The St. Louis Cardinals will take on the San Francisco Giants on Thursday night. It's time to continue our MLB odds series and make a Cardinals-Giants prediction and pick.

 

These teams have had remarkably similar seasons. Both of them own a 14-10 record and are in contention for first place in their respective divisions.

However, the Giants are actually in a much worse situation than St. Louis. San Francisco plays in the NL West, the toughest division in baseball. Their 14-10 record is only good enough to tie them for third place in the division. It doesn't help that they've lost each of their last three games and five of their last six. This is a huge opportunity to turn things around against a good Cardinals team.

Here are the Cardinals-Giants MLB odds, courtesy of FanDuel. 

MLB Odds: Cardinals-Giants Odds

St. Louis Cardinals: (+106)

San Francisco Giants: (-124)

Over: 7.5 (-102)

Under: 7.5 (-120)

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Why The Cardinals Could Cover The Spread

The Cardinals have a chance to make a big offensive statement here.

The Giants are entrusting reliever Mauricio Llovera with the start, so he'll likely pitch a couple of innings before giving way to the rest of the bullpen. The relieving corps is usually a safe bet to pitch well for San Francisco, but things have been different lately. Giants relievers have allowed a whopping 20 runs over their last five games. That's an inexcusably bad stretch, and now they're being asked to pitch a full nine innings against a solid Cardinals offense—a recipe for disaster.

Meanwhile, St. Louis has the privilege of deploying a legitimately good starter.

Miles Mikolas is set to take the mound, something that's produced great results for the Cardinals so far. Mikolas has been one of the best pitchers in the MLB in 2022, earning a 1.52 ERA and a .84 WHIP over five starts. It's hard to visualize just how good those numbers are, but it's much easier when it's put like this: Mikolas has only allowed five earned runs over 30 innings of work. Mikolas should continue his hot streak in this matchup with a struggling Giants offense.

Why The Giants Could Cover The Spread

While Mikolas has been pitching extraordinarily well, there's a chance the Giants can produce offensively in this game.

San Francisco has been great against right-handed pitching, earning a .244 batting average and a higher OPS, OBP and slugging percentage than they do against left-handed opponents. Another factor playing into this is the fact Mikolas has never pitched this well in his career. He's typically been a slightly above-average starter, but he's pitching like a Cy Young candidate all of a sudden. It's likely he comes back down to Earth this season, sooner rather than later.

Home-field advantage will certainly give the Giants a boost here.

San Francisco's offense has been significantly better at AT&T Park, earning higher batting stats almost across the board. Meanwhile, the Cardinals have struggled to hit the ball well when playing on the road. St. Louis suffers a drop in batting average, OPS and slugging percentage whenever they're forced to play anywhere but their home turf. The venue of this game heavily favors the Giants.

Final Cardinals-Giants Prediction & Pick

Getting the Cardinals as underdogs here is too good of a line to pass up. Mikolas is enough of a reason to bet them, and the fact the Giants are relying on their shaky bullpen is even more incentive.

Final Cardinals-Giants Pick: St. Louis Cardinals ML: (+106)