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The Reds are coming from a home loss against the Mets, where their batters were completely dominated by rookie SP Harvey. They will start this series by facing SP Wood, who is in fact a former player of the Reds. He is 0-5 since the All-Star break, even though he has just allowed five runs and thirteen hits in 18 innings over his last three starts. Wood's last outing was also against Cincinnati and in a pitching duel against Arroyo. He had a good performance, but the Cubs bullpen blew a 2-1 lead after he left the game. Now in a rematch this time in Cincinnati, on a much hitter-friendly park than the Wrigley Field, I believe Wood will have a lot more problems in handling the Reds offense. Wood is a flyball pitcher and with the wind helping the hitters tonight, the Cubs' SP will be in big danger in the park that is the second park seeing more homeruns in the league this season. He is terrible against RH bitters (.247 BA, .500 SLG, 5.86 FIP and 5.10 xFIP) and the Reds know that, as they will use a lineup with eight RH batters! Therefore, this should really be very tough night for Wood.

Cincinnati will use Arroyo as their SP tonight and he has been alternating good outings with poor ones. His last start was also in that game against the Cubs where Wood was the home team's SP and he only allowed two runs in that game. Arroyo struggles a bit against LH batters (4.68 FIP), while he is clearly better against RH batters (3.59 FIP). However, the Cubs don't usually give him problems, as their roster in 125 AB against him have hit just .216 BA! The Cubs are likely to insert a good number of LH batters once again tonight like they did last week, however only DeJesus has been in good form this month, while Rizzo is clearly struggling. Therefore, I don't expect Arroyo to heavily struggle tonight, but even if he struggles, the Reds have their great bullpen to save the situation. 

With I expecting Wood to struggle a lot tonight and with the Cubs not being able to cause a lot of problems to Arroyo, I believe Cincinnati will bounce back from yesterday's loss to the Mets with a comfortable win today. Therefore, I'll take the Reds tonight.

San Antonio was the hottest team in the league right before the Olympic break with 9 straight wins, so the pause came in a bad timing for them. The Silver Stars rely on their shooting and ball movement ability to score and so, it's normal that they will now need some time to come back on their top form once again. They aren't a physical team, so Tulsa will run with them tonight. Becky Hammon was in the Olympic Games and she's the motor of San Antonio's game, so I don't expect the Silver Stars to have a great game tonight.

On the other hand, Tulsa will play with their usual lineup and they will run with San Antonio tonight. They were able to cause problems to San Antonio early on the season and I believe they can take advantage of San Antonio's bad spot for tonight to cause them trouble and be competitive today. Therefore, I'll take the Shock in here.