TLDR: Houston shows up at Petco with the best record in the AL West behind them, and San Diego is scrambling to hang onto a wild-card spot with half its rotation on the shelf.
Neither club has a starter locked in for this one yet, but that's almost the whole story with the Padres right now. Between Joe Musgrove, Nick Pivetta and Lucas Giolito all working back from injury, San Diego's rotation depth is thinner than it's been all year, and whoever they trot out Sunday is pitching with zero margin for error.
Cristian Javier
(1-4)·6.44 ERA
Aug 3 vs Blue Jays
L
6.0IP
3ER
2K
0BB
85P
08/09 Lineup
Randy Vásquez
(9-6)·4.19 ERA
Aug 4 @ Diamondbacks
W
6.0IP
0ER
1K
1BB
80P
08/09 Lineup
Houston's not fully healthy either. Carlos Correa is still working his way back from the ankle injury that's kept him out since he was cleared to swing a bat, and Brice Matthews remains sidelined with a knee issue the front office is now pointing toward mid-to-late August for a return. That's a shortstop and a center fielder the Astros have had to replace on the fly during a stretch where they climbed from 6.5 games back into first place.
So this is a pennant-race matchup dressed up as a mid-August series — one team trying to hold a division lead it fought hard to get, the other trying to keep pace in a wild-card scrum that's been a game or two apart for weeks.
San Diego's offense has had real thunder in it lately — Manny Machado has been driving in runs in bunches and Fernando Tatis Jr. has looked like himself again — but the results have been streaky. A blowout loss to Arizona is sitting right there in the Padres' last five games, a reminder of how quickly things can get away from a pitching staff running on fumes.
Houston, meanwhile, has been the more stable club, which is exactly what a first-place team needs during a stretch where two everyday regulars are still watching from the bench. If the Astros can just avoid a letdown spot in a lower-stakes weekend series, they're built to grind out this one behind a lineup that's carried them through the injuries so far.
Astros 2, Padres 7: Final Score & Odds Recap — First-Place Astros Test a Padres Team Running on Fumes
