Posted on
5/9/2008 8:34:15 PM
MLB Baseball Betting - Colorado at San Diego
By Charles Jay
BetUS Sportsbook baseball bettors know that the Colorado Rockies and San Diego Padres are currently struggling in the National League West. On Saturday night they'll each get a chance to inch up toward the .500-mark as they do battle at Petco Park in San Diego in an NL game that gets underway at 10:05 PM ET.
Ubaldo Jimenez (1-2, 5.82 ERA) will be the starter for the Rockies, while Greg Maddux (2-3, 4.09 ERA) takes the mound for the Padres.
Here are some of the MLB Baseball betting trends as they relate to this matchup (numbers are good through Thursday's games - please adjust for Friday results)
* COL has lost 13 of its last 18 games
* COL has lost six of its last seven road games
* COL has played four of its last five road games UNDER the total
* SD has lost six of its last seven games
* SD has lost six of its last seven home games
* SD has played five of its last six home games UNDER the total
In the HEAD-TO-HEAD MLB betting trends:
* COL has won seven of the last eight meetings
* Six of the last nine meetings have gone UNDER the total
* COL has won five of the last six meetings as the road team
* Nine of the last 13 meetings in San Diego have gone UNDER the total
Colorado, which went on a furious winning streak to blast into the NL playoffs, then bulled its way into last year's World Series, lost five of its first six games to start the 2008 season and hasn't quite recovered. Of course, it doesn't help when your staff allows the opposition to hit .270. San Diego just can't hit the ball. the Padres are hitting .232 as a team an have scored an average of 3.3 runs a game, one step up from the bottom of the National League.
Rockies' starter Ubaldo Jimenez has done a pretty good job of keeping the ball in the park - among the 137 batters he has faced this season, he's given up just ten extra base hits and two home runs - and in every start but one he has allowed three runs or less. While he is not producing tremendous results - indeed, the Rockies have lost each of his last five starts - he has given his team a certain measure of consistency that is much needed in what has been a turbulent season.
Greg Maddux will go to the mound in his fifth attempt to win his 350th career game. Maddux is of course, the future Hall of Famer who has captured four Cy Young awards and is still going, well, relatively strong at age 42. Maddux only has two wins on the year but he is holding opponents to a .267 batting average and .297 on-base percentage, each of which are lower than any figure he's had for the last five years. Gone are the days when he can go through a whole season with a 0.81 WHIP ratio, as he did in 1995. However, when you look at his slate, Maddux has had only one very bad outing this season - that was on April 18, when he was touched up for nine runs and 13 hits in seven innings by the Arizona Diamondbacks. Before that he had a 2.00 ERA and since then his ERA has been 3.32.
We are going to move with the sentimentality of the event here, as Maddux, who's been pitching in bad luck, finally cashes in on the opportunity to get his 350th, a milestone that will become less attainable in this era of five-inning starters, setup men and closers.
So we will go with the Padres in the BetUS Major League Baseball betting odds.
JAY'S PLAY: SAN DIEGO
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(Charles Jay of http://www.eBookies.com touches all the bases as a regular contributor to the BetUS Locker Room)