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Try and find pitcher Jorge Campillo’s name on any Atlanta Braves 40-man roster when the pre-season publications hit the newsstands and it would like facing John Smoltz, three strikes and your out. Campillo is 29-years old and has been through a great deal, most recently toiling in the Mexican League learning his craft after a series of arm miseries. Yet this soft-tossing right-hander is a big part of today’s super situation. If you watch Campillo (2-0, 0.99) pitch, he’s got three speeds, slow, slower, slowest, all with excellent movement and he’s mastered the arm speed element, to where the motion is all the same. He’s made three starts for Atlanta, with the Braves winning all three, pitching 15 innings, allowing only nine hits. In his starts, he has yet to walk a batter, while compiling 16 strikeouts, as hitters have a hard time adjusting to darting slow pitches.
Manager Bobby Cox has been very careful, keeping him on a short leash, not having him throw too many pitches, which has meant the bullpen will see a great deal of action. Cox has lost John Smoltz from starting rotation and Mike Hampton was out before he started, leaving Atlanta to scramble, using pitchers like Campillo (0.600 WHIP as a starter) to fill the rotation. This places a great burden on the bullpen, which leads to overworking them. Adding these factors together produces the following superb system.
PLAY OVER all teams where the total is 8.5 to 10 (ATLANTA) - with an overused bullpen that pitches more than 3.2 innings per game, with a hot starting pitcher- WHIP of 0.800 or less over his last three starts.
Conventional wisdom suggests, the bullpen is going to crack (it did last night) and allow runs to be scored just from being tired, if Campillo can work only five or six innings.
Let’s look at a few other parts to this NL East battle. The Braves average 5.7 runs per game at home and will face Burke Badenhop (1-3, 6.75) of Florida, who by his ERA isn’t exactly fooling many hitters. Plus, the Marlins can swing the lumber themselves, being 15-9-2 OVER on the road this season. Bookmaker.com has the contest pegged at Un9.5, with Atlanta a -165 money line favorite.
All right, you want to know how good this system actually is. In the last three seasons, the OVER has been the correct play 28 of 36 times, 77 percent, including 4-1 this year. With the total this low, this potential play should be more comfortable than your favorite pair of beat-up shoes, with average total score being 11.7 runs a game.
A FREE FoxSheet on this contest is available just for reading this article.
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