07.07.2023

St. Louis Cardinals @ Chicago White Sox Game Preview and Prop Picks: The Jordan Montgomery Game

It’s almost fitting that the first half of the season will wrap up with two of the most disappointing teams in the league matching up for a three-game series. Fresh off their series loss, the Cardinals will be in Chicago to take on a White Sox team that is fresh off getting swept. We’ll preview the series' first game before breaking down my two prop plays for the action.

Game Preview

In a sad yet impressive way, the Chicago White Sox season reached two new lows within the last week and a half. After losing a series to the Oakland A’s, the White Sox then proceeded to get swept by the Blue Jays, culminating in a doubleheader yesterday. In the first game of the doubleheader, both teams went into extra innings tied at zero, but then the White Sox bullpen allowed six runs in the 11th inning to lose the game 6-2.

Following their gut-wrenching extra innings loss after they got a stellar outing from Lance Lynn, the White Sox turned around in the next game and allowed 16 hits while losing 5-4. As they look to snap their three-game losing streak tonight, Chicago will have Dylan Cease on the mound for his 19th start. The right-hander allowed three earned runs in five innings during his last outing, which brought his ERA to 4.10.

Cease and the White Sox will face a Cardinals team tonight that had some brutal moments at the plate and on the mound in their series with the Marlins but was able to avoid getting swept last night with a 3-0 win. St. Louis was able to battle for their runs, with arguably the biggest coming off the bat of Nolan Arenado, who took Eury Perez deep to break a scoreless tie.

As big as the home run was, the Cardinals' pitching staff, especially starter Jack Flaherty deserve a lot of the credit for the win. After allowing a combined 25 runs over the previous two games, Flaherty gave his team 6.2 scoreless innings. St. Louis will have lefty Jordan Montgomery on the bump tonight, looking to make it two straight wins. The lefty has turned in three consecutive impressive outings to lower his to 3.52 in 92 innings.

Prop Picks

The focus of my two prop plays for this game will be Cardinals starter Jordan Montgomery. Not only has Montgomery been the Cardinals' best starter as of late, but he’s seen his strikeout numbers increase over his last five outings, so my first prop play is for him to go over his strikeout prop of 5.5, which is priced at (+110). The lefty has gone over this total in five straight outings and now faces a White Sox lineup with the 7th highest strikeout percentage against left-handed pitching at home over the last month.

The fact that Montgomery will be pitching on the road is even better since he has put up better numbers on the road, including a 22.4% strikeout percentage. Monty’s success on the road and the White Sox's struggles against lefties lead me to my next prop play, which is Montgomery, to go over his outs recorded total of 16.5, priced at (-145).

Chicago doesn’t just strike out a lot in this spot, but they also have the lowest walk percentage at 2.6% while ranking 27th in wOBA, 25th in wRC+, and OPS. This is perfect for Montgomery since he has gone over this total in six straight starts and has a .239 batting average against and 2.91 ERA on the road.