The Colorado Rockies take on the Los Angeles Dodgers. Check out our MLB odds series for our Rockies Dodgers prediction and pick.
German Marquez takes the ball for the Rockies, while Tyler Anderson gets the start for the Dodgers.
German Maruqez has a 5.12 ERA. This has been a bitterly disappointing season for him and the Rockies, especially the starting rotation. Colorado has one of the highest staff ERAs in baseball, and before you say “it's all about Coors Field,” look at the past two games of this series, in which Rockie pitchers have been rocked by the Dodger bats in Dodger Stadium. Colorado had Kyle Freeland going up against Michael Grove on Saturday. That's a favorable pitching matchup for Colorado, but it couldn't win because the Colorado bullpen imploded. On Friday, Colorado got hammered right out of the box. Marquez has had a few select games this season in which everything worked for him, but the vast majority of his starts have been mediocre at best. The Rockies have a lot of tough choices to make with their staff, and Marquez is certainly one of them.
Tyler Anderson has been one of the quiet stars of this 2022 Dodger season. It's very rare that a team wins 110 or more games in a season, but the Dodgers have done it. They wouldn't have been able to do it if they didn't get something special from Anderson. At the start of the season, the Dodgers had Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, and Julio Urias at the forefront of their rotation. Tyler Anderson was a back-end rotation piece along with Tony Gonsolin. While Gonsolin got hurt, it remains that he turned in a stellar season in his own right. Gonsolin and Anderson being excellent at the back end of the rotation enabled the Dodgers to quickly and easily absorb the impact of Buehler pitching poorly and then being injured for the entirety of the season. Kershaw's injuries were also able to be dealt with, since Anderson has been so thoroughly reliable.
Here's the essential, central point to make about Anderson: He was, at best, the fifth-best starter the Dodgers had entering 2022. Many people didn't even know who he was. Yet, this “fifth-best starter” on the team has turned in a 2.54 ERA. That's spectacular. For more perspective: That 2.54 ERA is roughly half of German Marquez's 5.12 ERA. It's simply remarkable, but it is an example of how the Dodger organization finds ways to make pitchers thrive. This organization cranks out quality pitchers, and it's not by accident.
Courtesy of FanDuel, here are the Rockies-Dodgers MLB odds.
MLB Odds: Rockies-Dodgers Odds
Colorado Rockies: +1.5 (+126)
Los Angeles Dodgers: -1.5 (-152)
Over: 8 (-112)
Under: 8 (-108)
Why The Rockies Could Cover the Spread
The Rockies are a bad team, and they are limping to the finish line, but they did have a 4-1 lead on Saturday. They're bound to win one game in Los Angeles. It's obviously a day on which the Dodgers are not going to be hugely motivated. They could easily take their foot off the gas pedal.
Why The Dodgers Could Cover the Spread
The Dodgers are not slowing down. Why is that? Remember that they'll get several days off starting on Thursday, while the National League Wild Card Series begins over the weekend. Teams which will get a bye in the first round of the playoffs want to keep playing their starters to keep them sharp. It's a change from previous years, when the NLDS would start two or three days after the final day of the regular season. The Dodgers have incentive to keep playing their stars.
Final Rockies-Dodgers Prediction & Pick
The Dodgers have covered the minus-1.5 run line each of the past two games, so why not do so again? That point aside, the Dodgers have every reason to mail it in, given how unimportant these games are. Yet, they keep playing hard and winning. That should tell you something about this team and whether it is likely to downshift for this game. It's not happening.
Final Rockies-Dodgers Prediction & Pick: Dodgers -1.5
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