Game Picks - Saturday: April 9, 2010

For Pete's sake! How can you correctly pick the Red Sox first win, the Bay Rays first win, the Braves over the Phillies and Cliff Lee, and the Blue Jays over the Athletics and still only end up a game over .500 for the day? It has been an incredibly difficult assignment to have any kind of success picking games thus far this season. Take the Game of the Day feature for example. That's supposed to be the slam dunk pick. That's the pick that should be the easiest to get right based on match ups and other factors. Yet, that feature is on a four day losing streak. This picker has become the Houston Astros of picking. Ugh! To top it off, one game was suspended in the ninth inning and the other was rained out.

So let's try this again, shall we? The Fan needs a huge day just to avoid finishing in the red for this week. For better or worse, here are Saturday's picks:

• The Yankees over the Red Sox: Buchholz doesn't have a good history versus the Yankees. Nova is pitching with a lot of confidence. The bullpens will get lots of play in this game. Yankees.
• The Braves over the Phillies: Life is just Beachy for the Braves today as they face Roy Oswalt. Beachy has a good history against the Phillies and started the year very well. 
• The Royals over the Tigers: Funny how these picks are shaping up. First, this picker thinks what should happen and then has to also wonder what will happen. The Royals start Chen who should throw beach balls to the eyes of the Tigers. (eyes of the Tigers? heh). But the Tigers start Phil Coke. hmm.. Royals.
• The Orioles split with the Tigers: The Orioles under Britton win the first game and the Rangers win the second game with Harrison over Arrieta, who should get smacked around by the Rangers. The second game will probably end about one o'clock in the morning.
• The Pirates over the Rockies: Greg Reynolds is making his first major league start since 2008. That was three years ago! The Pirates start Morton, who could succeed after both teams played for six hours last night.
• The Astros over the Marlins: How do you pick this game!? The Marlins will probably not have Hanley Ramirez in the line up and both Vazquez and Norris looked like batting practice pitchers their first outings. Good luck.
• The Brewers over the Cubs: This Fan likes Narveson's chances over Garza at home. Braun and Fielder should provide homers off of the homer-prone Garza.
• The Athletics over the Twins: Gio Gonzalez is great. Blackburn has had a good spring. The A's are due for a win.
• The Mets over the Nationals: The Fan lauded the Mets' signing of Capuano, so has to support him in his first start of the year. The Nationals counter with Gorzelanny, who can be pretty good at times. Man, this is tough.
• The Reds over the Diamondbacks: The D-backs are playing pretty good ball and Drew is back. But Arroyo won last time out despite being weak from mono. Got to go with someone that determined.
• The Dodgers over the Padres: The two teams will first finish their suspended game which could change yesterday's results. Then the main event takes place with Kuroda out-pitching Moseley.
• The Indians over the Mariners: The Indians won't have another ten run inning, but they should score enough off Fister (one of the more unfortunate names in baseball) to allow Masterson to drive the Mariners into ground ball heaven.
• The Giants over the Cardinals: A fantastic pitching match up with Cain versus Jaime Garcia. Garcia pitched a shutout last time out. But the Cardinals aren't hitting. So the Giants should eke out a win.

And the Game of the Day (ugh! Come on feature! Snap out of it!)

• The Blue Jays over the Angels: The Angels put Kazmir on the disabled list with a sore back (suuuure). Matt Palmer was just as bad in his earlier incarnations in the majors. Cecil with the win.

Yesterday: 7-6 pending the outcome of the Dodger/Padres game

Week: 33-37  [[hanging head]]

Month: 51-50

Season: 51-50

Games of the Day: 3-6