NL Baseball Preview: San Francisco Giants at Philadelphia Phillies
The defending World Series champion San Francisco Giants are enduring a disastrous season and they’ll try to put a rare win in the books on Wednesday when they take on the Philadelphia Phillies. San Francisco has been a complete mess since early this season-they’ve lost 5 straight, 8 of their last 10 and have posted a dismal 7-17 -14.9 unit record in the month of July. They’ve been especially bad on the road (more about that in a moment) but are just 1 game above .500 at home. The Philadelphia Phillies have been a picture of mediocrity this year and have treaded water just below the .500 mark all season. They’re 50-56 on the year and while they may be out of the postseason hunt they can still achieve a second place finish in the NL East where they trail the second place Washington Nationals by 1.5 games.
San Francisco will start converted reliever Chad Gaudin who has been fairly solid since coming out of the bullpen. Unfortunately, he’s made more headlines for a bizarre incident in Las Vegas where he allegedly groped a woman in an area hospital-despite the fact that he wasn’t sick or injured, just ‘hanging out’ at the medical facility apparently looking for the ladies. He’s been most effective on the road with the Giants winning 3 of his 4 away starts-and considering their dismal away record that’s quite an achievement. Philadelphia will respond with Kyle Kendrick who has put up good but not great numbers this year. The Phillies have won 12 of his 21 starts and 6 of his 10 starts at home.
Philadelphia has a decent record at home going 27-21 +1.2 units and that might be enough to take care of the road weary Giants. San Francisco is 18-32 -13.2 units on the road this season and that ranks among the worst in Major League Baseball. The only teams with fewer road wins are bottom feeders Miami and Houston and the only other team with 18 road wins are the bumbling Chicago White Sox. These three teams-and the Giants-are the only teams in baseball with fewer than 20 road wins. The Giants are in freefall and they’re a dead go against on the road and we’ll go against them until they give us a reason to do otherwise.
BET PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES (KENDRICK) -115 OVER SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS (GAUDIN)