The Philadelphia Phillies have plenty of reasons to be excited about Friday’s game versus the St. Louis Cardinals.

It’s the first home game at Citizens Bank Park in eight days and the Phils have a very favorable pitching matchup with Aaron Nola going up against Miles Mikolas.

Four hitters in the Phillies lineup, Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, Alec Bohm and Nick Castellanos, all have career home runs against Mikolas. The St. Louis right-hander also has some pretty damning road splits this season. He has a 5.51 ERA away from Busch Stadium and has conceded 20 earned runs while opponents have a .291 batting average against him.

Mikolas allowed at least six hits in five of his six road starts. He’s an innings eater, too, as he’s gone at least five innings in four of his last five appearances.

He hasn’t been dominant against any set of hitters, but lefties are hitting 18 points higher against Mikolas this season.


Enter Bryce Harper.

Harper leads the Phillies in hits, homers, batting average and OPS at CBP. He has 10 dingers, 34 hits, a .318 BA and 1.050 OPS. Harper owns a .278 batting average in 18 career at-bats against Mikolas as well.

Harper is anywhere from +320 to +350 to hit a home run, which is a pretty decent number given all the factors in play. His Over 1.5 total bases prop sits around even money as well.

Schwarber is a solid secondary option to player-prop betting because he comes into Friday with nine hits in the last week. He’s seen Mikolas the most of any Phillies player from his time with the Chicago Cubs. Schwarber has significantly lower odds to go yard, and he probably will for the entire series.

A handful of Cardinals hitters, mainly Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado, have seen Nola more than 15 times in their careers, but St. Louis’ two best hitters do not have good numbers against him. Goldschmidt has a .154 BA in 26 at-bats and Arenado has a .208 BA in 24 AB.

Nola’s pitched into the seventh inning in three of his last five home starts and is coming off a battle on the mound against Colorado in his last start. He went six frames despite not having his best stuff at Coors Field.

Nola’s outs prop sits at 18.5, so that might be tough to justify betting since he could have a solid six-inning start and still not hit the over. I think that’s a perfectly priced prop.

The Phillies money line is hovering around -200 at New Jersey sports betting apps and sportsbook apps in PA. It’s just slightly lower than that as of this writing, so you’re paying a ton of juice for the Phils to win.

If you think the Phils take full advantage of Mikolas, I would go with the run line and the Phillies’ team total over 4.5 runs. The Phils scored at least five runs in six of the eight games in their last homestand against the New York Mets, Washington Nationals and Texas Rangers.