Cardinals Will Dominate Reds Tonight
Very few teams have been doing as well as the Cardinals have the past month or so. The Reds are definitely not one of the teams that have been doing well. They aren't as brutal as they were in their stretch where they lost 20 of 21 games, but it is hard to be that bad.
Tonight, Miles Mikolas is pitching for the Cardinals. As president of the Miles Mikolas Fan Club, I feel like I need to defend him for his road performances. On the road this season, Mikolas has not been as dominant as he has at home. He has a 4.21 ERA and has allowed 82 hits in 83.1 innings. I'm not sure, exactly, what the issue is, but compared with even just hits allowed at home he clearly isn't as locked in on the road. He also is having his worst month of the season, posting a 5.40 ERA over 31.2 innings. It is misleading though because he actually has four quality starts in his five outings this month. The bad one was 10 runs allowed in 2.2 innings at Coors Field. He's pitched against the Reds twice, both last month. His dominant start came in St. Louis. Then he allowed six earned in Cincinnati.
The Reds send Chase Anderson to the hill to try and take this opener. This is the first start he will have with this new squad. He did start a week ago and went four innings pitching for the Phillies, allowing three earned runs in the start. What can we expect from Anderson? I can't expect much, honestly. He's only had one appearance on the season in which he didn't allow a run. Everything else has been terrible. In fact, he's only had three outings where he didn't allow at least two runs. 36 runs in 48 innings is rough.
Even with the struggles that Mikolas has on the road, and the Cardinals playing last night, I think they should take this game. It also shouldn't be particularly close. Still, I'm going to do another moneyline parlay option of Cardinals/Cardinals at -110.