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Phillies a Slight Home Favorite Against Braves After Conclusion of “Fade the Rockies and A’s” Road Trip
By Joe Tansey
Published:
It’s always fun when a divisional rival comes into Citizens Bank Park, and refreshing to have a few rivalry games played in the middle of a long season.
The Phils are a -120 favorite on the money line behind Ranger Suarez against Spencer Strider and the Braves.
As with most of the divisional games these days, there’s a ton of batter-versus-pitcher history to go off of that can help with betting these matchups.
The craziest part about this specific game is that Brandon Marsh, of all people, has the best head-to-head numbers against Strider of any Phillies player. Marsh has two home runs and a .385 batting average in 13 at-bats versus the Atlanta ace.
Look, there are probably six, maybe seven, or even eight, guys you would bet ahead of Marsh on a regular basis, but he is just -125 to get a hit at bet365 and +650 to homer. It’s absolutely worth the risk if he’s in the lineup.
Kyle Schwarber, Bryce Harper, and Alec Bohm all have homers against Strider as well, but none of them have a career batting average over .250 versus the right-handed hurler.
Strider certainly hasn’t been spectacular in his two starts this season, which is why the Phillies’ money line looks enticing. He allowed four runs on six innings in 4.1 innings in Washington last week .
It’s still a small sample size in 2025, but I think you have to take a stab at either Strider over 4.5 hits allowed or over 2.5 earned runs allowed since he hasn’t found his dominant stuff yet.
The histories are even better on the Atlanta side against Suarez. Ozzie Albies has three home runs and a .300 average in 20 ABs, while both Austin Riley and Marcell Ozuna have a home run and .300 averages versus the Phillies lefty.
BetMGM has a Home Run No Sweat Token that I would definitely use on this game. It’s wild to put Marsh and Albies in a parlay together, but it might be wild enough to work. There’s also a BetMGM PA casino bonus if you’re sitting this one out. We faded the Rockies and A’s, but that run is over, so we pause for new PA online casino.
The full game over 8.5 is the play, though, just in general. Six of the last seven Braves games have had at least eight runs and the Phils have scored four or more runs in six of the last seven as well.
Joe Tansey writes sports betting posts for Crossing Broad and also covers the Philadelphia Union for his Substack site, Union Soccer Blog.