Weather permitting, we have eight games on the MLB schedule for Monday. All eight are night games, packed neatly into about a seven-hour window, with the first pitch in Cleveland at 6:10 p.m. ET from Parker Messick and the last game of the night gets underway at 10:10 p.m. ET when Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the hill. Rain chances in Chicago and Minneapolis are the main worries on that front.
Five of the eight home teams are favored for this evening’s festivities, so we’ll see if the chalk holds up across the board or if the underdogs find a little bit of bite to add to their bark.
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 for 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 April 27:
St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh Pirates (-136, 8)
Embed from Getty Images6:40 p.m. ET
A bit of a quirky game here, as the Cardinals send veteran right-hander Dustin May to the hill and the Pirates counter with opener Mason Montgomery. Montgomery has allowed five runs on 11 hits in 11.1 innings of work with 21 strikeouts out of 51 batters and six walks. Don’t let his BB/9 or BB% worry you that much, as he walked three in his first appearance of the season and has only walked three in 10 innings since. He also has a run of seven straight scoreless appearances, including one start back on April 15 where he threw a scoreless inning with a punchy.
Wilber Dotel will follow and he’s made two appearances over 2.2 innings with a lot of hard contact allowed, but only one run on two hits. Dotel allowed 12 runs on 18 hits in 14.1 innings in the minors before getting called up for some extra bullpen help. The 23-year-old had a 4.15 ERA with a 3.89 FIP in 125.2 innings at Double-A last season.
I’m looking at May in this start, though, as his Outs Recorded prop sits at 15.5. May allowed 13 runs on 17 hits in his first 7.1 innings of the season, but has only allowed three earned runs in his last three starts while going 6.0, 6.0, and 5.1 innings. St. Louis has used Ryne Stanek and JoJo Romero, as well as Matt Svanson, who is more of a low-leverage guy. It would be a third appearance in four days for George Soriano, Gordon Graceffo, and Justin Bruihl. In other words, this is the type of spot where May will be pushed a bit by manager Oliver Marmol.
May’s been throwing the ball well of late, so he’s kind of earned that right anyway. He has only walked five batters in 24.2 innings of work with a 4.7% BB% and also has just an 18.9% K%, so he’s the epitome of a pitch-to-contact guy. From a contact quality standpoint, the Pirates are 12th in Hard Hit% and 18th in Barrel%, posting a .241 BA with a .244 xBA. They’ve walked better than 10% of the time, so May’s pitch efficiency should make things a bit tougher on the Buccos in this one.
He’s also on an extra day of rest, so I think Marmol will be willing to push him more, especially at the start of a four-game series with no scheduled off day until May 11, including series against the Brewers, Dodgers, and Padres.
Our OptaAI MLB Player Prop Projections have May down for 16.33 outs and a 2.4% Edge based on the current line.
Pick: Dustin May (STL) Over 15.5 Outs Recorded (-118)
Seattle Mariners (-131, 9) at Minnesota Twins
7:40 p.m. ET
The Mariners have reeled off a 6-2 record in their last eight games, including a sweep of the Cardinals for a happy little up-and-down trek to MSP after yesterday’s 3-2 win. The Twins are very much going in the other direction, as they started 11-7, but have now lost nine of their last 10.
There is reason for optimism today since top prospect Connor Prielipp is going to get the start. He went four innings in his debut with two runs allowed on four hits and struck out six without a walk. Personally, I don’t feel like a 51% slider rate is sustainable long-term for Prielipp, so we’ll see what his pitch selection looks like today against the Mariners.
Seattle is slashing .275/.337/.439 with a .344 wOBA and a .363 xwOBA over the last 14 days, as the offense has gotten on track after a really slow start to the season. They’re not drawing many walks, but they’re also not striking out and actually rank fifth in Barrel% in that span, posting a .439 SLG with a .493 SLG.
When Prielipp did allow balls in play last start, they were hit hard with a 54.5% Hard Hit% and an 18.2% Barrel%. He only had a 10.8% SwStr%, despite a lot of chases outside the zone, and a 9.6% CStr%. I’d say those are concerning signs against what I think is a pretty solid lineup.
Luis Castillo gets the call for the Mariners. It hasn’t been a great start to the season for Castillo, who sports a 5.01 ERA with a 5.23 xERA, but he also has a 3.56 FIP and a 3.98 xFIP with a 4.12 SIERA. All of those run estimators are suggesting better things on the horizon for Castillo, who has been burned by a .392 BA and a 62.8% LOB%. To be fair, he has given up a lot of hard contact and only has a 13-point gap between his wOBA and xwOBA, but he’s made some meaningful adjustments in his last two starts and actually looked very sharp last time out against the Athletics.
The Mariners have another strong bullpen that ranks fifth in ERA and FIP, while the Twins are 17th in ERA and 12th in FIP. With Prielipp unlikely to work overly deep into this game, as he needed 83 pitches to get 12 outs last time out, the Mariners should hold the advantage in the later innings as well.
Pick: Mariners -131
Chicago Cubs at San Diego Padres (-118, 7.5)
9:40 p.m. ET
I’ll be honest. I don’t know if situational spots really do exist in baseball or not, but we’ve got a pretty good spot to fade the Padres tonight. San Diego just played five straight games at elevation and eight games in a row away from home. The Padres started off in Anaheim before going to Colorado for three games before playing two games in Mexico City. Per FlightAware data, they got home around 12:30 a.m. after a 3:39 flight.
The Cubs did drop their last two games to the Dodgers, but this is the best offense in baseball over the last two weeks, as they’ve slashed .305/.389/.503 with a .393 wOBA. The Padres are well below that with a .246/.315/.376 slash and a .310 wOBA, which is even on the positive side of variance with a .295 xwOBA. They’re not really hitting once again and even if we consider wRC+ and keep park factors in the mix, they’re still 20th in the last 13 days while the Cubs are first with a 152 wRC+.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge Matthew Boyd guy, but he’s making his second start coming off of the IL. He allowed two runs on five hits in 4.2 innings with five strikeouts against zero walks and had a 64.3% GB% against the Phillies last time out. The Padres rank 26th in wRC+ against LHP with just a .230/.295/.322 slash, so this should be a decent matchup for Boyd.
Randy Vasquez is a great story for the Padres this season with a 1.88 ERA and a 2.53 FIP, but his 4.31 xERA does have me concerned. The Cubs are fifth in wRC+ against RHP this season with a .250/.339/.406 slash and a 112 wRC+. By wRC+, the other lineups Vasquez has faced this season are the Tigers (6th), Red Sox (28th), Rockies (25th), Mariners (7th), and Rockies again. Vasquez faced the Tigers in the season opener and the Mariners two starts ago, allowing four runs on five hits with four walks over four innings.
I know that the Cubs have piecemealed together a bullpen with all of their injuries, but the -120 on the 1st 5 and the -102 on the full game are pretty big differences. Also, one of the main tenets of this handicap is the Padres being sluggish and that could certainly be a late-inning factor.
Pick: Cubs -102
The post MLB Best Bets Today: Adam Burke’s Picks for Monday, April 27 appeared first on VSiN.
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