Colorado Rockies vs St. Louis Cardinals Betting Picks

We had the UNDER here Saturday, and the Rockies made sure it never had a shot, an 8-6 shootout that squared this series at a game apiece. Michael McGreevy takes the ball for St. Louis looking to settle it, and even with his ERA climbing to 3.59 as the league has adjusted to him, he was sitting at 2.10 through his first nine starts of the year, evidence of what this arm is capable of against a lineup this thin. Michael Lorenzen starts for Colorado carrying a 6.94 ERA and a 3-10 record, numbers that explain why the Rockies sit at 46-71 with one of the league's worst run-prevention numbers. St. Louis is 58-59 and unspectacular on its own, but Colorado on the road is a different level of bad, its offense built for altitude and overmatched away from Coors Field. Sharp money has already found this side of the number, and this finale sets up as the kind of game that gets away from Colorado early. St. Louis wins on the runline this afternoon.

Friday's opener between these two settled at 3-2, five total runs, and nothing about the arms tonight argues for more. Kyle Freeland's season line is ugly, an ERA pushing 6.81, but his last time out was the best start of his year: a complete game against Kansas City, one run over nine innings. Matthew Liberatore answered with six innings of one-hit, scoreless ball in Toronto, with seven strikeouts. Colorado's bats are the honest argument against this. The Rockies have scored more runs than St. Louis this season and slug considerably better, but those numbers carry half a season at altitude, and tonight they're on the road. That travel is its own signal: there's a durable UNDER pattern for this Colorado club once it leaves its home park, and it fires tonight. St. Louis is averaging under four and a half runs a night, 11th in the National League, with Jordan Walker's knee leaving him day-to-day. The number has come down from its opening, and the money behind that move isn't coming from the ticket count. The UNDER is my play tonight.