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Phillies a Slight Home Favorite Behind Ranger Suarez Despite Recent Downward Trends
By Joe Tansey
Published:
It’s mid-August and we know the Phillies will be in the postseason, so let’s slap a tag on a very important series.
This is a litmus test series against the Seattle Mariners over the next three days.
The Phils are a slight -115 favorite behind Ranger Suarez for the clash against the 68-win Mariners, who are 1.5 games off first place in the AL West.
Monday’s game is important from a postseason perspective because the Phils are facing one of the best pitchers in baseball this season in Logan Gilbert. His record is only 3-4, but he’s got a 3.31 ERA and 124 strikeouts. He’s let up just 15 earned runs in his last 43 innings of work dating back to July 1st.
Gilbert’s allowed four or fewer hits in five of his last eight outings. He’s struck out 57 batters in that span. He’s whiffed at least six opposing batters in each of those appearances.
Unfortunately, Suarez is trending in the opposite direction. The Phillies’ southpaw let up 14 earned runs in 18.2 innings of work so far in August. He’s had more than six strikeouts once in the last seven starts and he’s allowed 51 hits since the beginning of July.
Seattle is coming off the emotional high of gallivanting around Williamsport. There was a small rain delay that pushed back the Sunday night start, so they did get into Philly late, but that’s really the only positive spin I can find for Suarez to rebound from his recent struggles.
I think you have to bet the Under 18.5 outs at bet365 on Suarez. He’s only gotten into the sixth inning three times in his last seven starts and his last start against the Reds was not promising.
Seattle has the second-most home runs against lefties (the Phillies are third), so I wouldn’t be surprised if the Over 2.5 earned runs prop hits for Suarez, potentially in one swing.
We do know from previous postseason runs that Ranger battles his balls off in tight games, so maybe that helps him re-wire his system, but right now the recent trends suggest that won’t be the case.
Gilbert’s allowed 12 home runs this season, but both lefties and righties have horrible overall splits against him, so it’ll take a near-perfect game from the Phils to win.
If you do want to play around with narratives, though, Cal Raleigh and Kyle Schwarber to hit a home run SGP does sit at +1150, the best price you’ll get on that particular SGP across the three games of the series. If none of that grabs you ahead of 6:45 p.m. Monday night, you can always grab a PA casino sign up bonus and play blackjack online.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.