Posted on 4/23/2008 6:11:45 PM

MLB Online Baseball Betting - Cubs vs. Rockies

By Mike Rose

All’s well with online baseball bettors on the North Side of Chicago these days as the weathers starting to turn for the better and the “W” flag continues to wave atop the Wrigley Field scoreboard. The Chicago Cubs wrapped up its eight-game homestand with a resounding 8-1 victory over the New York Mets Tuesday afternoon to improve its home mark to 10-4 on the season. Ted Lilly churned out his first quality start of the year (6 innings 4 hits 1 ER) to earn his first victory, and Cubs SS Ronnie Cedeno knocked in five runs on two hits to increase his batting average to .345 on the season.

It could have been a lot worse considering they left a whopping 33 men stranded on the basepaths. The Cubs are now 14-6 for the first time since 1975, and have surpassed their win total from April of last season. After winning back-to-back series’ on the road against the Padres and Astros, the Rockies returned home and got swept in the short two-game set they had with the Phillies; the team they swept in the NLDS last season. The bullpen has let the Rockies down terribly their last three overall surrendering the lead in the late innings every time. Manny Corpas blew the save last night when Pat Burrell found the gap to clear the bases and allow the Phillies to pull out the 8-6 victory. It was his third blown save in seven chances this season.

Lefty Rich Hill will be out to grab his 2nd win of the season Wednesday night when he toes the Coors Field bump after looking much better in his last start against the Pirates. In the win, he allowed three hits and one earned run with a K/BB ratio of 4/3 in five innings of work. Certainly not eye popping stats, but good enough to earn the victory and allow him to breath a little easier after he didn’t make it past the third inning in his previous start. That said, Colorado has been none too kind to him as he’s 0-2 with an 11.32 ERA and 2.128 WHIP in two career starts at Coors. Strangely enough, both of those starts came on the same day, August 11, the last two seasons. Maybe this earlier start will allow him to exorcise his Coors field demons.

Opposing him will be lefty Franklin Morales who comes into tonight’s start 1-1 with a 6.60 ERA. He put forth a winning effort his last time out in the Rockies 11-5 road win at Houston. He threw 113 pitches allowing five hits in five innings, but surrendered four earned runs in the first inning. He had trouble with his command once again walking four Astros to increase his season total to 10 on the year, but settled down after the first frame to keep Houston off the scoreboard throughout the rest of his start. He’s yet to have faced the Cubs in his career.

Colorado opened short –115 home chalks with the ‘total’ set at 10 under –120 for game one of this two-game set. You can get down on both the ‘side’ and ‘total’ at BetUS.com right now!

Chicago rattled off five wins in their first five meetings with the Rockies last season including both visits to Coors Field. However, Colorado took the last two at Wrigley when they were playing some insanely hot baseball to close out their 2007 regular season schedule. Chicago is 6-2 against them the L/8 times they’ve met, but the Rockies are 5-1 their L/6 at home vs. a lefthander. It’s also been very profitable backing the over between these teams as its 11-3 the L/14 overall and 6-2 the L/8 times they’ve squared off at Coors.

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