After dropping both games of a doubleheader on Saturday, the Chicago Cubs will host the St. Louis Cardinals again on Sunday night in the fourth game in their five-game series. The Cubs took game one of the series, followed by the doubleheader sweep by St. Louis on Saturday.
After Saturday, the Cardinals are one game over .500 and just 2.5 games behind the Cubs for the NL Central lead. Not bad for a team that had multiple cases of COVID-19 and has had an even weirder year that most other MLB teams.
With two games left to play in the series, the Cubs have to be slightly uncomfortable with their 2.5-game lead.
Getting Healthy
After the COVID-19 scare that the Cardinals had earlier in the season, it’s been about getting back on track. Although they never had much of a chance to get in any sort of rhythm, the team’s COVID-19 cases wasted any progress that was made in the restart. Dakota Hudson will toe the rubber for St. Louis on Sunday to try to keep them going.
Hudson is coming off his best start of the year, throwing seven innings of two-run baseball, and only one of those runs was earned. After throwing a bullpen game in the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, the Cards could use a solid, deep outing out of Hudson. They would love nothing more than his 2.77 ERA coming down even further.
Division Rivalry
The Cubs certainly don’t want to lose any more games in this set to their least favorite division rivals. Outside of Ian Happ, the Cubs just didn’t have much offensively on Saturday. Happ, on the other hand, became only the fourth hitter to ever have a multiple home run game off of Adam Wainwright for the second time.
That’s right, Happ has had two multi-home run games off of Wainwright. Impressive, to say the least.
The Cubs will roll starting pitcher Jon Lester out Sunday. Lester is in the midst of a season that he would rather forget, but maybe the inconsistency of the Cardinals lineup can get him going.
Profiting off of Rivalry
The Cubs are favored by 1.5 on the run line and are also slight favorites on the moneyline. One of the interesting parts of this series is that these two teams will not meet again this year after Monday’s series finale. So if either team wants to get one last jab in, here’s their chance.
When making your pick on this one, I’d double down on St. Louis. Lester has had a bad year, and the Cardinal bats are in full swing right now. Not only should you pick them on the moneyline, but the run line as well.
Even if they are unable to beat the Cubs, they’ll keep it close. Take the Cardinals +1.5 and win some money.
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