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Today’s free total comes in the Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals matchup. Arizona has actually had a successful road trip in Cleveland and Miami pitching wise. Which is a surprise considering the struggles the staff had for the month of July and early August.

Don’t let their recent success fool you. They faced two teams in the Indians and Marlins that had been struggling mightily at the plate, especially the Indians. That series also featured a double header due to a rain out. Miami finally got going against Josh Collmenter yesterday and carried that over into pummeling the Diamondbacks bullpen.

The juice of -233 doesn’t please me enough to take the Nationals but I do like the over in the first five innings of this matchup. It’s just 3.5 because of Nuno’s latest strong performance and Zimmerman’s command all year.

Arizona has been getting on base plenty of times but failing to score runs. Against the Marlins they did score three first inning runs against Brad Hand and had several base runners on against Alvarez, and bases loaded against Tommy Koehlher yesterday.

They’re bound to get some runs plated across. Take the first five over.