Article courtesy OddsShark (@OddsShark)
The suddenly hot San Francisco Giants (14-16) go for their seventh victory in a row on Tuesday as heavy underdogs at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com against the National League West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers (22-8).
The Dodgers are listed as -200 road chalk on the MLB odds for the series opener versus the Giants with unbeaten Julio Urias (2-0, 2.74 ERA) on the hill. San Francisco counters with Johnny Cueto (2-0, 4.35 ERA).
Urias has finally started to live up to the hype this year which has made him almost untradeable in his fifth season with Los Angeles, although he is coming off his shortest outing of 2020. The 24-year-old lefty lasted just 1.2 innings in an eventual 6-4 loss to the Seattle Mariners, allowing one run and four hits but throwing 52 pitches before getting pulled by manager Dave Roberts.
That loss ended a seven-game winning streak for the Dodgers, who have since won four straight to stay well ahead of the Giants and San Diego Padres, who have won seven in a row.
San Francisco is playing some of its best baseball of the season though and saw Cueto take a no-hitter into the sixth inning at Dodger Stadium earlier this month before settling for a 5-4 victory.
The 34-year-old righty has struggled against Los Angeles during his career with a losing mark at 8-9 to go along with a respectable 3.62 ERA. In his last two starts since then, Cueto has allowed a total of four runs and seven hits in 12.2 innings with three walks and 13 strikeouts.
The Giants split a four-game set with the Dodgers to open this year before losing two of three from Aug. 7-9. The UNDER went 4-2-1 in those seven meetings, according to the OddsShark MLB Database, and Los Angeles was favored big each time. In fact, San Francisco’s last three wins in the series have all come as an underdog of +260 or higher at online betting sites.
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