The Philadelphia Phillies have one of their best starters on the mound Wednesday in Zack Wheeler, who is trying to match teammate Aaron Nola’s stellar outing on Monday against the Detroit Tigers.
Nola allowed just one hit across seven innings of work in a Phillies win, and Wheeler has a chance to duplicate that performance against a Tigers team that ranks in the bottom five in Major League Baseball in most hitting categories.
Reese Olson (0-1, 3.60 ERA) will make his second career start for Detroit in this game against Wheeler (4-4, 4.33 ERA).
While the Phillies ace has a rough ERA, his Fielding Independent Pitching sits at 2.85, suggesting some major positive regression is coming.
Here are the odds and my best bet for this matchup:
Tigers vs. Phillies odds, run line and total
Tigers vs. Phillies prediction and pick
Olson was solid in his Major League debut, allowing just two runs on two hits across five frames in a loss to the Chicago White Sox. Unfortunately, Detroit gave him zero runs of support in that game.
That could be the case in this matchup against the Phillies, as the Tigers couldn’t touch Nola on Monday night.
Wheeler is in the same boat as Nola in terms of pedigree, and he actually ranks in the 68th percentile in expected ERA, 80th percentile in barrel percentage and 85th percentile in average exit velocity against this season.
Translation: Wheeler isn’t getting hit hard, he’s just been a bit unlucky.
That’s a bad sign for a Tigers team that doesn’t put many runs on the board as it is this season, but I will give Olson some credit for pitching well in his debut.
If he can put together a similar performance, we should be looking at a matchup that falls short of this total of 8.
Game odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.