The Washington Nationals will try to complete a three-game
sweep of the San Francisco Giants in the series finale on ESPN's Sunday Night
Baseball. The Nationals (45-36) had not faced the Giants (42-40) since losing
to the defending World Series champions in four games during their National
League Division Series playoff matchup a year ago. But Washington has gotten a
bit of revenge by winning the first two games of this series by a combined
score of 11-4 following a 9-3 rout on Saturday.
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The Nats moved to 4.5 games ahead of the New York Mets for
the lead in the NL East with their latest victory and will send Jordan
Zimmermann (6-5, 3.16 ERA) to the hill hoping to win for the third time in as
many starts. Zimmermann had lost three straight before going 1-0 in his past
two outings, which have resulted in 15.2 scoreless innings and a pair of
Washington wins even though he only got a decision in one of them. However,
both of his last two starts came against the Atlanta Braves.
San Francisco will try to break a five-game losing streak
with Ryan Vogelsong (6-6, 4.19) making his 15th start of the season. Vogelsong
is coming off a loss to the Miami Marlins last Tuesday in which he gave up four
runs and seven hits in six innings with three walks and four strikeouts. But
prior to that setback, he had earned consecutive wins against the San Diego
Padres and Seattle Mariners by throwing 12.2 scoreless innings in a pair of
shutout victories. Vogelsong has seen the UNDER cash in three of his past four
outings.
Saturday's game was the first meeting between the Giants and
Nationals that went OVER the total since Aug. 24, 2014, ending a streak of five
straight UNDERs in the series. Before that UNDER streak though, the OVER cashed
in each of the previous five meetings. San Francisco has also seen the OVER
cash in eight of its last nine games overall, with at least nine combined runs
scored in eight of them.
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for Sunday's baseball picks from the Don Best handicappers.