Free Saturday Play
Big Al McMordie
BigAl.com

At 4:05pm ET our complimentary selection is on the St. Louis Cardinals and San Francisco Giants 'over' the total. It is hard to believe that Giants starter Matt Cain went 7-16 last season. After all, the 24 year-old righthander had a 3.65 ERA and 163 strikeouts in 200 innings. Unfortunately, his lopsided won-lost record does not bode well for Cain in 2008, as the Giants have a distinctly worse team than they had last year. Gone are outfielder Barry Bonds and third baseman Pedro Feliz, and the Giants relief pitching situation is totally up in the air as well. Cain's biggest problem is that he tends to leave pitches over the plate and he has paid for that on more than one occasion, especially in his home ballpark. Cardinals starter Todd Wellemeyer's success this season over his first two starts is a bit of an oddity. Through five previous seasons in the Majors (only 2007 as a starter), Wellemeyer has never had an ERA under 4 runs in any of those seasons. Last year, when Wellemeyer took over a starting role, his ERA was a very unsightly 4.54 runs and there is no real reason to believe that he will improve dramatically on that number. In the last seven games played between these two teams in San Francisco, a total of 73 runs have been scored, or an average of over 10.4 runs per game.

Take the 'over'.

As always, good luck...Al McMordie.

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