#956 ASA TOP PLAY ON 10* St Louis Cardinals -1.5 Runs (-115) over Cincinnati Reds, Thursday at 7:45 PM ET - The Reds are in a free fall losing 6 straight games including a 4 game sweep at home at the hands of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In that series the Reds were outscored 23-8 and only collected 23 total hits for an average of less than 6 hits per game. St Louis is surging winning 33 of their last 45 games and they’ve built a 7 game lead in the NL Central over Milwaukee. The Cards are also chasing the Mets to try and earn a bye in the wild card round. Mikolas is on the mound and he has been fantastic at home this season with a 2.23 ERA allowing just 59 hits in 89 innings pitched. He’s coming off a poor outing, however that was on the road vs where his numbers are quite a bit higher, and he’s had an extra day off to rest up between starts. In his 1 start at home vs the Reds this season he pitched 7 innings and allowed 1 ER. Cincy is struggling at the plate right now and we expect them to have problems plating runs tonight. That shouldn’t be a problem for St Louis. They will be facing Chase Anderson who has pitched only 9 innings this season, but 2.1 of those innings have come vs the Cardinals. They faced him twice just 2 weeks ago and Anderson gave up 7 ER’s in only 2.1 innings. On the season he’s allowed 3 home runs in just 9 innings which is a potential big problem here vs the Cards who are averaging 1.3 HR’s per game and have hit the most round trippers in MLB since the All Star Break. Anderson is backed up by the worst bullpen in MLB (highest ERA and 2nd highest WHIP) so we don’t expect the offense to stop when he exits. Cincinnati is just 27-43 on the road this year and vs teams over .500 they have the 2nd fewest wins in the Majors with a record of 25-53. We like the host Cardinals to win this one by 2+ runs.