Wednesday's Free Pick (25-13 L38 Free Plays!)

[Pick Bot]

Take Cubs -1.5 -105 (1DIME FREE PLAY) (1-5SCALE)
We are going with the Cubs for our Early Bird Special Play. It will be a free play we've got a pitching mismatch here I believe with Randy Wells going up against Mike Hampton.

Randy Wells has a 3.61ERA at home and a 3.21ERA during the day with a 3-1 record this year. He has faced the Astros before going 6 innings giving up 4H and 0ER 2H came from Carlos Lee who is left without Berkman and 1H came from Berkman who is now on the DL. Despite scoring 11 runs last night I think the Astros are going to struggle with the hole that Berkman has left in the lineup. Houston averages 11 points less during the day in terms of team average than they do at night and the Cubs are 6-1 in Wells' last 7 starts and they are 4-0 in their last 4 vs. a LH starter.

Enter Mike Hampton who is starting to get hard. He even got hit hard by the Mets. Astros 0-5 in Hamptons' last 5 starts vs. a team with a winning record. Hampton goes up against one of the better Left hand hitting lineups that feature Ramirez .429 vs. LHP, Bradley .343, Theriot .333, Lee .310, and Johnson .300.

Astros have lost 79% of their road games by more than one run while the Cubs have won 8 games in a row at home by more than 1 run and 74% of their home wins on the season have come by more than 1 run.