MLB Playoffs 10/05: St Louis Cardinals @ Atlanta Braves

St. Louis  at Atlanta

MLB - 901 St Louis Cardinals @ 902 Atlanta Braves (Starting Pitchers: K. Lohse vs K. Medlen) Atlanta will of course use Medlen in today's wild card game and I expect the Cardinals' batters to struggle today. Medlen generally uses three kind of pitches: fastball, curveball and changeup, with his secret being the fact that his release point is the same for the three pitches, something that really fools the opposing batters. According tofangraphs.com, Medlen is a top 5 pitcher in all these three pitches, while St Louis is #6 against fastballs, #4 against curveballs and #16 against changeups (Medlen's best pitch). Over the last 30 days, the Cardinals are just #21 against fastballs, #7 against curveballs and #26 against changeups, therefore looking at Medlen's amazing form, I can't really expect St Louis (whose roster has just 33 AB's against him) to be the team who is finally able to make Medlen struggle, after a dozen of amazing outings. If we add to this, an excellent bullpen with Martinez, O'Flaherty and Avilan plus the closer Kimbrel (1.01 ERA, 0.78 FIP and 0.88 xFIP), I don't see how the Cardinals will be able to have any kind of decent offense today against the current best pitcher in the baseball plus a bullpen who is #2 in FIP with 3.21 and #1 in xFIP with 3.32 this season, while having had even better numbers in September. So, it will be all up to Lohse to have a very good outing today to compensate St Louis' lack of hitting today. He had "just" a solid September/October with 3.89 ERA, but his advanced numbers (3.39 FIP, 3.34 xFIP) were quite good and better than his ERA. He had some issues against Washington twice, but that isn't expected to happen today against an Atlanta offense that combined a .635 OPS over the last 30 days. Lohse throws mostly fastballs (53%), sliders (23.4%) and changeups (19.2%), with the Braves being just #28 in hitting against fastballs, #25 against sliders and #5 against changeups in September. With the full season numbers not being much better, I don't see Atlanta putting Lohse in big trouble today. I know Lohse struggled in a start against Atlanta earlier on the season, but he didn't have his usual good control on his pitches (6 GB and 10 FB, including 2 HR allowed) and ended up struggled against a Braves offense that was in much better form back then than they are right now. Even though I believe Atlanta will eventually win this game due to a brilliant pitching from Medlen plus the bullpen, I also expect Lohse to have a very good outing in here, turning this game into a very low scoring game. Therefore, even considering the low totals line, I'll be taking the Under in here. Pick: 3 units (Single Dime Play) on 901/902 Under 7 (w/ K. Lohse & K. Medlen) @ -125 / 1.80 on 5Dimes