Legal Sports Betting

Phillies vs. Cardinals: One Posidelphia Bet, One Negadelphia Bet, and a Boostable Parlay

By Joe Tansey

Published: May 12th, 2025 · 4:16 PM EDT

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Everything is peachy keen in Phillies world.

The Phils won five of six on the road last week, the pitching staff is on fire, and they come back to Citizens Bank Park with immaculate hitting weather.

All of that sounds like the perfect concoction for the over 8.5 to hit on Monday evening, but as the great Lee Corso would say, “Not So Fast My Friends.”

The Matthew Liberatore/Cristopher Sanchez pitching matchup actually lends itself to the under.

Liberatore hasn’t allowed more than three earned runs in any of his last five starts. He’s coming off his best start of the year against the dead-in-the-water Pirates.

Sanchez, as we all know, can turn into the reincarnation of Cy Young when inside the hallowed walls of The Bank.

Sanchez as a whole has been solid for the Phils and he’s also coming off an impressive outing in which he limited the Rays to one hit over six innings.

Sanchez struck out five Rays last week, and while his punchout numbers dipped a bit, the over 5.5 at even money is worth a look.

Now, look, I’m not comparing the two pitchers, but the Cardinals did strike out seven times against MacKenzie Gore on Sunday. The Cardinals are a middle-of-the-pack strikeout team against lefties, 14th to be exact, but I think Sanchez can get to six punchouts. That’s the Posidelphia bet.

Liberatore can reach his over 4.5 strikeouts as well since the Phils have the sixth-highest strikeout rate against left-handed hurlers. That’s the way to go if Negadelphia is part of your legal sports betting philosophy.

But if going against the Phils isn’t your thing, I’d look into the first five under because neither starter has a high home run concession rate.

The full game under is in play here as well. I’d pair the under 8.5 with Sanchez 5 Ks and Liberatore 4 Ks to get you to +200. You can boost that even further with bet365’s 30 percent profit boost for SGPs. For what it’s worth, if you’re scanning Pennsylvania sports betting apps and NJ betting apps, note that Trea Turner over 1.5 bases at -135 is the most-bet player prop of the day at BetMGM.