BEST LINE: Pinnacle over 9½ -104

Felix Doubront has a WHIP of 1.51 after eight starts. That’s an alarming number that will continue to hurt him. Doubront has just 29 K’s in 42 innings. His swinging strike rate is 7% but over his last three starts, it’s much worse at 4%. Doubront’s groundball/fly-ball split of 9 groundouts/29 fly-outs over his past two starts is further proof of the trouble that lies ahead. Doubront has posted some of the worst skills in the game and he’s always had a history of skills falling flatter with each passing month. Current Jays have hit .303 against Doubront in 108 career AB’s and they have a great chance of adding to those numbers here.

J.A. Happ might be worse than Doubront. Happ looks decent when facing teams’ that can’t hit lefties but that’s not the case here. Against teams that hit lefties well, Happ is among the worst starters in the game. His first half last season ended by a line drive to the head, as if there wasn't enough evidence that he was getting hit hard. He ended up with a 4.56 ERA after 18 starts with just five of those being of the pure quality variety. This season, Happ has 12 walks and 14 K’s in 18 innings. His swinging strike rate of 5% does not support those 14 K’s so don’t expect the Red Sox to miss many pitches here. Happ has been lucky with an unsustainable 89% strand rate and he’ll now face a Boston squad that has a .745 OPS against southpaws. In 16.1 innings in his career at Fenway, Happ has walked 13 batters. One has to expect at least one of these two clubs to put up a crooked number here and the other side to take care of the rest. It would also not surprise to see two crooked numbers, prompting us to go over the number.

PLEASE NOTE: We’re posting this play now but we are NOT pulling the trigger until after 6:00 PM when we get a weather update. There are strong winds throughout the East Coast today and if the wind is blowing in, we might have to pass.  We’ll update our play both here and on Twitter. 

UPDATE: Weather conditions as of 5:10 PM EST show winds at a moderate breeze left to right at 13 MPH. Therefore our bet is official on the over 9½ -104