MLB Baseball Betting: Colorado Rockies at Philadelphia Phillies
The jury is still out on Ryne Sandburg’s performance as a manager with the Philadelphia Phillies but he’s got a good chance to add another win to his resume on Wednesday night as his team hosts the Colorado Rockies. Sandburg was tabbed to take over the team after Charlie Manuel was fired and the Phillies have won 2 of the 5 games with their interim skipper at the helm. That’s really all the Phillies have to play for this season-it’s unlikely they’ll finish in last place since they’re 7 games ahead of the lowly Miami Marlins. But the most important metric doesn’t look good for Philadelphia as they’re 21.5 games back of the first place Atlanta Braves. The Colorado Rockies were-until recently at least-in the mix for the NL West lead but they’ve been playing poorly while the Los Angeles Dodgers have shot past everyone in the division. They’re now 15 games out of first place and have to worry about staying ahead of the two bottom feeders in the division-San Diego and San Francisco-who trail the Rockies by only 2.5 games.
Philadelphia will start lefthander Cliff Lee for today’s game-Lee hasn’t pitched badly this season but is definitely well off of his superstar form of a few years back. Lee has a 3.19 ERA overall but the Phillies have lost 12 of his 23 starts. At home he’s got a 4.00 ERA with the Phillies going 5-5 in his assignments. The team has dropped his last three starts with Lee posting a 4.26 ERA. Colorado will start righthander Juan Nicasio who has numbers very similar to Lee’s.
The Rockies have struggled on the road all season going 23-41 for a loss of -11.8 units. They’re usually a team to go against twhen they’re away from Coors Field and they face another bad situational spot today as they’ve been a money loser against left handed pitching this season. Against southpaws the Rockies are 17-28 -10 units. To be sure, the Phillies are also in the red in most of their relevant situational breakdowns but we expect the team to play hard for Sandburg the rest of the way. This is as much of a play against Colorado as it is a play on Philadelphia but look for the veteran Lee to get the job done here.
BET PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES (LEE) -170 OVER COLORADO ROCKIES (NICASIO)