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Tonight, we have a battle in Southern California as the San Diego Padres head to Chavez Ravine to take on the Los Angeles Dodgers in this series’ second of four games. The Padres will trot out right-hander Randy Vasquez, while the home Dodgers will send out Ben Casparius for his third start.
The Dodgers currently lead the NL West by a handful of games over the San Francisco Giants and Padres, so every game will have a ton of meaning as it relates to not just the division race but for the playoffs.
Let’s look at each team’s season thus far and make a pick for tonight’s Padres vs Dodgers matchup on TBS.
The Padres come into tonight’s game in the NL West hunt just a few games behind the division-leading Dodgers. While the Dodgers have sort of “brute-forced” their record through a dominating offense despite injury woes on the mound, the Padres have been successful in large part thanks to their pitching.
San Diego is a top-10 team in baseball in K/9, HR/9, line drive percentage, ERA and second in strikeouts per game. They haven’t done this on the strength of any standout pitcher, though Nick Pivetta has been their best pitcher all season with a 7-2 record and a solid 3.40 ERA in 14 starts.
The offense has been the team’s weak point, with the Padres in the bottom five in baseball in home runs and middle-of-the-pack status in batting average and below-average in runs scored. While the Padres also have some stars in Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Jackson Merrill, they haven’t hit their stride to be able to carry this team offensively. Their secondary pieces, like Luis Arraez, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth and others have struggled through the season and will need to get their footing as we get towards the All-Star Break and the dog days of summer.
The Dodgers have gutted through crazy injury luck on their pitching staff to have one of the best records in the National League. Their offense is the club’s heartbeat with players like Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Andy Pages, Freddie Freeman and other stars. The pitching staff has been decimated, but the team has soldiered on. Names like Roki Sasaki, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Treinen, Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol and Kirby Yates have stints on the injured list.
Even with those huge names not pitching for the Dodgers, they made it work and then some. Yoshinobu Yamamoto has been excellent, leading the rotation along with Dustin May. Both have been rotation mainstays when the rest of the starters have been a veritable turnstile all season. Getting Ohtani back on the mound will certainly help matters.
The Dodgers have been buoyed by their offense, which leads the league in home runs, batting average and runs (399). Freeman is third in the MLB in batting average, Ohtani is hitting just shy of .300 (with 25 home runs, and Teoscar Hernandez is 10th in baseball with 50 RBIs. The Dodgers are an embarrassment of riches on offense, and if their pitching health can return to some normalcy, look out.
For a DFS pick tonight, the starting pitching matchup could lend itself to some offensive firepower, with Vasquez and Casparius on the mound for their respective clubs. It’s worth noting that Machado has been on a tear the past couple of days, as he’s hit a .333/.579/.950 triple slash with four home runs and 16 RBI entering this series.
Adding on top of that, Machado has a hit in 11 of his last 12 games, so against solid but hittable pitching in Casparius, we’ll take Machado to put up at least two total bases in tonight’s contest.
Kevin has been writing about sports since 2015 with a primary focus on fantasy football. His work has been featured on outlets like Matthew Berry's Fantasy Life, FantasyPros, Sports Illustrated, RotoBaller, Fantasy Alarm, and numerous other fantasy websites. As a native New Yorker now living in the Midwest, Kevin counts the Green Bay Packers, New York Yankees and Syracuse Orange as his favorite teams.