…with apologies to the Sex Pistols for this post title.  Baseball betting action continues on Sunday as we head to the stadium formerly known as Enron Field, and now named for a much more solvent company, Minute Maid Field.  The Houston Astros have gotten off to a slow start, losing their first 5 games.  They at least scored some runs in Saturday’s 9-6 loss to Philadelphia–they’d only scored a total of 6 runs in their first four games.  As they’ll be reminded of by every sports media outlet in town tonight and tomorrow, the 0-5 start is the team’s worst since the 1983 Astros opened the year 0-9.  Philadelphia has looked dominant in the early going, leading the MLB in runs and hits.  The ‘baseball themed tattoo’ picture idea was an abject failure, due more to the ungodly things I’d have to see on Google image search to find them.  For the immediate future we’ll be using pictures of dogs in baseball uniforms to accompany the daily baseball picks.  Here’s a good looking pooch in a Houston Astros uniform.  Fortunately for him the fact he doesn’t have opposable thumbs is keeping him from being penciled in at #6 in the Houston batting order.

HOUSTON ASTROS VS. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES:

We’re not expecting much out of the Astros this season, but as is frequently the case in the early MLB schedule the line for this game has been overcompensated based on the results of the season so far.  It’s important to keep a few things in perspective here–Philadelphia is a very good team, but they opened their season against the Washington Nationals.  Houston faced the top of a dominating San Francisco pitching rotation and now get the Phillies.  Roy Halladay looked very good in his first start of the year but, again, it was against the Nationals.  And even the lowly Nats managed to win one in the three game series.

So now the Astros need a win, have their veteran ace Roy Oswalt on the hill and are a +175 underdog.  With all due respect to the Phillies and Halladay, that’s simply too high of a price this early in the year.  Don’t forget this is baseball, where even the worst teams win 35 to 40% of their games, and the best teams lose 35 to 40% of theirs.  Here’s some more perspective–the Astros and Oswalt were just +135 dogs against the San Francisco Giant and Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum in the opening game of the year.  Gotta take the value with a solid veteran Oswalt in this spot.

PLAY HOUSTON (OSWALT) +175 OVER PHILADELPHIA (HALLADAY)