Phillies vs Cubs Props Picks & Best Bets for Sunday Night Baseball

It’s a battle of two of the biggest brands in baseball when the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs lock horns tonight in primetime. 

I see considerable value on the mound in my Sunday Night Baseball props for April 27, and you can find more value over in our Phillies vs. Cubs predictions!

Phillies vs Cubs Sunday Night Baseball props

• Nola o5.5 Ks (-113)
•  Schwarber o0.5 hits (-154)
• Taillon u17.5 outs (+108)

Phillies vs Cubs props for Sunday Night Baseball

Aaron Nola Over 5.5 strikeouts (-113 at Caesars)

I’m not much of a trends person in baseball. Games are so different on a year-to-year, month-to-month, or even on a week-to-week basis. However, there’s one today that caught my eye. Aaron Nola has faced the Chicago Cubs 10 times in his career, exceeding this strikeout total in nine of them. I can’t ignore that here.

Nola has had some regression this season. It’s a product of many factors, such as age and opponent, among others. But he’s also been unlucky. His expected ERA is nearly two full runs lower than his actual ERA, and his expected BABIP is much better as well.

Some regression of the positive kind is forthcoming, which will enable him to pitch deeper into games. This is a good spot to do that and create plenty of swings and misses. 

Though the results have regressed somewhat, Nola’s whiff rate has stayed quite strong — landing in the 60th percentile today — and his K-rate is slightly elevated above that. The Cubs should be obliged to improve that number, too.

They’ve done a good job avoiding strikeouts this season, but a large part has been because they're first in the league in chase contact. That’s the very statistic that drops off significantly when they see more offspeed pitches, and that’s what they’ll see a ton of tonight.

Kyle Schwarber Over 0.5 hits (-154 at Caesars)

This is an excellent spot for Kyle Schwarber to get a knock and, amongst the prop market, by far, the most significant value on the game, as my projections make the fair odds here almost 50 cents higher. 

The story here is the fastball. Jameson Taillon takes the mound for the Chicago Cubs and throws a ton of it. Some variation of a fastball makes up almost 60% of his pitching arsenal. That’s a great thing for Schwarber.

He’ll enter this game as, once again, the best fastball hitter on the Phillies roster. The numbers speak for themselves: a .333 batting average, a .820 slugging percentage, and a 65% hard-hit rate. It just doesn’t get much better than that. 

It fits perfectly Schwarber has the most data points regarding head-to-head matchups against Tallion. He’s faced the righty 19 times in his career and delivered a 1.02 OPS. That’s quite good. I’ll also be dabbling in the home run market. 

Jameson Taillon Under 17.5 outs (+108 at Caesars)

Fittingly enough, the last prop plays directly into this one. Schwarber isn’t the only good fastball hitter on the Phillies roster; he is the best one with a team full of them. That’s part of why the BatX projects Jameson Taillon at just 16.7 outs here, making this good for a four-star play. 

Taillon's barrel rate is in the Bottom 15% of baseball. That’s not what you want when facing the likes of Nick Castellanos, Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and others who make up a powerful lineup. 

The workload also plays a part here. Tallion has failed to reach this number in back-to-back starts. It also happens that those have come against lineups with a similar swing profile in the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres: very good fastball hitters and very power-heavy at the top of the lineup.

I suspect history repeats itself a third time here. 

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