Major League Baseball is back and Sunday Night Baseball will see the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the San Diego Padres. The game is scheduled for an 8 p.m. start time and it will be televised nationally on ESPN. Currently the odds for the game have the Dodgers favored on the road in this one.
Clayton Kershaw was supposed to start this season opener against the San Diego Padres, but he's a little banged up. The Dodgers said Kershaw will miss at least a couple of starts while being on the disabled list to open the year. Yet, Kershaw did throw 6 2/3 innings against Arizona and struck out seven Diamondbacks when those teams officially opened the season in Australia.
The Dodgers already have two wins as they swept Arizona in Major League Baseball's Australia experiment. It seemed to have worked attendance-wise as there were more than 38,000 fans at both games. Taking the hill tonight for the Dodgers will be Hyun-Jin Ryu, who struck out five and also picked up a victory over Arizona. Current Padre hitters hold a .313 average against Ryu in 16 plate appearances, which is certainly a small sample size.
Andrew Cashner is going to get the ball for the Padres tonight. In his final start last season he scattered four hits and struck out seven over seven innings of work in a loss to these Dodgers. He went 10-9 a season ago and had a pretty solid ERA of just 3.09 in his appearances. In fact Cashner threw well against Los Angeles in three games a season ago, losing all three starts by scores of 3-1, 2-1 and 1-0. He struck out 16 batters during that time, didn't give up a long ball and pitched 22 innings. Not bad.
He's very excited to get the ball for the Padres in their season opener and also said taking the hill on opening day is "a big honor." Now the honor will be facing one of the better lineups in baseball, who he threw well against last season. Current Dodgers have just a .228 average against Cashner in 79 plate appearances. Adrian Gonzalez has had the most success with five hits in 13 at bats.
The Dodgers finished the regular season winning 42 of their final 50 games. This year they're hoping not to get off to a bad start again. Matt Kemp and Carlos Quentin will both start the season on the disabled list as well, but the Dodgers still have a lot of talent on the team. Yasiel Puig made himself a star last season and has three hits in 10 at bats so far this year.
We like Los Angeles to get this game tonight. They've already played twice, so we think they'll be a little more comfortable tonight. Cashner has had some success against the Dodgers an we think this will be a lower-scoring affair, but give us Los Angeles in this one.
Free Pick: Dodgers 4, Padres 2
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