Projecting the Series: Giants vs. Marlins

The Giants finished April with a record of 12 and 10, winning 5 of the 7 series that they played. They are currently on pace for about 88 wins, which is about what was expected out of them but given all of this it felt that they played a little bit better than their record currently shows.

Maybe it is just that I got so used to a team that scratched and clawed for every run but this team scored 90 runs in the month, averaging over 4 runs a game for a whole month, which all last season they only did one time (during August). With a team built around pitching I would have expected a better record given the run support but I guess part of that was hidden by the opening series sweep.

Again the data going into the projection model is based on ZiPS projections and also the current seasons statistics but it is still weighted toward the projections but slightly less than it had been previously. It will stay pretty heavily projected toward projections until maybe Memorial Day when we have nearly two full months of data to go with.

So here are the probable pitching match-ups courtesy of MLB.com:

Matt Cain vs. Ricky Nolasco
Barry Zito vs. Carlos Zambrano
Ryan Vogelsong vs. Anibal Sanchez

Odds:

	Giants	Marlins	Total Runs
Game 1	64%	36%	6.4
Game 2	60%	40%	6.9
Game 3	53%	47%	5.9
Sweep	16%	9%
2 out 3	41%	34%
1 out 3	34%	41%
0 out 3	9%	16%
Win Series	57%	43%
Lose Series	43%	57%

The Giants are favored in every game against the Marlins who are coming in really struggling. The Giants should hopefully be able to take advantage and start the month out right with another series win. The Zito vs. Zambrano match up should be interesting because who doesn't like a double "Z" match up, also of note since I started doing this I don't remember Zito being so heavily favored to win, so good for him.

Predicting over under: I got my first ever series win in betting the over/under last week taking the under all three games and being correct in all but Friday's game which just got to the over by one run. This brings my season record to .500 with my goal being .550 by the end of the year. Another winning series would certainly help me get there. Tonight's line is 6 and I am taking the under so hopefully Cain has his good stuff. After I published this I noticed I made an error in tonight's odd's, the Giants are now favored even more and the project runs is now pushing me to the over, so hope for a ton of Giants offense.

Season record 10-10

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