San Francisco has dropped their last three while the Diamondbacks are in the midst of an eight-game losing streak. Let’s determine which one of these downward-spiraling clubs will shake free from their funk as we keep cashing our MLB picks!
Tuesday, May 25, 2021 – 9:40 PM EDT at Chase Field
The Giants are still licking their wounds after getting swept by the Dodgers over the weekend and are now two games behind the San Diego Padres for the top spot in the NL West. San Francisco is hoping to get well in a hurry against arguably the worst team in baseball, the Arizona Diamondbacks. In their last outing, the Giants were hoping to avoid the sweep at the hands of the defending World Series champions but after two close games to open the three-game set, the Dodgers offense unloaded on San Francisco en route to an 11-5 LA victory.
Dodgers’ starter, Julio Urías, dazzled throughout much of the afternoon but was finally touched in the sixth inning when Austin Slater launched a two-run shot to close the gap. The 24-year-old Mexican import also added to the offense with a two-run double in the second followed by an RBI single in the third inning.
"We got beat every which way in this series," Giants manager Gabe Kapler said. "They made more pitches than us, they got more big hits than us, they played better defense, converted more plays into outs than we did."
It’s amazing to recall only a few years ago that the Diamondbacks were the Cinderella story in Major League Baseball after rebounding from a 69-93 record in 2016 to posting an identically opposite 93-69 record in 2017. The next two seasons saw them trot out better than .500 clubs before last season’s truncated schedule in which they ended with a 25-35 record. But D-Backs fans believed it to be somewhat of an anomaly and figured this year the Snakes would be back to bite their opponents. But after well over a third of the season in the books, it appears the only team getting snake-bitten is Arizona.
The Diamondbacks are in the midst of their worst losing streak in a season they would rather forget. Mired in the muck of the NL West basement, the Snakes are already 12 ½ games back, and check into this one with an 18-30 record. In their last outing, Arizona was on the short end of a 4-3 decision and failed to avoid the sweep at the hands of the Rockies. Colorado’s Trevor Story, leading off the bottom of the ninth inning in a 3-3 game, smashed a hanging curveball from Arizona reliever Stefan Crichton to ice the win for the Rockies.
It was the 13th consecutive road loss for Arizona and first-baseman, Pavin Smith, who put the D-Backs up, 3-2, with a two-run shot in the sixth inning, had this to say, "It's very tough, losing this much on the road. I feel like we're in a lot of the games, which makes it even harder. Losing at the end there really hurt but we're going to bounce back from it."
The Diamondbacks will win eventually and when they do there will be plenty of squares screaming at the television, bewildered that the streak ended at their expense. And what an expense it will be, as you better believe the books will be pumping up the numbers on the favorites because it will be tougher and tougher to attract any action on the money-burners from the desert. Right-hander Kevin Gausman (4-0, 1.66 ERA, 0.80 WHIP) will be toeing the slab for the Giants and will be opposed by fellow-righty, Corbin Martin (0-1, 5.40 ERA, 1.60 WHIP), who will get the start for the D-Backs.
The MLB odds at all of the top sportsbooks are slow to release the line on this game, as one or both of the starters is not etched in stone at the time of this writing. However, we do see that BetOnline is bold enough to be one of the few majors hanging a number on this matchup which is SanFrancisco -163, and take back +150 on the D-Backs. I see no value in Arizona in this one, therefore, I will line up with Joe Q. Public and bet the Giants because the squares are not always wrong.
MLB Pick: Giants -163 at BetOnline