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Can the Phillies Ride Mick Abel to First Winning Streak in Two Weeks?
By Joe Tansey
Published:
The Phillies haven’t had a winning streak since the last week of May.
It’s a little alarming when you put it that way, but as noted on Monday, this is a 162-game season and there will be dips.
The rollercoaster should continue to go back up on Tuesday with the Phils throwing Mick Abel against Colin Rea in a matchup where both the Phils and Cubs have even odds on the money line.
This is mostly due to the low sample size on Abel, and while he has been solid in his two starts, he is facing one of the better teams in baseball on Tuesday.
There’s a much larger data set on Colin Rea, and while he owns a nice 3.49 ERA, there are signs of some major regression coming his way.
Rea surrendered six earned runs in two different starts against the Reds to close out May. He’s allowed four or more earned runs in three of his last six starts. He let up two earned runs or fewer in his first seven appearances.
That’s one trend going in the Phillies’ favor. The other is the .314 batting average that lefties have against Rea.
With that in play and winds expected to blow out to right, there’s no better time for a Kyle Schwarber home run than now. I keep trying to speak it into existence in these posts and have had no luck. Schwarber is +210 to go yard at BetMGM, which has a No Sweat Home Run Token available for Tuesday’s MLB slate.
But hey! that’s a lot better than me suggesting to bet Max Kepler because of the splits. (Watch, Kepler’s gonna break his funk and go yard tonight and Schwarbs will be 0-for-4).
Righties are only batting .233 against Rea, but Trea Turner has a .250 batting average in 12 at-bats versus Rea, J.T. Realmuto has a .400 BA in 10 ABs and Nick Castellanos has a home run in one of his 11.
Schwarber props are the play based on the splits, but Turner and Castellanos are the go-to guys on recent form. Castellanos is tied for the eighth-most hits in the majors over the last seven days, while Turner has six hits in that span.
A Turner/Schwarber/Castellanos hit SGP gets you to +140 at bet365, while 2+ total bases for each player moves you up to +700. For PA sports betting I’d use the bet365 Safety Net Bet on the latter of those two plays.
There’s far less data with the Cubs against Mick Abel, which probably plays to the home side’s advantage. Abel’s only allowed eight hits across 11.1 innings in the majors.
Abel’s strikeout prop is only over/under 4.5. Zack Wheeler fanned seven Cubs on Monday and the Cubs are a far more favorable matchup for Abel than the Blue Jays were last week. The Cubs have the ninth-most strikeouts in the majors since last Tuesday, so while Abel probably won’t have nine Ks, like he did against the Pirates, he can absolutely reach five or even more in this outing.
Abel is also +220 to record the win at bet365. He went into the sixth inning in both of his major-league starts, and if the Phils jump on Rea in the first half of the game, that looks like the pitching prop with the best value in Tuesday’s game.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.