The Yankees, who lead the major leagues in scoring, were blanked for just the third time this season and their AL East lead was cut to eight games over second-place Boston. Not a cause for alarm, but the Yankees don’t go down to the royals in shut-out fashion too often. Look for them to dish out some payback this evening. Shockingly, the Royals posted a 5-0 shut-out over the Yankees last night after dropping the first game of the series in heartbreaking fashion. Starter Jorge De La Rosa shut out the New York Yankees for 5 2-3 innings Tuesday night and then Todd Wellemeyer finished up for a 5-0 victory, the Royals’ first blanking of the AL East leaders in more than three years. Just 24 hours earlier, a bullpen collapse had led to a 10-run Yankees’ eighth in a 12-5 Kansas City loss. What a difference a day makes!!! Anyway, look for both squads bats to be out tonight. New York was 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position last night, and will make a conscious effort of taking care of business this evening.

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One of our favorite early-season College Football betting angles is to play AGAINST any single-digit road favorite following both a SU and ATS win during the month of September. This is because bettors tend to overreact to impressive performances early in the year, and knowing this, oddsmakers usually inflate the line in the next game giving some nice line value to the home underdog.

In fact, if you merely faded ALL September road favorites regardless of the line coming off of a SU and ATS win, you would have gone 200-163-2, 55.1 percent ATS since 1985, an impressive record indeed for such a large sampling over a 21-year period. The real gold mine however has been isolating such road favorites of less than 10 points, as fading these clubs produced a lucrative record of 115-82-1, 58.4 percent!

There are five games that meet the single-digit criteria this week, including the Friday night ESPN2 national telecast. Feel free to check them out in our Free Picks section.

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Last night’s win over the Cubbies saw the Pirates escape the NL Central basement, but don’t expect them to celebrate too long. they need to come right back out tonight and win too make sure they win the series. The Cubs (55-83) have lost five straight against the Pirates (56-83) and fell behind Pittsburgh into last place in the division for the first time this season. The Pirates have won six of eight, while Chicago lost for the 15th time in 18 games and now own the worst record in the National League. To make matters even worse for Chicago, Zach Duke is a stellar 4-1 vs. the Cubs with a 1.66 ERA and WHIP of 1.079. His only loss against them came earlier this year when the Cubs were playing some of their best ball of the season. Don’t look for that to occur again tonight as Duke picks apart the Cubbies woeful line-up en route to the Pirates sixth straight win over Chicago.

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We faded John Smoltz his last time out and the Giants crushed him to the tune of six hits and seven earned runs in only five innings of work. This really looks to be as good a spot as any to fade him once again. The Mets are by far the best the NL has to offer. They already lost the first game of this series two nights ago to their most hated rival in the East, and will do whatever necessary to get over the top tonight. Even if Smoltz is coming off a bad outing. Dave Williams has won each of his only two starts in Shea, and looked pretty good in doing so. He’s worked a total of 12 innings, gave up 13 hits, five earned runs,a and struck out six while walking one. Not to bad by my count, and he’s coming off his best start as Met since putting on the orange and blue going seven innings in Coors and holding the Rockies to three runs on nine hits. We get a friendly ump behind the bump in Ted Barrett whose seen the home team cash in 19 of the 28 games he’s called balls and strikes this year. Roll with the best team in the NL at home as a dog no less!
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