Atlanta (Jurrjens) at Philadelphia (Worley) -125 O/U 9 
Recommendation: Philadelphia

Atlanta’s a confident team right now having won three straight and four of five with all four wins being by three or more runs. The offense has scored 29 runs in their last five games and the starting staff has rattled off four straight quality wins. The surge has seen them now get to within 0.5 game of the lead in the NL Wild Card race. Conversely, Philadelphia is an absolute mess after 86 games at 37-49, 14 games behind division leading Washington. Local media, the fan base and the team are all extremely frustrated and the Phils are an inch away from being a trade deadline seller. All that being said, Philadelphia looks to be in a good spot today against the Braves and RH starter Jair Jurrjens. While Jurrjens numbers in his three starts since coming off the DL look real good (2-0 / 1.20 WHIP / 1.47 ERA), there are numbers inside the overall façade that have us looking to fade him here. Jurrjens length of start, WHIP, total bases allowed, batters faced per inning and % of hits per batters faced have all gone up in each of his starts. His pitch counts per inning of 16.0 and 16.75 over his last two starts along with his six total strikeouts vs. 77 batters faced also signal trouble. His excellence in avoiding walks (only allowed 4) and home runs (0 allowed) have masked all the other inadequacies. Jurrjens current path suggests that he’s about to get lit up and Philadelphia’s offense is more than capable of doing just that. 1B Howard will be back in the starting lineup here for the Phillies who have been very successful offensively vs. righties posting a .272 batting average. On the hill for the home team will be RH Vance Worley who had rattled off four straight quality outings before slipping in his start last Tuesday against the Mets. Worley has a sensational 1.64 ERA in his pair of career starts against Atlanta and we’ll look for him to get the job done here at this reasonable price.