The San Diego Padres will try to clinch their brief two-game set with the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight at Petco Park. The Padres are coming off a dramatic comeback win as third baseman Donovan Solano delivered the walk-off single with the bases loaded in the 10th inning.
The win cut LA’s lead to 5.5 games, but the other big news in this series is roster reconstruction. Both the Dodgers and Padres will have players walking around the clubhouse with name tags on, as Andrew Friedman and A.J. Preller turned the trade deadline into their own personal swap meet.
The pitching matchup will pit Clayton Kershaw against Dylan Cease, so let’s take a deeper dive into the stats and roster moves to see who’s hot, who’s not and where the value play is as San Diego tried to go from wild card combatant to division leader.
Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres Odds
| Team | Spread | Total | MoneyLine |
| Los Angeles | +1.5
(-215) |
0 7
(-105) |
-105 |
| San Diego | -1.5
(+170) |
U 7.5
(-115) |
-125 |
| **ESPN BET Odds Subject to Change** | |||
Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres Match Details
- Fixture: Los Angeles Dodgers vs. San Diego Padres
- Date and Time: July 31, 2024, @9:40 PM EST
- Location: Petco Park, San Diego, California
Apex Tale of the Tape
| Los Angeles | vs. | San Diego |
| 63-45 | Record | 58-51 |
| 4.93 | Runs/G | 4.70 |
| .253 | BA | .264 |
| .334 | OBP | .323 |
| .435 | SLG | .412 |
| .769 | OPS | .736 |
| 147 | HR | 122 |
| 65 | SB | 75 |
| 3.80 | ERA | 4.07 |
| 1.21 | WHIP | 1.24 |
| 33 | Saves | 25 |
| 0.987 | Fielding % | 0.987 |
Key Stats
Los Angeles Dodgers
You know that old adage about needing a scorecard to ID the players? Welcome to the Dodger clubhouse. Andrew Friedman did an on-the-fly roster overhaul at the deadline, making moves right and left. The new names include Jack Flaherty, Tommy Edman, Kevin Kiermaier, Michael Kopech and Amed Rosario, but they’re not the guys who matter here.
The ones who do are Shohei Ohtani, of course, but part of the reason he matters so much is because the contributions from the rest of the lineup have been intermittent at times, with Cavan Biggio and Will Smith contributing especially big hits last night. On the pitching side, the key player is Clayton Kershaw, who is coming off arm surgery and suddenly a lot more necessary than LA thought he would be.
San Diego Padres
The Padres are all about the drama right now. The ever-dramatic Manny Machado homered in the ninth along with CF Jackson Merrill to get San Diego to extras, and the Pads completed their comeback in the tenth to notch their eighth win in their last nine games.
The pitchers have been doing drama, too. Matt Waldron coughed up a bad start against LA last night, but Dylan Cease has been a stud. He’s coming off an epic no-hitter against Washington, and before that he shut out the Guardians and the Braves. To say he’s on a roll would be a serious understatement.
Prediction
The roster shuffling has been getting most of the attention in the last couple of days, but the value here is in the pitching matchup. Clayton Kershaw is mostly a reputation play at this point–he’s unlikely to go deep into the game, and San Diego’s offense has been a serious force lately. Dylan Cease has been a pitching force in his own right, and while he may not shut out LA, he’s got more than enough to best Kershaw. We’ll go with the Padres at a money line of -125 just in case Kershaw comes up strong, which would certainly add more to the drama factor here.
Final Pick
San Diego Padres – Money Line – -125
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