Jennings has never won against Les Nationales -no matter where they played- and as for Livan, after a slow start, he's been remarkably gifted at getting decent run support behind his solid but unspectacular pitching. No seriously, you would be hard pressed to find a starting pitcher who you could predict as accurately performance to performance as Livan Hernandez. Around seven innings, two or three runs, about eight hits, four or five K's and a couple or three walks. Everytime. Okay, so there are chinks: in his last three starts Livan has given up at least one homerun when he allowed two over the entire duration of his eleven game win streak (spanning thirteen starts). When he loses, Livan tends to fall out of rhythmn from the stretch and too often he lets opponents string together several hits in a row, resulting in three to five run single innings. The Rockies therefore have to try and get a couple of guys on early and see what happens. Without Christian Guzman manning short, the Nats offense takes an automatic step forward but they lose a little on the left side for D so hopefully Matt Holliday and a couple of our other right handed bats can take advantage of that.
Despite Hernandez's success this year, the Rockies actually have a pretty decent shot of winning if JJ pitches solidly. Go Rockies!