St. Louis at Cincinnati

Mark McGwire returns to the dugout as a batting coach, a dozen years after he broke baseball's home run record in this city. After admitting to steroid use, it will be interesting to see the reception he gets. He has the pleasure of coaching Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday which should be a killer 3-4 lineup this season. Aaron Harang gets the honor of trying to slow these two down first. The problem for St. Louis is that they finished last season out very poorly, dropping 11 of their final 13 games. Teams that finish the season that poorly typically don't start strong in their opener. Asking the Cards to win this game by 2+ runs on the road is asking a lot. I like Cincy, a team that won 13 of their final 17 home games last year, on the runline here. I like the OVER. The past three seasons, the Cards are 43-27 OVER on the road to a total of 7.5 to 8. The last ten times these teams have met here in Cincinnati, the OVER has come through eight times. Take the Reds on the runline and the OVER here.