Oakland left-hander Dallas Braden will send the Athletics into the offseason on a winning note when he squares off against Ryan Rowland-Smith and the Mariners.
Our Sunday MLB betting selection is on the Oakland Athletics as 155 MLB money line road favorites over the Seattle Mariners at Safeco Field.
After spending all of September pitching out of the bullpen, the Mariners are scheduled to give Aussie lefthander Ryan Rowland-Smith one more crack at the rotation on the last day of the season. He certainly hopes that his last start of the season will go better than the one before it, and it almost can't help but be an improvement.
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On July 27 in Chicago, Rowland-Smith had one of the ugliest outings of any starter this season when he allowed all 11 earned runs in the game in just five innings as the Mariners were trounced by the White Sox 11-0.
He was promptly placed on the disabled list with a lower back strain and missed the entire month of August before coming back as a middle-to-late reliever in September. So far the results have been very mixed in four outings out of the bullpen.
Oakland lefthander Dallas Braden's season has gone quite differently than Rowland-Smith's. Braden started out the season pretty well, going 3-1 in the month of April, but then in his second start of May, Braden pitched only the 19th perfect game in Major League Baseball history.
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Although he's been nagged by injury, and hasn't come back to the form he had on May 9 very often since, Braden can still consider the season a success. Braden has made 29 starts with a 3.50 ERA, 1.15 WHIP and five complete games. All are career-bests for the southpaw, and he's only just entering his prime.
Heading into Saturday, Oakland has gone 5-1 in the last six meetings. Take the A's on the final day of the regular season.