Road Giants – San Francisco at Colorado

BetOnline MLB betting odds:  Rockies -160, Giants +140, Total 9.5

Southpaw Randy Johnson (2-2, 4.50 ERA) continues his quest for 300 wins as he takes the mound for the Giants, while the Rockies counter with right-hander Ubaldo Jiminez (1-4, 6.58 ERA).

Here are some of the MLB Baseball betting trends as they relate to this matchup:

• SF has won 10 of its last 14 games
• SF has lost eight of its last 11 home games
• COL has lost 14 of its last 21 games
• COL has played four of its alst five home games OVER the total

In the HEAD-TO-HEAD sports betting trends:

• COL has won four of the last six meetings
• The last four meetings have gone UNDER the total
• COL has won four of the last six meetings as the home team
• Four of the last six meetings in Denver have gone OVER the total

The Giants got some offensive support together for their 2008 Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum on Tuesday, getting a home run from Bengie Molina and RBI hits from Aaron Rowand and Randy Winn to key a 6-2 win at Wrigley Field. Rowand was mired in an 0-for-20 slump before coming though with his two-run double. On an overall basis, though, San Francisco has been anemic offensively, averaging 3.6 runs per game, which is dead last in the National League, and that the principal reason they are trailing the NL West leading Los Angeles Dodgers by 5.5 games.

Of course, the other side of the coin is that the Giants have been getting some good pitching, and that is the reason why, witch such poor offensive output, they are a game over the .500 mark and in second place in the division. Only one team is allowing less runs than San Francisco (3.7 per game) and one of the starters who has helped make that happen is Randy Johnson. The 6’10" lefty, who is ticketed for the Hall of Fame, is three wins away from his 300th career victory, and if he performs as he did the last time out against Colorado, that will happen sooner than we think. Just five days ago he shut out the Rockies on four hits over seven innings, leading the charge in a 3-2 San Francisco win. Two starts before that, he surrendered just one hit over seven frames against Arizona in a 2–0 win. Yes, he still has his stuff.

Johnson made three starts for the Rockies last year while in a Diamondback uniform. He allowed four runs in five innings in a win on May 13, then followed that with a six-inning stint on August 12 in which he yielded just two runs in six innings. Finally, on September 28, he picked up win #295 with a two-hit shutout. That means in his last 16 innings against Colorado, Johnson has pitched shutout ball and allowed six hits against Colorado. He is 19-7 lifetime with a 2.23 ERA against this opponent,

That’s good enough for us. We’re going with the underdog Giants, at +140 in the BetOnline National League baseball betting odds.

JAY’S PLAY:  SAN FRANCISCO (+140)

(Graded on a scale of 1-4 stars)