The Giants and Padres Mexico City series continues and the biggest storyline has been the run scoring.
The Padres won the first game in Mexico City, which is played at incredibly high altitude where the baseball flies, by a score of 16-11. This is not a typical baseball game with the way the ball travels and the runs were coming in bunches on Saturday.
San Diego will send out Yu Darvish while San Francisco counters with Alex Cobb in hopes of limiting some of the explosiveness of each offense, but given the climate, it seems to be a tough ask.
Here’s how I’m playing this unique weekend series between NL West foes:
Giants vs. Padres odds, run line and total
Giants vs. Padres prediction and pick
Trying to handicap this matchup is a futile effort with the unique situation each team is playing in. The total for this game has surpassed 20.5 after the 27 run bonanza on Saturday night and I have no interest in trying to figure out which team will have a big enough inning to push this game out of reach.
Instead, I want to limit the variables and focus on one team and that’s the Padres matching up against Alex Cobb. Cobb has been lights out this season for the otherwise struggling Giants, pitching to a sub-2.00 ERA and has a complete game shutout to his name as well. However, this is not an ordinary baseball setting with the way the ball is carrying.
The Padres have pop in the lineup, especially with Fernando Tatis Jr. back in uniform after serving his PED-related suspension, and the team also puts runners on a base at a high clip. The team is second in walk rate this season and will have plenty of run scoring chances on Sunday.
Given that I don’t expect Cobb to handle this altitude any better than the pitchers did yesterday, I don’t expect a quality start out of him and can’t trust the Giants bullpen that has the third highest ERA as a unit this season.
Balls will be flying, and I’m simply going to count on the Padres team total over in what should be another high scoring game.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.