Cincinnati Reds +200 - Rookie Vs Ace

The Cincinnati Reds will play in St. Louis against the Cardinals for the third game of the series on Wednesday and the Reds are looking to win the series after their latest come from behind victory. Last night marked the 18th come from behind victory when the Reds won 9-8 and now the Cincinnati Reds (31-22) lead the St. Louis Cardinals (30-23) by 1 game for the NL Central Division lead. The Reds avoided dropping three straight with their win last night and took over first place and tonight the Reds are looking to extend their lead to two games or leave St. Louis tied for first place.

Sam LeCure will make his second start of his young career. On May 28th, LeCure beat the Houston Astros pitching a decent ball game as he went 6 innings allowing 2 runs, and had 4 walks with 5 strikeouts. It was a great outing for your back end rotation spot, but it was against the Houston Astros who are statistically the worst hitting team in the National League and the Cardinals are a completely different team. LeCure will need to pitch much sharper and throw more strikes tonight but if he can duplicate his Houston outing, then the Reds would be in great shape and won’t have to burn through the bullpen.

The Reds received much needed bullpen help last night when they optioned Carlos Fisher to Triple A and put Mike Lincoln on the DL and they brought up fresh arms in the form of Logan Ondrusek and Enerio Del Rosario. Last night Del Rosario won his first major league game after relieving Johnny Cueto after Cueto was hammered last night allowing 8 runs in 5 innings. Del Rosario allowed the 2 inherited runners, but had some bad luck with Rolen missing a play that was not charged an error. The bullpen went 4 shut out innings last night allowing 5 hits and 3 walks. That is not flawless, but it was a great job considering how the bullpen had been lately. Rhodes looked healthy and Masset threw the ball well. The bullpen should be ready tonight with Thursday being an off day and the fresh arms should take some pressure off Rhodes and Masset.

Joey Votto finally returned to the lineup after missing six games and he was a huge boost with his bat going 4/5 with a solo home run and scoring 3 runs. Scott Rolen had a huge night with his third multi-homerun game with 4 runs batted in. As long as the Reds bats stay hot they can beat anyone including Carpenter. Last night Votto and Rolen were huge, but everyone contributed at some point in the game with the Reds having 14 hits and scoring 9 runs. Rolen and Gomes have been RBI machines in the past 7 days with 17 runs batted in between them and they are 19/45 (.422) combined; Phillips and Stubbs have scored 14 runs and are hitting 20/54 (.370). The one downside tonight will be that Ramon Hernandez will probably be out of the lineup tonight. With Ryan Hanigan on the DL, Hernandez needs to stay fresh, so by sitting tonight he will have two days off. Corky Miller should get the nod tonight which could also boost LeCure. Corky caught most of LeCure’s games in the minors this season, so he knows what he can do.

The bottom line is the Reds are worth a shot as dogs here tonight. Carpenter is the ace of the Cardinals staff, but he is beatable. The Reds lead the National League in several offensive categories such as runs scored, batting average, and home runs. The over is worth a look here as well. It is only 8 runs. A small parlay would be worth a shot with a .5 unit to win over 2.3 units. The Reds get it done tonight. My prediction tonight is 5-4 Reds win.





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