Marquee Matchup for April 6th, 2010

I do like a great pitching matchup. I am all about sitting down for every game and thinking that I could be a first-hand witness to the next perfect game. I love strikeouts, I love great defense, and a good pitching duel.


Yesterday I took the day off of work and was excited to be able to watch the aces go head-to-head. For the most part, I was pretty disappointed with the results. There were A LOT of runs put up yesterday, and most all teams showed some rust. There were exceptions. Halladay, Santana, and Lincecum looked stellar...though my heart skipped a beat when Lincecum called the trainer out of the dugout...for a fork to clean his cleats with. Don't do that to me, Smokey!


I think I am going to try a new feature, and if you get sick of it, or just plain don't like it I will shut it down. But being a pitching fanatic, I thought it would be fun to highlight a matchup of the day to keep your eyes on. Sometimes there might be more than one, sometimes picking one will be a struggle. Just to make it interesting for myself I will keep a tally on the sidebar for everybody to see how awful I am at predicting sporting events.


So for tonight's stanza, I want you to know that I have reviewed ALL matchups, and I am not just being a homer here, but tonight's Marquee matchup is Lester (Boston) V AJ Burnett (New York).Jon Lester

AJ (gas can) Burnett.

The Lowdown: On paper, this matchup looks pretty good, but a closer look show that in four games last season again the Red Sox, Burnett had a paltry 8.85 ERA while allowing a .291 BA and 6 HR's allowed. Even more telling? Three of those games were at the Fens, where the ERA jumped to an abomination of 14.21 with a BAA of .379 and ALL 6 HR's given up.

Lester? In four games against the Yanks, had a slightly elevated ERA of 4.43 with a BAA of .283 and 4 HR's given up. But you put him at Fenway, and the ERA dropped to .286 with a BAA of .240 and only 5 HR's given up ALL SEASON.

Of course you can't always look at last seasons numbers, and you can't win without the bats behind you...but I wagering that the Red Sox will be on an emotional high after Sunday's big comeback and be ready to pounce on AJ early once again.

Prediction: I'll take Lester for the win.