Recommendation: OVER 8 
 
We have a lot of favorable factors here pointing toward a potentially high scoring game. For starters, White Sox RH Gavin Floyd has been in terrible form lately going 1-2 with 2.08 WHIP and 11.90 ERA over his last four starts. Floyd has struggled with his command needing an average of 18.4 pitches per inning during the stretch and he’s been up in the strike zone and behind in the count consistently. Houston brings a solid hitting team into this series (.266 BA & .723 OPS vs. RH) and they’ve been hot lately scoring five runs or more in seven of their last 10 games. Chicago has been strong offensively as well and they got Paul Konerko (.371/.451/1.069) back last night. Konerko has five hits in five at-bats in his career vs. Astros lefty Wandy Rodriguez and team mate Adam Dunn has had great success against him as well going 10-23 (.435) with five extra base hits. Like Floyd, it’s been a struggle recently for Rodriguez who has allowed 19 hits (6 home runs) and 11 earned runs in his last two starts which were only five innings each. Considering the subpar numbers posted by the White Sox bullpen at home (4.32 ERA, 14 HR allowed in 97 1/3 innings & 10 combined blown saves and losses), the late inning door is wide open for Houston to score. Minus closer Brett Myers, the Astros pen has been a mess also getting scored on in 11 of their last 12 outings with an ERA of 7.14 and WHIP of 1.76. In this dramatically hitter friendly park, I’ll back OVER 8 -1.15.