Oftentimes bookmakers will bake in a “must-win” tax, forcing bettors to pay a premium on a team that is in a high-stakes spot for a particular game. With the Philadelphia Phillies just 1 1/2 games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League wild card race and the Chicago Cubs on the beach, you can safely assume if you want to bet the Phillies, you’re going to have to be OK with laying some extra juice.
At the end of the day, betting is supposed to be fun and add to the experience of watching sports, so if you’re a Phillies fan who is white-knuckling your way through the playoff race and want some extra skin in the game, by all means go ahead and do it. But if we’re looking at this matchup from a value perspective, it’s hard to argue against the Cubs, even if the pitching matchup favors the Phils.
A day after falling to the Cubs, 2-1, the Phillies will turn to Aaron Nola to put them back into the win column. Nola has been steady all season with a 3.28 ERA, 0.99 WHIP and 28.7% strikeout rate in 192.1 innings of work. His underlying metrics and batted ball data check out as well, as Nola ranks in the 88th percentile in expected wOBA, 92nd percentile in hard hit rate and 77th percentile in expected batting average.
The man tasked with trying to keep pace with Nola on Wednesday night will be former Yankee prospect Hayden Wesneski. The 24-year-old has made four appearances — including two starts — for the Cubs since being traded for Scott Effross and has not looked out of place in the MLB at all. Wesneski owns a 2.45 ERA and 3.17 xFIP over 22 innings and has struck out 24 of the 84 (28.6%) of the batters he’s faced while issuing only four walks.
The Phillies are the better team with a much stronger starting pitcher in this matchup, but Wesneski has shown that he can handle an MLB lineup and the difference between these two offenses isn’t that drastic. While the Phillies have an above-average offense (.317 wOBA, .729 OPS) against right-handed pitching, the Cubs are not that far adrift (.306 wOBA, .696 OPS).
Sean Zerillo’s Action Network MLB Model projects Chicago as a +151 underdog on Wednesday night and although there’s already some value on the Cubbies at +162, it seems pretty likely this number will keep rising. At the time of writing, 84% of the bets for this tilt have come in on the Phillies, which is not surprising since bettors will naturally gravitate towards the team with more on the line in a spot like this.
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