Chicago Cubs vs. Houston Astros Odds & Prediction: July 19th 2010

Chicago Cubs vs. Houston Astros
Prediction: Houston Astros +155 odds
Visit Touthouse.com for more MLB predictions from Matt Fargo

The Cubs are coming off a series win against the Phillies over the weekend as they took three of four including Sunday where they were able to get to Roy Halladay. They look to carry that into the series against the Astros and while letdowns in baseball are very uncommon compared to other sports, this is a situation where we have one. Houston meanwhile is coming off a series loss in Pittsburgh as the offense once again did nothing to help Roy Oswalt yesterday, scoring no runs. That actually puts the Astros in a solid underdog situation explained later. Wandy Rodriguez gets the call for Houston and he is pitching some of his best baseball of the season. He has tossed four straight quality starts and while the All-Star break has out a halt to that for now with the added time off, facing the Cubs should negate that. He has thrown four straight quality starts against Chicago as well going back to last season. This includes two straight at Wrigley Field with the latter coming earlier this season. Rodriguez has maintained a WHIP of 1.00 over those last four starts and it looks like he has ironed out some of his issues after a rough couple months. He squares off against Carlos Silva who is having one of the most surprising seasons in baseball. He is 9-3 with a 3.45 ERA and 1.14 WHIP in 17 starts. He is coming off one of his worst starts of the season in his last start before the break and it will be interesting to see how he responds. That along with the time off killed a lot of positive momentum he had built with seven straight quality starts. The situation mentioned earlier is to play on all underdogs after being shut out in a loss to a division rival, in a game involving two teams with losing records and winning percentages between .380 and .460. This situation is 29-12 (70.7 percent) since 1997. 3* Houston Astros