Thursday MLB Gambling Matchups + Odds From Sportsbook.com

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MLB: Travel day trio

Thursday afternoon is packed with eight Major League Baseball games and you can bet on them right now by checking out our MLB Live Odds page.

Make sure you check Overnight Lines each day for the early odds on the following day’s games.

Here’s a look at several of Thursday’s early games.

Milwaukee Brewers (+105) @ Chicago Cubs (-125)
Starting Pitchers:
Dave Bush (Milwaukee)
Ryan Dempster (Chicago)

Ryan Dempster makes his first appearance as a starter since 2005. A reliever with 85 saves over the last three seasons, Dempster has made just six starts in the last four seasons. It remains to be seen how the Chicago Cubs’ pitcher will adjust from the bullpen to the rotation as he hasn’t been part of a pitching rotation since 2003, when he went 3-7 in 20 starts with the Cincinnati Reds.

In five years as a starter, Dempster had just two winning seasons and has a 5.01 in seasons in which he was a starter. Cubs’ backers will be interested to see how Dempster’s command issues affect his pitch count and ability to go deep into games as a starter. He’ll certainly get a good test with his first game coming against a Milwaukee Brewers’ lineup stacked with talent.

The Brewers counter by sending Dave Bush to the mound. The 28-year old has had two-straight winning seasons since joining the Brewers in 2006 but his spot in the rotation wasn’t guaranteed until Chris Capuano went down to injury in spring training and Claudio Vargas was cut. The left-hander is still trying out though as the Brewers need to open a rotation spot when Yovanni Gallardo comes off the DL later this month.

Bush possesses a nasty curveball and was first in the Majors in strikeout-to-walk ratio in 2006, but his numbers dipped last season as his strikeouts went down from 166 to 134. The Cubs are one of the teams that have given Bush problems since he entered the NL Central as he has just one win in eight starts against the division rival.

Kansas City Royals (+160) @ Detroit Tigers (-180)

Starting Pitchers:
Zach Greinke (Kansas City)
Jeremy Bonderman (Detroit)

The 2007 season can be described as the tale of three seasons for Jeremy Bonderman. The Tigers hurler failed to earn a decision in his first five starts, went 10-1 in his next 13 starts before ending the season on a terrible stretch in which he won just one of his final 10 outings.

The Tigers offense was the talk of the offseason but it has yet to get into a groove as the Tigers have started the season 0-2. Following a 5-4 loss to Kansas City to start the season, Detroit failed to produce a single run in Wednesday’s 4-0 loss to the Royals. Tigers’ batters had just three hits in that game, one of them coming with two outs in the ninth.

Zach Greinke starts this season in the Royals’ rotation after alternating as a starter and reliever last year. Greinke had 14 starts in 54 appearances last year and went 7-7 with a 3.69 ERA.

The 2-0 Royals feature a batting lineup that should be more potent than last season as Mark Teahan and Billy Butler are now in the mix. That said, the quick start against the Tigers is surprising.

Houston Astros (+130) @ San Diego Padres (-150)

Starting Pitchers:
Shaun Chacon (Houston)
Randy Wolf (San Diego)

The San Diego Padres won the first two games of this series heading into Wednesday’s late-night meeting and will look to newcomer Randy Wolf to earn another victory over a Houston Astros team that has a suspect rotation after ace Roy Oswalt.

Wolf went 9-6 in 18 starts with the L.A. Dodgers last season. More importantly, the Dodgers won seven of the final 10 games that Wolf started before he went on the disabled list in July.

Playing in the pitcher-friendly Petco Park is expected to help lower Wolf’s numbers as he has been known to give up the longball. After a slow start to the spring, Wolf threw six shutout innings against the L.A. Angels in his spring training finale.

Pitcher Shaun Chacon will be making his Houston Astros debut. Another pitcher that has bounced back and forth between the starting rotation and bullpen, Chacon made 64 appearances last season but just four of those were starts. He went 5-4 with one save and had a 3.94 ERA with the Pirates last season.

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