Over the course of an MLB season, bettors have the opportunity to wager on thousands of games. Inevitably, there’s some value to be found out there. During the past several years, I’ve had success with MLB bets. So, I’ll share my daily plays here along with videos for those who prefer multimedia formats. Each game will have a few brief notes explaining my thoughts.
Keep in mind that some of these lines will have moved by the time I get around to writing them up. The best way to get in at a good number is to use our MLB odds page and join TheLines.com’s free discord server to see the picks as they’re released. I encourage everyone to get involved in the discussion and, rather than tail anyone’s picks (including mine) without thinking, apply your own judgments as a filter. We have a great community of baseball fans discussing games daily.
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Best MLB Bets For Monday, April 24
Boston Red Sox At Baltimore Orioles
Notes for this game:
- Chris Sale has been looking like old Chris Sale. Ignore his 8 ERA and focus on his peripherals. They’re telling us he’s good and healthy again, and it looked that way to me when I watched him.
- Sale has gotten killed by a combo of walks, homers, unlucky BABIP and low LOB%. The BABIP and LOB will correct on its own, and nothing in the peripherals suggests he should suddenly have a high walk rate.
- Dean Kremer broke out a bit last year by introducing a cutter he threw about 30% of the time. That key pitch is down to about 15% usage with negative pitch values, so I feel like something’s off here.
- Boston took some morning steam after I bet them, but -120 might still be good enough for a small play.
Current best price on Red Sox:
Texas Rangers At Cincinnati Reds
Notes for this game:
- Nick Lodolo looks potentially great, but he has had some platoon difficulties in his career. The sample against lefties is quite small since teams prefer to stack righties against him, but his FIP and xFIP are about 2 runs worse.
- The Rangers have a projected lineup that includes just one left-handed hitter (Nate Lowe, who actually has a reverse split in his career). Jonah Heim smashed lefties last year as well.
- The Reds released their lineup around the time of writing and it includes someone named Henry Ramos at DH, who hasn’t taken an MLB swing since 2021. That’s never a good sign.
Current best price on Rangers:
Detroit Tigers At Milwaukee Brewers
Notes for this game:
- Colin Rea was a played I was excited to fade so I’m surprised to find myself backing him. But he hasn’t been terrible thus far and might be a bit better than replacement level.
- Matt Boyd has been very rough so far, losing eight percentage points off his called strike+whiff rate. Even more worrying, he has lost fastball velocity each outing and was down to 89.2 per Statcast. That’s nearing Rich Hill territory.
- Boyd’s also been bad without the platoon advantage and the Brewers have a projected lineup with only Christian Yelich swinging from the left side.
- All that being said, the Brewers stunk at hitting lefties last year and they stink so far this year. So your mileage may vary and the market isn’t excited about this bet, with better prices than I got now available.
Current best price on Brewers:
Kansas City Royals At Arizona Diamondbacks
Notes for this game:
- Arizona has called up Tommy Henry to replace the DFA’d Madison Bumgarner, instead of one of their top prospects. Henry projects poorly and didn’t cover himself in glory in nine 2022 starts, with a -0.4 WAR.
- I still don’t know how to project Brad Keller since he overhauled his entire approach to pitching, apparently. Any bet on his games is a bit of a dart throw until we see where his talent level settles. All that being said, he at least has a fairly solid MLB track record (4.21 ERA in 654.2 IP).
- The Royals are hurt a bit by missing MJ Melendez, who got hurt. Their lineup has been terrible thus far.
- The line has moved around a bunch here, but I think anything at +120 or better is OK to play.
Current best price on Royals:
