Phillies vs. Nationals Betting Pick: Nats a Rare Contrarian Favorite

If you've taken a gander at the NL East standings lately, you've noticed that this hasn't been the year the Nationals were hoping for. At 35-38, they're eight games out of first place and four behind the second-place Phillies.

Still, they're -110 favorites over said Phillies tonight.

As win-loss records tend to be the starting point for many casual bettors' decisions, a plus-money opportunity on a "better" team is a pretty appealing play — especially in a game with no stars on the mound (Nick Pivetta vs. Erick Fedde).

It shouldn't come as much surprise, though, that oddsmakers are well aware of team records when they set lines. They're also well aware of how much action each side of a given line is drawing — the Phillies are attracting three-quarters of bets but only 60% of money in this case — and they aren't in the business of setting soft lines to be nice.

In fact, fading "trendy dogs" like the Phillies has been a profitable spot for baseball bettors historically, especially in spots similar to the Nats' tonight.

On top of being contrarian with a higher money than bet percentage, Washington is also coming off a win (three, in fact). In general, that leads the public to believe a loss is due, when in reality those extremely recent results should have no affect on tonight's outcome. That's provided another hint of historical value to teams like the Nationals tonight.

Let's put the whole recipe together — when a team is favored against a better opponent (by record), receives less than a third of bets but at least five percentage points more actual money, and is coming off a win, that club has gone 43-16 since 2016 (when Bet Labs began collecting money percentage data).

That record has won 20.3 units in the past 3.5 years for a 34.3% return on investment.

The pick: Nationals -110