Game Picks - Thursday: June 30, 2011

Yesterday was a travel day again as the Fan and his lovely wife drove to a location north of Orlando to spend a few days with the grown son. It's the first time to his place and he has a lovely apartment with his girlfriend. Much pride goes to both.

While traveling, the interleague picks didn't get any better. They just barely scraped above .500 again. The Yankees, Phillies, Cardinals, Twins, Marlins, Mets, Rangers and Indians were all good picks. But several things shot the rest of the picks down. The most grievous of which was the continued screwing of Jordan Zimmermann. The guy pitched a complete game. He only gave up one unearned run and lost. What the heck, Nationals!? You win every other game but when this poor kid pitches? The Royals lost again to the Padres. Holy crap, why can't that team win a game? Perhaps having the line up start with Melky Cabrera on top followed by Chris Getz would be a clue.

James Shields continued his impressive pitching, but one pitch that resulted in a three-run homer did him in. Meanwhile, the Bay Rays only had eight base runners the entire game and hit into two double-plays. That didn't help. King Felix was again dethroned. He simply hasn't been dominant for a large part of this season. Ryan Dempster was better than Tim Lincecum. And then Carlos Marmol blew his save, but the Cubs still won in the bottom of the ninth. Ubaldo was good, but Mark Buehrle matched him and the White Sox bullpen was better than the Rockies'. Picking against Brandon Morrow was a bad idea, even if it was against the Pirates. Can you believe the Fan just typed that last sentence? Even-if-it-was-against-the-Pirates. Different.

There are nine games on the short-Thursday schedule. Six of them are day games so it won't take long to know how this day is going to go. Here are the picks:

• The Red Sox over the Phillies: The Red Sox salvage the last game of the series with lefty, John Lester doing his ace-like thing better than Cole Hamels does his ace-like thing. Lefties aren't good for the Phillies offense.
• The Yankees over the Brewers: C. C. Sabathia makes it game, set and match against the Brewers as the Yankees complete the sweep over Randy Wolf.
• The Tigers over the Mets:  The Mets record offense this series comes to a screeching halt against Justin Verlander. Mike Pelfrey will be looking around and wondering why they didn't save any runs for him.
• The Giants over the Cubs: Good match up of Matt Cain versus Carlos Zambrano. Going with the better team.
• The White Sox over the Rockies: The Rockies' goose is Aaron Cooked in this one. Jake Peavy with the win.
• The Athletics over the Marlins: This Fan wondered about Trevor Cahill before his last start and he turned out brilliant. Okay. We'll go with that then. Chris Volstad with the tough luck loss.
• The Blue Jays over the Pirates: Something about established veterans being sent to the minors gives them a kick in the pants. Brett Cecil was one such dude. He beats Jeff Karstens, which is tough to do these days.
• The Rangers over the Astros: Wandy Rodriguez wasn't so good in his last outing, but he's a favorite here. But the Astros won't score against Matt Harrison.

And the Game of the Day!

• The Cardinals over the Orioles: Jaime Garcia has been scuffling a bit. But if he has a good day, he'll tame the Orioles quite nicely. Brian Matusz simply hasn't been the same pitcher lately.

Yesterday: 8-7
Week: 28-26
Month: 212-183
Season: 648-550
Games of the Day: 57-34