On Wednesday evening, the Houston Astros (72-60) try and bounce back following an ugly loss to the Colorado Rockies (38-94), who played spoiler in Yordan Alvarez’s long-awaited return yesterday. With Framber Valdez on the mound for Houston against Chase Dollander, the home team feels primed to produce fireworks at Daikin Park this evening.
Here’s an Astros vs. Rockies prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook for Wednesday’s contest.
Astros vs. Rockies prediction, preview
You heard that right in the intro — Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez played his first game since May 2 last night after battling a hand injury with a setback over the last three-plus months. The star outfielder went 0-for-2 but did produce two walks in his return, though the Stros’ offense as a whole suffered and scored just once on six hits in the 6-1 loss. Houston’s lineup now looks just about whole (though Isaac Paredes remains sidelined likely for the remainder of the season with a hamstring issue), which should help them iron out an inconsistent offense over the most important stretch of the campaign.
The results in August haven’t looked pretty, sitting third-to-last in scoring with just 88 runs in 23 games. They’ve hit .234 in that sample, the 23rd-ranked mark, with a .682 OPS, 24th overall. Homers have also been scarce for this team with just 26 this month, tied for 20th. If truly healthy and ready to return to his old self, Alvarez’s addition infuses some much-needed juice into this lineup. Houston’s arms generally pitched well over the course of the season with the sixth-best WHIP, but the team’s ERA has now slipped to 12th on the year amid a poor stretch this month — with a 4.88 ERA that ranks 23rd and a 1.39 WHIP that falls 25th, the pitchers are clearly tired.
The Rockies are still the worst team in baseball by a 10-win margin, but they’ve produced respectable numbers at the plate in August. Colorado ranks 17th in scoring with 109 runs in 24 games, sixth in batting average at .262, and 15th in OPS with a .731 mark. They’re also 12th in slugging percentage at .422. Believe it or not, the Rockies have actually won 16 games since the All-Star break as well, and while they’ve lost 20 in that span, they’re still playing much better ball than their historically poor start to the 2025 campaign.
However, even the best run support may not save this rotation and bullpen. As a whole, Colorado’s pitching staff falls dead-last in ERA with a 7.39 mark in August. Predictably, a 1.71 WHIP also falls last in the MLB. Those are some very poor numbers, but things don’t look brighter as a whole this season — the Rockies are still tailing every other team with a 5.96 ERA and 1.61 WHIP overall.
Astros vs. Rockies pick, best bet
DraftKings Sportsbook lists the Astros as strong -304 favorites on the Moneyline tonight. The Rockies are +239 underdogs with the run total set at eight.
For Houston, left-hander Framber Valdez (3.32 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, 153 SO) sees the start. He’s played poorly lately with seven or more hits and three or more earned runs allowed in each of his four starts this month, but at some point he’s bound to bounce back. Valdez squares off against Colorado righty Chase Dollander (6.91 ERA, 1.63 WHIP, 68 SO), whose rate stats are, well, uninspiring to say the least.
The Astros probably should’ve won last night’s game, especially with Hunter Brown pitching, but the loss shows that anything can happen on a nightly basis in this sport. However, that felt like more of an outlier than a sign of things to come, especially with Houston entering such a mouth-watering matchup against Dollander. He doesn’t generate many strikeouts, walks lots of batters and allows plenty of barrels with a fifth-percentile grade in pitching run value this season. The Astros should rebound nicely and not only win by multiple runs tonight, but dominate Dollander in his appearance. I’m targeting over 4.5 total runs for the home team at -130 odds.
Best bet: HOU Astros over 4.5 total runs (-130)
Click the odds on this bet to tail!
