It's a National League battle on Tuesday night as the Philadelphia Phillies are in town to take on the Arizona Diamondbacks in the second game of their three-game series. The game is scheduled for a 9:40 p.m. start time and it will be televised on MLB.tv. Currently the odds for the contest have the Phillies favored at -110 (Risk $110 to win $100) while the Diamondbacks are home underdogs at +100 (Risk $100 to win $100) and the total for the game is 9.5 runs.
Free Analysis: The Phillies are going to start Vance Worley on the mound tonight. While he isn't the big name like some of the other Philadelphia (7-10) starters, he can get the job done. He's 1-1 this season with an ERA of 2.37 with 21 strikeouts so far this season. He went 11-3 with a 3.01 ERA as a rookie last season. Current Diamondback hitters are just .167 in 12 plate appearances. Lyle Overbay has a homer but also has two strike outs. Only Paul Goldschmidt has a hit against Worley as well. Back on Thursday, Worley struck out 11 and beat the San Diego Padres, not the best offensive team in the league, 2-0. The Diamondbacks (9-8) were struggling a bit at the plate last week, hitting just .196 collectively as a team. However, in Monday's win over the Phillies they dominated at the plate, collecting 16 hits in a 9-5 win. Justin Upton hit his first home run of the season in the win. In his career Upton is hitting .348 with three homers in 14 career home games against the Phillies. All of the Phillies runs came off the home run ball last night as Shane Victorino hit a three-run bomb and Carlos Ruiz hit a solo homer. The Phillies are currently in last place in the NL East. Josh Collmenter (0-1, 10.22) gets the start for the Diamondbacks tonight. He hasn't gotten farther than one out in the sixth inning this season. Current Phillies hitters are connecting for .278 against Collmenter. In his only start against the Diamondbacks he gave up two runs, eight hits and struck out a career-high eight over 6 2/3 innings of a 3-2 road win last season. This year, however, he's allowed 15 runs in just 12 1/3 innings thrown so far this season.
Free Pick: Worley has thrown well this season and that's tough to go against at this point in the season. However, the Phillies are just downright bad offensively without Howard or Utley in the lineup. We like Arizona despite the tough stretch for Collmenter. We're not saying he's better than Worley but when putting both lineups together we'll definitely take Arizona. They're at home too so that gives us a bit of an incentive to take as an underdog. Philly has struggled overall this season, ranking ninth overall in team average. The Diamondbacks are actually worse at just .238 but they have far less disciplined hitters. That kind of goes against our pick, but in this matchup we really like the D'backs.
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Free Picks: Phillies at Diamondbacks Betting
Phillies have weak hitting and strong pitching and Bryan Leonard's True Runs strategy explained in more detail plus other factors MLB bettors need to know about Phillies at Diamondbacks (Wednesday, April 25, 2012) from Pregame.com - Including predictions from Bryan Leonard and analysis from host Scott Spreitzer.