Free Baseball Bet Apr29'09: Tampa Bay (S.Kazmir/L) vs. Minnesota (N.Blackburn/R)

The Rays and Twins are not teams that have torn the cover off the ball thus far in '09. Tampa is a combined .773 OPS, while Minnesota is just .707 in the On-Base Plus Slugging category.

More specific to today's matchup, the OPS data is especially grim for one of these teams:

	vs Righties	vs Lefties
Minnesota		.604
Tampa	.784

Most of Tampa's order has either not yet had a chance to face Blackburn or only seen him in one AB thus far in their respective careers. Thus, they are not likely to be comfortable facing him in the Metrodome. Meanwhile, Kazmir has owned most Twins hitters by allowing just a combined .575 OPS - the only exception being Morneau (1.083 OPS vs Kazmir), who can likely be pitched around. The Twins not having Mauer continues to leave a hole in their lineup until he comes off the DL (expected later this week).

Thus far this year, Kazmir has gotten off to a somewhat slow start and a 5.13 FIP, which is probably why the posted betting total is not even lower. But, this should be overcome by the great matchup data above and that he has always been a decent Road pitcher. Blackburn has seen his peripherals come into nice form this year, generating a low 3.73 FIP. Plus, he likes pitching in the Metrodome so much he posted just a 2.96 ERA at home last year.

Resulting Free Baseball Bets pick:

UNDER 8 +100