Interleague play has always been one of my favorite baseball betting opportunities of the season, and tonight’s card is especially attractive.  We’ll take a look in this post at another marquee matchup as the Boston Red Sox head south to take on the Philadelphia Phillies.  And we’ve got a canine Red Sox fan picture for the occasion–he looks like he’s upset that he had to stop chewing on his rawhide ‘Bill Buckner’s Leg’ toy to look up at the camera.

BOSTON RED SOX VS. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES:

We’re not able to do much with Boston on most nights since they’re one of the biggest ‘public’ teams in all of sports and invariably overvalued.  Here’s a case where we’re catching them at a nice price and in a good matchup situation.  Red Sox have a winning record on the year, but they’re nowhere near the stratospheric pace set by the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees.  They’re in 4th place in the AL East–they really can’t sink into the basement since Baltimore is so awful and they’re two games back of third place Toronto.   Phillies have been slightly erratic this year but they’re playing great baseball now winning 7 of their last 10 and leading the NL East by 4 games over Florida and 4.5 over an Atlanta team that everyone had left for dead a few weeks ago.

Cole Hamels gets the start tonight for Philadelphia and while the Philles have won 4 of his 6 starts his numbers haven’t been overly impressive.  He’s looked sharp in his most recent starts, but YTD he’s got a 4.29 ERA overall and a 3.37 mark at home.  Boston starter John Lackey has similar stats, with a 4.86 ERA overall and a 3.92 ERA on the road.  The difference here is that the Red Sox have pounded left handed pitching this year–Boston is hitting .276 against southpaws and putting up 6.4 runs per game, which is 1.2 more than their average run output for all games.  They’re 10-5 on the year against lefthanders good for +4.2 units of profit.  In all fairness, Philadelphia has demonstrated a similar degree of dominance against RHP with a .281 BA, 5.8 runs per game and a 20-8 record.  Still, that just means that this game is essentially a toss up and getting +140 on one side of a ‘coin flip’ is a long term profitable strategy.

Worth noting that the Red Sox have won 4 of the last 6 meetings, and that Philadelphia lost a ton of money in Interleague play last year (6-12 -8 units).

PLAY BOSTON (LACKEY) +140 OVER PHILADELPHIA (HAMELS)