This is a 10* GAME OF THE WEEK on the San Diego Padres.

Colorado has won three straight, but we think it'll come back down to Earth tonight against Padres' ace James Shields. Shields (0-4, 3.55 ERA) has pitched better than what his record would indicate as he has four quality starts in his first five outings. So far Shields has been the victim of poor run support as his team has provided no runs in three of his outings, not surprisingly he has the second-lowest run-support average in the league at 1.36. Shields comes into this one off his best outing of the year, giving up one run and three hits over seven innings in a 1-0 loss at San Francisco. Before allowing four runs and six hits over seven innings in a 6-3 road loss to the Rockies on April 10th, he'd won six straight decisions vs. them. The Padres managed just three hits off Clayton Kershaw in a 1-0 road loss to the Dodgers on Sunday, spoiling their first series sweep of the season. One bright spot for San Diego remains the play of slugger Matt Kemp, who is 12 for 33 with two homers in his last eight games. And that's bad news for the Rockies as he's hitting .410 with nine home runs and 24 RBI over his past 15 vs. them. The visitors counter with Jon Gray (0-0, 11.42 ERA) who has been shelled for 11 runs and 16 hits over 8 2/3's innigns in his first two starts. Gray is 0-1 with a horrible 6.57 ERA in 11 big league starts. This is a huge pitching mismatch, we like the Friars to finally get off the schneid and give Shields a bit of support today and all things considered, this is indeed the very definition of "great line value." Play on SAN DIEGO.

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