Monday Baseball

[jtsneaks]

Why not some spring training this afternoon?

Pittsburgh -120 over Cleveland



Starters: The Pirates return home on Monday to host the Indians at 1:05 p.m. ET. Right-hander Tony Armas Jr. (0-0, 1.80 ERA) will make his third preseason appearance for Pittsburgh , and will face Cleveland lefty Jeremy Sowers. Scheduled to follow Armas are Shane Youman, Dan Kolb and John Wasdin.



The pirates have some good hitting going on right now as they have gotten double digit hits in eight straight. Armas has thrown well in the spring and I will take the Bucs today to get the win. The tribe is going to let seven pitchers get some throws in this one today with the focus on getting more pitchers in, not in winning.



Detroit -120 Over Tampa Bay



Fossum makes his first start for the Rays off an injury and he will be very rusty and will be followed by an array of pitchers. Following Fossum's outing, the Rays will use right-handers Jeff Niemann, Steve Andrade, Tony Peguero, Al Reyes and Gary Glover. Bonderman starts for the Tigers who will be without Mags who was hit in the head by a pitch. However the Tigers will bring plenty of veterans on the trip.



Winning is not important to the Rays who have just notched 1 win this spring. "The issue right now is not winning and losing," Maddon said. "The issue is getting all the things I want to see -- better quality at-bats [and] see more of a grinding approach at the plate. I see our pitchers pitching to contact, keeping the ball down, throwing more strikes. The defense, except for one game, has played well. All the concepts are getting done. It's out there."

Maddon said he'd much rather win beginning in April, but he did say they would put a greater emphasis on winning games toward the latter part of Spring Training.

"At that point, you start playing predominantly one group of players and a specific group of backups," Maddon said. "We're just giving everybody an opportunity right now. There are a lot of guys in camp and you want to make sure everybody gets a chance. If you look at it primarily, if we start scoring more runs and the pitching keeps doing what they're doing, we're going to be OK."



Mets -125 over the Nationals

Chan Ho Park makes his second exhibition game start, and the Mets make their second trip in three days to Viera on Monday to play the Nationals. Billy Wagner and Aaron Heilman are to back him up. I like the depth of the pitching matchups here and they will get a win after losing to the Nats two days ago.

JT Sneaks