March 29th, 2012 – found at Bovada
