Milwaukee Brewers vs St. Louis Cardinals Betting Picks

I've backed St. Louis in both games of this series, and Milwaukee won both, 8-4 on Friday and 3-2 yesterday. I'm switching sides for the finale because of who is on the mound. Jacob Misiorowski carries a 1.86 ERA and a 0.80 WHIP with 247 strikeouts in 169.1 innings. Milwaukee held him to three innings last Sunday at Baltimore. Pat Murphy called that a breather ahead of a more normal outing in this start. The obvious worry is a club with the best record in baseball locked up and nothing to play for. Murphy has already said this start is meant to be a normal one. The Cardinals are in no shape to punish him. They've lost three straight and eight of their last ten while scoring 31 runs over that stretch, and they rank 27th in OPS. Andre Pallante is a capable arm with a 3.61 ERA. He allowed one run over six innings at Pittsburgh his last time out, which helps keep the scoring down from the other side too. Once Misiorowski is done, the Cardinals have to solve a Milwaukee bullpen with a 3.36 ERA. That mismatch is behind both bets. Milwaukee is the right side on the moneyline this afternoon with the UNDER alongside it, and I don't expect the Cardinals to make either one close.

I had St. Louis in this series opener last night, and the Cardinals came back from a 4-1 deficit to tie it in the seventh before Milwaukee put up four in the eighth and won 8-4. The Brewers are 101-59, the Cardinals are 77-83 with three wins in their last ten, and I'm going back to St. Louis anyway. This is a pitching bet. Quinn Mathews has a 2.37 ERA over his last five starts, allowing three earned runs or fewer in every one and pitching into the seventh in two of them. Dustin May has gone the other way since Milwaukee acquired him. His ERA with the Brewers is 5.61, and he has failed to finish the fourth inning in five of his last seven starts. Milwaukee's bullpen ranks third, and that is the strongest case against this. It still can't cover the early innings, and Milwaukee has already locked up the top seed in the National League. St. Louis is also drawing a far bigger share of the money than of the tickets, which is the kind of split professional bettors leave behind. Take St. Louis tonight.

St. Louis is five games under .500 and 23 games back in a division Milwaukee wrapped up on September 15. The records say this shouldn't be competitive, and the price reflects that. But the Brewers have been playing out the schedule ever since clinching, while the stakes left on it now belong to the team chasing. Robert Gasser gets the ball for Milwaukee off a strong final turn, seven scoreless innings his last time out, and Michael McGreevy has quietly matched him for St. Louis: a 3.84 ERA that's actually the tighter number of the two, buried under a 7-9 record because the Cardinals' offense hasn't backed him all season. Two comparable arms take the mound tonight, and this price still reflects six months of Milwaukee pulling away in the standings, not tonight's specific matchup. That gap is where the value sits. Take the Cardinals on the moneyline tonight.