The Arizona Diamondbacks take on the San Francisco Giants. Check out our MLB odds series for our Diamondbacks Giants prediction and pick.
Zach Davies gets the call for the Diamondbacks, while Carlos Rodon will go to the rubber for the Giants.
Zach Davies has a 4.11 ERA. He started the season poorly. On June 3, his ERA for the year was 4.84. Then he pitched three strong games to reduce his ERA to 3.78. On June 25, he got injured and missed the next five weeks. He didn't pitch in July. He returned to the Arizona rotation on Aug. 1 and made an abbreviated two-inning appearance against the Guardians. In his two most recent starts, he pitched 10 innings — five in each start — and gave up a total of three runs. Not bad. If the D-Backs can get a five-inning, one-run start from Davies in San Francisco, they'll be very happy.
Carlos Rodon has a 2.95 ERA. He had two rough starts right out of the All-Star break against the Dodgers and the Diamondbacks, but if anyone was worried about him, he bounced back very impressively in his last three starts: 18 1/3 innings pitched, three runs allowed, no walks, 20 strikeouts. He has allowed two solo homers plus one other earned run, and that's it. No one grabbed Rodon at the trade deadline. A number of teams could sure use him, but they weren't willing to pay the price to get him. Rodon, with the Giants several games under .500 a week ago, might have felt he was not going to be part of a serious playoff push, but now, with the Giants having won five games in a row, San Francisco is just 4.5 games behind the San Diego Padres for the third and final wild card spot in the National League. This is a big game, and Rodon was meant to pitch in these kinds of moments. It's time for him to deliver with his team having a surprisingly better chance at a playoff berth compared to seven days ago, when the outlook was far more bleak.
Courtesy of FanDuel, here are the Diamondbacks-Giants MLB odds.
MLB Odds: Diamondbacks-Giants Odds
Arizona Diamondbacks: +1.5 (-128)
San Francisco Giants: -1.5 (+106)
Over: 7 (-124)
Under: 7 (+102)
Why The Diamondbacks Could Cover the Spread
The Diamondbacks let a game slip away on Tuesday. They will be motivated to grab a game in this series and play spoiler for the Giants. Zach Davies is not an elite pitcher, but he has shown signs of rounding into form after his injury absence. The Diamondbacks performed well against Carlos Rodon in late July. A few weeks later, they have a decent chance of being able to get a few runs off him. If Davies can give them a strong start, they have a great chance to at least cover the 1.5-run spread.
Why The Giants Could Cover the Spread
After their thrilling come-from-behind walk-off win in the bottom of the ninth on Tuesday, the Giants are back in the hunt for real. They're just 4.5 games behind the Padres and have made up three whole games in the standings over the past five days. With the team finally playing great baseball and getting the timely hit on a regular basis — with two walk-off homers in the past three games, the kind of thing which happened a lot for this team last year — the Giants are going to be sky-high, flying with confidence and reveling in the thrill of a playoff push. This team looked done and roasted a week ago, but the outlook is very different now. Carlos Rodon is the workhorse pitcher the Giants want on the hill for this game. He's much better than Zach Davies.
Final Diamondbacks-Giants Prediction & Pick
Carlos Rodon versus Zach Davies with the Giants in the middle of a playoff push, playing before an energized home crowd which senses that San Francisco can make a late-season surge? Sounds like a definite Giants win.
Final Diamondbacks-Giants Prediction & Pick: Giants -1.5
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