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It is time for some Mile High Baseball! The Cleveland Guardians will wrap up their inter-league road trip when they look to sweep the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field. Let's take a look at our MLB odds series, where our Guardians-Rockies prediction and pick will be revealed.
Winners in six of their last seven games played, the Guardians are putting themselves in great position thanks to their recent play. Now only trailing the Twins by 2.5 games in the division, Cleveland will hope to bring their brooms with them to the park on Thursday with RHP Triston McKenzie, who is 3-5 with a 3.09 ERA up to this point.
As for Colorado, the Rockies have been nothing but a doormat for opposing teams to walk on in 2022, as they have slid to almost ten games under .500 with an overall record of 27-36. Looking to stop the bleeding on the mound will be righty hurler Chad Khul, who has surprisingly proved to be a good acquisition for Colorado in the offseason with his 4-3 record and 3.70 ERA.
Courtesy of FanDuel, here are the Guardians-Rockies MLB odds.
MLB Odds: Guardians-Rockies Odds
Cleveland Guardians: -1.5 (+104)
Colorado Rockies: +1.5 (-125)
Over: 11.5 (-108)
Under: 11.5 (-112)
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Why The Guardians Could Cover the Spread
Cleveland really does rock! The Guardians have no doubt had their ups and downs to this point of the season, but Cleveland has stayed afloat and has put themselves in a great position to succeed. Give credit where credit is due, this team has been fun to watch! While their 15-17 record doesn't seem to be all that impressive, the Guardians are still able to beat you down in multiple ways over the course of a nine-inning ballgame.
For starters, will anyone be able to cool down third-baseman Jose Ramirez? After many electric seasons at the plate in recent years, it appears that Ramirez has finally reached his full potential. Leading the major leagues with 62 RBIs, Ramirez is 14-29 with two homers, seven doubles, and nine RBIs during his current nine-game hitting streak. Ramirez isn't the only one that can make a pitcher pay with a mistake pitch in the zone, but as a whole respectively, Cleveland has maintained the eighth-best batting average in the league with a .251 mark.
With the verdict being out for a while on how legit this Cleveland offense can be, their pitching arms may in fact be even better. Through 58 games, Cleveland has compiled the eighth-best team ERA at 3.63, has racked up a whopping 28 quality starts from starting pitching, and is only allowing teams to hit .227 off of them. Not to mention, Triston McKenzie has only surrendered 39 hits in just 64 innings, and while 11 of those have come in the form of the long ball, the promising twirler certainly has what it takes to hold the Rockies at bay this afternoon.
Why The Rockies Could Cover the Spread
Sports in the Mile High City are creating quite the buzz as of late; well, unless you're the Colorado Rockies. Of course, there's the Denver Broncos who are sky high after acquiring Russell Wilson in a trade during the offseason, the Colorado Avalanche who are appearing in their first-ever Stanley Cup Finals in more than two decades, and even the Denver Nuggets who have seen Nikola Jokic win back-to-back league MVP's. However, The Rockies have quickly and steadily gone from NL contenders to bottom-feeders in a matter of only a couple of seasons. Things may seem like a lost cause at 20th and Blake, but the Rockies can still cover the spread against Cleveland on Thursday if they can do a few things the right way.
No surprise here, but the best part of this group's overall game continues to be the offense, which is fairly accurate for a team that has always been able to score runs in the thin air of Coors Field over the course of its franchise's history. Offensively, the Rockies have the third-highest batting average at .251 and have even scored 282 runs, which is currently the twelfth most in baseball.
The offense is surely not the problem, but the pitching has been. With the third-highest ERA at 5.01 in the league, the Rockies have found it difficult to record outs and prevent other teams from scoring at a feverish pace. In fact, the opposition is belting .276 off of Colorado's arms in 2022, which would account for the 29th best average among pitching staffs in the major leagues.
As concerning as this may be for Rockies bettors, the good news is that Chad Kuhl has been one of the more reliable starting pitchers that Colorado presents, so another steady outing from the former Pittsburgh Pirate could do wonders for the Rox.
Final Guardians-Rockies Prediction & Pick
The Rockies have lost six consecutive games at home and have lost nine out of 13 games while Cleveland has managed to come away victorious in 13 of their previous 16 games. Colorado is way too unreliable to put money on them right now, while the Guardians seem to be trending upward at the halfway point of June.
Final Guardians-Rockies Pick: Guardians -1.5 (+104)
