The San Francisco Giants are in Oakland tonight for the final game of their four game series with the Athletics. The Athletics are actually going for the sweep after winning the first three games of the series fairly easily outscoring the Giants 28-15.
Head to Head Trends
Giants are 2-7 in the last 9 meetings in Oakland.
Over is 5-0-1 in the last 6 meetings.
Oakland Athletics (+125)
The Oakland Athletics are 4th in the American League West 15.5 games back of the 1st place Texas Rangers. The Athletics seem to be either hot or cold with not much middle ground. They’ve already had several 5 or 6 game win streaks but immediately after that they’ll lose 7 of their next 8 games or something like that. The Athletics are playing well right now winning 6 of their last 7 games so lets see if this trend continues and they soon hit another cold stretch.
Starting for the Athletics tonight is lefty Dillon Overton who will be making just his second career start. In his first start he wasn’t horrible he gave up 3 earned runs over 5.2 inning of work but he gave up 3 home runs so it seems like he was probably just really lucky they were all solo shots.
Oakland Athletics Trends
Athletics are 6-1 in their last 7 overall.
Athletics are 8-21 in their last 29 Thursday games.
San Francisco Giants (-145)
The San Francisco Giants are 1st in the National League West 6 games clear of the 2nd place LA Dodgers. The Giants have been one of the best teams in baseball over the past couple months winning 32 of their last 45 games. The Giants have one of the better offenses in the National League averaging 4.64 runs per game and they also have one of the better pitching staffs allowing 3.98 runs per game.
On the hill for the Giants in this is lefty Madison Bumgarner who is 8-4 with a 1.99 ERA on the season. Bumgarner is one of the best pitchers in all of baseball probably second only to Clayton Kershaw. Bumgarner has 14 quality starts this season including his last 13 starts in a row.
San Francisco Giants Trends
Giants are 21-8 in their last 29 road games.
Giants are 41-20 in Bumgarners last 61 starts.
Conclusion
I’m going with the San Francisco Giants over the Athletics in this one. Usually I don’t base my picks too much on starting pitching but that’s not the case today. This pick is 100% based on Madison Bumgarner one of the best pitchers in all of baseball versus a guy making just the second big league start of his career.
Free Pick: San Francisco Giants -145
