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Home - Baseball Betting
2006 Washington Nationals Predictions
Did they
show us something last season or are our 2006 Washington Nationals
predictions going to return them to the basement of the NL East. Last
season’s move to D.C. from Montreal proved to be an effective one as the
former Expos improved from a 67-95 record in 2004 to a 81-81 mark as the
Nationals last year. They enjoyed their highest attendance in franchise
history and fans are anxiously waiting to see if they can put another
solid season together in 2006. One thing they have on their side is a
pitcher-friendly ballpark which allowed them to stay in a lot of games
last season despite having trouble producing runs. They averaged just
3.56 runs per game at home as opposed to the 4.32 they averaged on the
road. The team was had the worst batting average of any team in the
National League. This shows the unmistakable pitcher-friendly home
field and also gives us a great way to make money on the Nationals.
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The Nationals due have a couple of solid starters on this staff that
allows them to stay in games without scoring a whole lot of runs. Livan
Hernandez has a rubber arm like you don’t see in this day and age. He
was 15-10 with a 3.98 ERA last season while John Patterson emerged to
put up a dismal 3.13 ERA. It’ll be up to the health of Tony Armas to
see if he can provide a solid 3rd option while Brian Lawrence
and Ramon Ortiz join this rotation and can hopefully provide solid
options to shore up the rotation. Chad Cordero really helped this team
come through with one-run games and saved 47 games while posting a 1.82
ERA.
Time
will tell if Soriano can fit into this team’s plans in left field. He
will provide some much needed punch to the lineup with his speed and
power, but there isn’t a whole lot of other options in the lineup.
Guillen and Nick Johnson are the most powerful, and that isn’t saying a
whole lot. The Nationals are definitely going to have to make sure they
play well defensively and get a lot of quality starts out of their staff
in order to stay competitive in this talented National League East.
Good news is that they’ll get plenty of games against the hapless
Marlins.
Because
of their difficulty run producing at home, which is opposite of most
teams, the Nationals developed a reputation of a poor hitting team. But
because they scored nearly a run more per game on the road, overs were a
solid gold play on the Nationals. On the season, they scored about the
same number of runs as their opponents when on the road, but they got
taken to school at home. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a team is
a poor hitting team all the time. It’s important to differentiate
between how a team hits against lefties and righties and at home and on
the road.
It will
be important to start tracking this trend again this season from day 1.
In all probability, the road should be friendlier to the Nationals
offense in 2006. If so, we’re taking the overs to the bank.
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