Baseball lines may favor the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday but the Washington Nationals are not a bad team this season. The Dodgers are also not a power team and they should not be getting elite status in terms of baseball odds. Baseball lines oftentimes do favor the Dodgers but they have been nothing special this season. Los Angeles does not have a dominant pitching staff so they need to score runs to win games. Sometimes that happens and sometimes it does not. They have a chance to score in this game on Saturday which is the second game of the three-game series.
Before yesterday’s game, the Dodgers and Nationals had actually split their last ten games. That trend right there tells you how competitive this series has been. Last year the Dodgers took two of three in Washington but two years ago they were swept. A better bet has been the total in baseball odds. Six of the last seven meetings between the two teams have gone over the total in baseball lines. Considering neither of these teams is that strong in terms of pitching, that could happen again in this game.
The Nationals are a team that can be a surprise in baseball lines. They have some power in the lineup in including Adam Dunn and Ryan Zimmerman. Dunn got off to a slow start but he is playing solid defense. He will come around on offense and he has not let his offensive struggles affect his defense. “I know it’s a matter of time before the offensive side comes, but they are two different aspects of the game — you have an offensive side and you have a defensive side. It’s just like any other sport,” Dunn said. “I’m having fun over at first base, the more I don’t have to think about it.”
Dunn will be a free agent after this baseball lines season and he could be highly sought after, especially if he can play good defense at first. “I want to see how much range I can cover,” Dunn said. “I always look where the second baseman is and see where he is playing. I want to be able to get to the balls. It’s a matter of positioning. I want to position myself better to where I can take some balls that are hits between me and the second baseman and take them away. There is a lot I want to learn. It’s not like I’m a Gold Glover.”