How to bet Sunday Night Baseball between Los Angeles Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates
When the National League playoffs roll around this year, unless the Miami Marlins hijack October, viewers of ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball are going to be very familiar with the participants.
For the seventh straight week, Dan Shulman, Jessica Mendoza and Aaron Boone broadcast from a National League venue, and for the second time this year, the telecast showcases baseball's best pitcher, Clayton Kershaw. The three-time Cy Young Award winner has taken his extraordinary talents to an even higher level in 2016, as he brings a 1.57 ERA and a 0.67 WHIP into tonight's contest, both of which are career bests and resemble the kind of figures you only expect to see in a career year from the best closer in baseball, not a starter who has already thrown 115 innings in 2016.
Marking off the traditional wedding checklist for brides, Kershaw and the Dodgers represent the "old" and "blue" categories for Sunday night viewers, and we get a taste of the "new" from Pirates starter Chad Kuhl. Kuhl, making his first major league appearance, joins Jameson Taillon as another promising prospect called up to both fortify this year's rotation and eventually join Gerrit Cole as cornerstones of the Pirates' staff for the rest of this decade. Kuhl brings impressive in-season results from Triple-A Indianapolis, notably a 2.58 ERA, but he doesn't fit the bill of a flame-throwing prospect. Rather than striking batters out, Kuhl relies more on a sinker to induce plenty of ground balls.
New, old, blue ... that still leaves us short of one bridal item. Well, feel free to borrow the advice of our baseball handicappers at Chalk, who have been tying bookmakers up in knots this season. With a clean sweep by our slate of experts last week, Joe Peta moved to 7-3 on the season (plus-4.48 units) Dave Tuley advanced to 5-2 (plus-2.7) while Erin Rynning kept his season perfect at 2-0 (plus-2).
Tuley is off this week, but we get takes from Peta and Rynning on how to bet Dodgers-Pirates.
