Tonight is definitely the marquee matchup of the series with John Smoltz being pulled from tomorrow's game. Cook comes in as the Rockies de facto ace, and he's been living up to the label after rolling off six consecutive winning decisions. He's had only a couple of bad performances in his shortened season and has otherwise proved reliable and deadly efficient in his game management both home and away. Hudson himself came within an out of a nine inning complete game last time out, he's going the distance with increasing regularity. Unfortunately for the Braves, something else Hudson has been doing with increasing regularity is allowing about four runs per start, something that qualified as a "bad performance" for Cook in my prior sentence.
Really, with Hudson struggling to keep the runs off the board of late, and with Cook's miserly control of his game, You've got to like the Rockies chances tonight to take this series early, and with Smoltz being pulled from tomorrow's start, could we be talking sweep? Alright, I won't get excited just yet, let's get through tonight first. Go Rockies!