It’s Opening Day for some and Game 2 for others, as we look at an eight-game schedule in MLB today. The planned off day for weather may actually have been a good thing this season, as we had terrific conditions across most of the East Coast and Midwest for yesterday’s daytime action, but the forecasts are less appealing today in those locales. Fortunately, we have no weather worries today, as all of our games are in domes, in California, or in Atlanta.

It is a bit of a downer that the only “day” game we have today is in San Francisco between the Yankees and Giants with a 4:35 p.m. ET start time. But, that also means a little extra time to dig through all the pertinent information and see what the best bets to make are for today.

I’ll be posting my daily best bets Monday-Saturday with a Sunday Night Baseball preview on Sunday, as all the day games make it tough to get something out with lead time out here in Las Vegas. All lines are from DraftKings and are current at the time of publish. Please take the initiative to SHOP AROUND for the best odds. It matters. A lot.

One new offering this baseball season is our Opta AI Player Prop Projections. They are available to VSiN Pro Subscribers only, so you can check out our current offers here. Zachary Cohen will be using those projections and his own handicapping to write up MLB player props.

Greg Peterson will have his best bets posted the night before and you can also check out his daily lines to see what looks to be off-market. Steve Makinen has also released his updated Bullpen Betting Systems and DraftKings Splits Systems, plus he’ll have a daily analytics report.

Feel free to use my opinions and thoughts, as well as our suite of MLB Betting Tools, including the DraftKings and Circa Betting Splits, Steve Makinen’s Daily Ratings, Greg Peterson’s Daily Lines, the 1st 5 Innings Analyzer, and Umpire Stats. Check out our new MLB tools powered by Ballpark Pal: Strikeout Projections, Park Factors, and YRFI Report.

That’s a lot of coverage and we’ll be doing it all season long. We’re happy to have you along for the ride.

Here are the MLB best bets today for March 27:

(Sacramento) Athletics at Toronto Blue Jays (-181, 8.5)

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7:07 p.m. ET

Even though the Blue Jays were just two outs away from winning the World Series, the ride of the 2025 season still deserves to be honored and it will be tonight with a celebration for the AL champs. With the Maple Leafs basically out of it in the NHL, it’s a Blue Jays town now and so it should be a raucous and exciting atmosphere at Rogers Centre, which will keep in all the sound with a closed roof on a cold day.

Luis Severino gets the ball for the A’s and Kevin Gausman goes for the Jays here. Severino pitched in the WBC for the Dominican Republic and threw the ball very well with 11 strikeouts and just two runs allowed on eight hits over 7.1 innings of work. It was a bit of a mixed bag for WBC arms yesterday, but some prominent names did struggle in their first starts. I’m not really treating that as a betting angle quite yet, but it certainly brings a level of concern.

Toronto had the lowest K% in baseball last season and Severino’s K% dropped to a career-worst 17.6%. The Blue Jays should put a ton of balls in play here and that should increase their chances of scoring runs. Also, Severino only made two starts for the A’s in the desert during Spring Training, but it looked as though he was trying to work pretty hard on a changeup, perhaps to help neutralize his platoon splits, as lefties slashed .270/.352/.400 and righties just .245/.298/.379. He only had a 16.9% K% against LHB, so something else with some swing-and-miss would be good.

Here’s the problem with that – it’s been arguably his worst pitch throughout his career. In 105 changeups to LHB last season, he allowed a .381 BA with a .476 SLG and an average exit velo of 90.2 mph. He threw 42 to righties, who did even more damage over nine batted balls. Considering he’s already a high-fastball, high-sinker usage pitcher, I’m not sure that I like this development. It may have just been a Spring Training thing, and maybe he’ll rely even more on the sweeper that brought him so much success last season. But, this is also a brutal first assignment for a guy who allowed just a .251 BABIP on the road last season, suggesting some significant regression potential.

The A’s bullpen is a random hodgepodge of guys, where only two of them, JT Ginn and Mark Leiter Jr. project to have ERAs under 4.00 per FanGraphs. There are a lot of guys with mediocre control back there. As we saw in some games yesterday, relievers are working out a lot of kinks themselves.

I like the Blue Jays Team Total Over 4.5 here at -125. It’s a bit of a hefty number, but they’re maybe the most motivated team coming into this season and don’t strike out. While pitchers are still working to find their command, that’s a dangerous combination. 

Pick: Blue Jays Team Total Over 4.5 (-125)

Kansas City Royals at Atlanta Braves (-143, 7.5)

7:15 p.m. ET

Cole Ragans and Chris Sale come together in what represents a pretty elite pitching matchup in the opener for these two teams. Ragans is coming off of a wasted season in which he had a groin injury early and then a rotator cuff strain that cost him the summer. He finished with a 4.67 ERA, but he had a 2.67 xERA and a 2.50 FIP, not to mention a ridiculous 38.1% K%. That’s such a monster number for a starter. It’s not sustainable, but Ragans had a 29.3% K% in 2024 and getting over 30% this season is not a stretch at all.

At least Ragans had something to build off of heading into the winter, as he did come back in September and made three starts over 13 innings with 22 strikeouts against just four walks. He did post a 7.31 ERA in the spring and maybe that will concern some people, but he had a 3.72 FIP and was victimized by a .463 BABIP and a 59.5% LOB%. He’s also a fly ball guy and that doesn’t tend to be a good thing in the desert. Not only that, but a good chunk of the starting lineup for the Royals was playing in the WBC, so it’s not like Ragans had the best group possible behind him.

Obviously Sale is damn good in his own right and he had a good spring with a 2.75 ERA over 19.2 innings. He seemed to focus on pitching to contact with a 51.7% GB% and just a 19.5% K%. Sale, like Ragans, will probably see a lot of bench guys in this game with both teams using platoons, which is probably why we see juice on Under 7.5 here as modelers plug in those so-called lefty specialists.

I think both starters will be good, but I don’t see this big of a gap between Ragans and Sale, the Royals lineup and the Braves lineup, and there’s a very good possibility that the Royals have the better bullpen. I like both relief groups, but Kansas City’s additions of Matt Strahm and Nick Mears in December were two excellent acquisitions. I’ll take a stab with the underdog here in a game that feels like more of a toss-up than the line implies. This is also a KC team that I really like coming into the season, so I’ll follow through on that.

Pick: Royals +119

Los Angeles Angels at Houston Astros (-163, 8.5)

8:15 p.m. ET

One of the starting pitchers with the most helium coming into the season is Mike Burrows and he’ll get the nod today against the Angels. It’ll be Yusei Kikuchi for the Halos, and he’s had a really weird lead-up to the season. Kikuchi pitched for Japan in the WBC, but only made one start and one relief appearance over four total innings. He made one official Cactus League start and allowed a solo homer and another knock over 4.2 innings of work with three walks and a couple of punchies. That was on Mar. 19.

I truly don’t know what to expect from Kikuchi early, I’ve never been all that fond of the profile. He also tilted more towards the pitch-to-contact side last season, bumping his xERA to 4.47 and his FIP to 4.23, the highest in both numbers since 2022 when he had a 5.19 ERA with the Blue Jays. Kikuchi was also objectively terrible on the road last season with a .280/.360/.455 slash against and a .354 wOBA, posting a 5.04 ERA over 89.1 innings.

Righties also batted .264/.336/.445 with a .336 wOBA and the Astros probably should hit lefties better than righties as the season goes along due to their handedness. They should run eight righties at Kikuchi today, with Yordan Alvarez as the only lefty. That should set up nicely for them.

Back to Burrows, who was acquired from the Pirates in December. As you would expect, the Astros have tweaked his arsenal, encouraging more two-seam fastballs as opposed to four-seamers. Opposing batters hit .326 with a .529 SLG and just a 16.8% Whiff% against his four-seam last season. His changeup and slider were both very effective pitches and now having a two-seam with more arm-side run should help. Burrows had a 112/101 GB/FB split last season. It was 26/13 in Spring Training and that’s a good sign for a guy who allowed 13 HR in 96 innings.

I definitely like Burrows over Kikuchi here and like the 1st 5 Run Line -0.5 at -115. The Astros have the higher-upside starter, the better lineup matchup given that they’re running out a ton of righties against Kikuchi, and might even get to face a lesser reliever out of the pen if Kikuchi reaches his pitch count early.

While I think the Astros could cover the -1.5 full-game run line, the home team with a lead only bats eight times, giving us one fewer chance at scoring runs, hence the 1st 5 approach, where I know both teams will bat an equal number of times.

Pick: Astros 1st 5 Run Line -0.5 (-115)

Detroit Tigers at San Diego Padres (-126, 7.5)

9:40 p.m. ET

The debut of Framber Valdez with the Olde English D is today, as he’ll throw his first MLB pitch for somebody other than the Astros. It’s a fresh start for Valdez, who was the subject of a lot of chatter after what appeared to be a purposeful cross-up of his catcher, pumping a fastball into his chest protector when he was looking for something else. He’s also back with AJ Hinch, which can’t hurt, and also has one of the league’s best defensive backstops in Dillon Dingler.

Valdez was his usual self in the spring with a 58% GB%. He only walked two batters over his 18.1 innings and if he can harness his control even a little bit, it elevates his ceiling so much. I’m really high on the Tigers this season and this addition is a big part of the reason why, but I do really like the upside that this offense seems to have.

Kevin McGonigle’s debut was really impressive as the Tigers jumped all over Nick Pivetta, who had a poor spring and battled some arm fatigue. Well, King didn’t have a great spring either, allowing 19 runs on 25 hits in 15 innings of work. He only struck out 13, walked seven, and gave up eight homers, including three in each of his last two starts.

We all know that Spring Training stats are littered with asterisks, but for a guy who went from 173.2 innings in 2024 to 73.1 innings in 2025 with a noticeable drop in K% and a big spike in HRs and HR/FB%, a rough ST concerns me that much more. Without his 81.1% LOB%, we’d be looking at King in a different light, as a 3.44 ERA looks solid, but he had a 4.26 xERA and a 4.42 FIP.

I won’t go so far as to say that the wrong team is favored here because it really is hard for books to be off that much, even early in the season with a high-variance sport, but the Tigers at plus money was an auto-grab for me this morning. As always, shop around for the best price.

Pick: Tigers +104

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