NL Baseball Preview: Colorado Rockies at San Diego Padres
The San Diego Padres finally won a game last night defeating the Colorado Rockies. It was something that we should have seen coming. The Rockies were completely mystified by the Arizona Diamondbacks’ southpaw starters over the past weekend and we should have foreseen that they’d have a hard time against the Padres’ Eric Stults. Stults might not be Sandy Koufax but against this Rockies team he doesn’t have to be. The Padres are still a mess having lost 9 of their last 10 games though they’ve backed out of last place due to the continuing struggles of the San Francisco Giants.
Colorado isn’t exactly tearing it up either-they’ve lost 7 of their last 10 games-but now they get to throw their own talented left hander against the weak hitting Padres. Jorge De La Rosa may not have Cy Young level numbers but he’s been decidedly solid this year-especially considering that he has to pitch in the thin air of Denver’s Coors Field much of the time. De La Rosa has a 3.19 ERA overall and the Rockies have won 12 of his 18 starts (though just 5-5 on the road). He has been very consistent all season long and his overall ERA is in line with his road ERA of 3.22. To be fair, the Padres have turned a small profit against lefthanders this season with a 16-16 +3.5 unit profit against southpaws but that’s a pretty flimsy reason to back a team that really hasn’t done much right lately. We do like Padres’ starter Andrew Cashner who has a solid 2.36 ERA at home but he hasn’t pitched well in his most recent assignments.
Colorado needs to string together some wins but due to the strange nature of the NL West this season they’re not out of contention despite their recent poor play. They find themselves in third place just 4.5 games out of first and just two games back of the red hot Los Angeles Dodgers in second place. The Padres have some decent young talent but they’re still not much of a team-they could turn things around later in the season but that being said we’ll be looking to bet against them until they give us a compelling reason to do otherwise.
BET COLORADO ROCKIES (DE LA ROSA) +130 OVER SAN DIEGO PADRES (CASHNER)