{"id":14943,"date":"2011-04-15T14:07:52","date_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:07:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=14943"},"modified":"2011-04-15T14:08:13","modified_gmt":"2011-04-15T19:08:13","slug":"cellar-dweller-battle-san-diego-padres-at-houston-astros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/cellar-dweller-battle-san-diego-padres-at-houston-astros-14943\/","title":{"rendered":"Cellar Dweller Battle: San Diego Padres at Houston Astros"},"content":{"rendered":"

San Diego Padres (5-7) AT Houston Astros (4-9)<\/strong>
\n April 15, 2011 at 8:05 PM EST<\/strong>
\n Opening Runline:\u00a0 HOU -1.5 +175, SDG +1.5 -205<\/strong>
\n Current Runline:\u00a0 HOU -1.5 +185, SDG +1.5 -220<\/strong>
\n Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 HOU -120, SDG +100<\/strong>
\n Current Moneyline:\u00a0 HOU -106, SDG -104<\/strong>
\n Opening Total:\u00a0 8<\/strong>
\n Current Total:\u00a0 8.5<\/strong><\/p>\n

SP:\u00a0 SDG- A. Harang, HOU- J. Happ<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"
Aaron Harang is getting his career back on track in San Diego and takes the mound for the Padres tonight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both the Padres and the Astros sit at the bottom of their respective divisions and will look to push one another even further into debt in their division.<\/p>\n

Aaron Harang is dipping into his bag of tricks to begin playing like vintage Aaron Harang again.\u00a0 Harang was the Reds’ ace from 2005 to 2007 but he had fallen off in recent years, possibly due to being overworked early in his career.\u00a0 After back to back 16 win seasons, he went 18-38 with a 4.71 ERA in his last three seasons with the Reds.\u00a0 Last season Harang pitched only 111 innings and he posted an atrocious 5.32 ERA.\u00a0 PECOTA saw the improvement coming, predicting a 4.34 ERA, nearly a full run better than 2010.\u00a0 He’s also expected to pitch 189 innings this season, which would be his most since 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been extremely motivated to get back to a level of performance that he was accustomed to for a number of years there in Cincinnati,\u201d Padres manager Bud Black commented.<\/p>\n

Harang is 6-5 with a 4.00 ERA in Houston and his ERA for the last 3 wins is 3.00.\u00a0 He’s going to need more help from the offense than what they gave on Thursday in a shutout loss to Houston.\u00a0 They went 0 of 8 with runners in scoring position.\u00a0 They are batting .206 on the season now.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to keep grinding it out,\u201d Padres outfielder Ryan Ludwick said. \u201cYou always hear the phrase: \u2018Hitting\u2019s contagious.\u2019 Hopefully the contagiousness goes on the positive side here in a minute.\u201d<\/p>\n

J.A. Happ will take the mound for the Astros.\u00a0 His first start was not good, as he gave up 7 runs in 4 innings.\u00a0 He came back on April 5th to allow only one run and four hits in 7 2\/3rds innings as the Astros went on to win 7-1 over the Marlins.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was trying to get ahead of hitters and pitch aggressively,\u201d Happ said. \u201cMore or less just have some conviction with what I\u2019m throwing and be aggressive with it. (Sunday) was a lot better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Houston’s Carlos Lee has struggled but this may be just the pitcher to take him out of his slump.\u00a0 Lifetime against Harang, Lee has hit .400 (16 for 40) and has recorded 4 doubles and a homer.<\/p>\n

San Diego is 2-6 SU in their last 8 games and the total has gone UNDER in 5 of their last 7 games.\u00a0 The total has also gone UNDER In 8 of their last 11 on the road and it has gone UNDER again in 7 of their last 8 against the Astros.\u00a0 The Padres are 2-7 SU in their last 9 road games against the Houston Astros and the total has gone UNDER in 6 of San Diego’s last 7 games on the road against the Astros.<\/p>\n

Houston is 7-18 SU in their last 25 games and the total has gone OVER In 9 of their last 13 games.\u00a0 The total has gone OVER in 9 of their last 13 games and it has also gone OVER In 4 of their last 6 at home. The total has gone UNDER in 7 of their last 8 against San Diego and Houston is 7-2 SU in their last 9 games at home against the Padres.\u00a0 The total has gone UNDER in 6 of Houston’s last 7 games at home against the Padres.<\/p>\n

If Harang can continue to find the fountain of youth, this could be a cakewalk for the Padres.\u00a0 On the other hand, their offense has been pretty bad.\u00a0 The question is, will Harang get any run support?\u00a0 If the answer is yes, expect a Padres win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

San Diego Padres (5-7) AT Houston Astros (4-9) April 15, 2011 at 8:05 PM EST Opening Runline:\u00a0 HOU -1.5 +175, SDG +1.5 -205 Current Runline:\u00a0 HOU -1.5 +185, SDG +1.5 -220 Opening Moneyline:\u00a0 HOU -120, SDG +100 Current Moneyline:\u00a0 HOU -106, SDG -104 Opening Total:\u00a0 8 Current Total:\u00a0 8.5 SP:\u00a0 SDG- A. Harang, HOU- J. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40250,"featured_media":4583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1444],"tags":[1039,891],"class_list":["post-14943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-headlines","tag-houston-astros","tag-san-diego-padres"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14945,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14943\/revisions\/14945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}