We have a 5-5-5 schedule in MLB today, with five games in the AL, five games in the NL, and five interleague games. Mother Nature has had an impact on today’s schedule, as the Royals and Guardians moved up their first pitch due to extremely cold temps in Cleveland tonight. Similarly, the first pitch was moved up in Chicago between the Orioles and White Sox and so was the game in Queens between the Diamondbacks and Mets, as they also moved Wednesday’s start time up.
We’ll see what, if any, impact that actually has on those games, but we do have lots of totals of 7 or 6.5 today, partially due to the pitching matchups and partially due to the cold weather.
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 everybody now, but will soon be 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 7:
St. Louis Cardinals at Washington Nationals (-118, 7.5)
6:45 p.m. ET
After opening the season against the Cubs, Phillies, and Dodgers, the Nationals have gotten a bit of a breather here this week with a home series against the Cardinals. There are sure to be some growing pains under first-year skipper Blake Butera, who is all of 33 years old, and 32-year-old GM Anirudh Kilambi. To be 4-6 with the schedule that they’ve faced so far is quite an accomplishment.
And I think they’ll be able to inch a game closer to .500 today with a matchup between Matthew Liberatore and Cade Cavalli. Let’s start with this – the Nationals are fourth in MLB in wRC+ at 129, slashing .277/.352/.457 despite that very difficult schedule to start the season. They scored nine runs against the Cardinals yesterday, getting to Andre Pallante and the bullpen. Nobody expects this rate of performance to continue, but with a .326 BABIP and a 9.7% BB%, there really isn’t anything overly fluky about it, at least with the size of the sample that we’re looking at.
What has really keyed the hot offensive start is what the Nationals have done against lefties, slashing .286/.375/.438 in 128 PA. Joey Wiemer’s had a lot to do with that, as the waiver pickup from the Giants has a couple of homers and a triple while playing on the thin side of the platoon. Liberatore, who had a lot of helium over Spring Training with a big spike in K%, has not carried it over to the regular season. He struck out 19 of 56 batters down in Florida. He’s struck out four of 46 batters in two MLB starts. He’s been fortunate to post a .216 BABIP with all that contact and opposing batters don’t have a hit in 10 PA with RISP.
Liberatore’s definitely run on the right side of variance thus far, holding a 1.64 ERA with a 3.73 xERA, 5.63 FIP, and 5.28 xFIP over 11 innings to start the season. He only has a 5.2% SwStr% over starts against the Rays and Mets and draws a Nats lineup making the most of their contact so far.
St. Louis is off to a slow start on offense, slashing .222/.305/.353 thus far. In that respect, it should be a decent matchup for Cavalli, who has allowed four runs, three earned, on eight hits over 9.2 innings against the Phillies and Cubs. He has only allowed one Barrel and just a 25.9% Hard Hit% against those two lineups, that are objectively better than this Cardinals crew.
Neither one of these bullpens inspires much confidence, but because I prefer the Washington lineup, I’d rather have them for eight or nine trips to the plate instead of five.
Pick: Nationals -118
Seattle Mariners (-120, 7.5) at Texas Rangers
Embed from Getty Images8:05 p.m. ET
It has been a tough start to the season for Nathan Eovaldi, who has allowed 11 runs on 16 hits in just 8.2 innings of work with a 12/3 K/BB ratio. Eovaldi has allowed a ton of hard contact, so he’s earned his .481 BABIP against and has given up three homers in road starts against the Phillies and Orioles. He’s allowed a 56.7% Hard Hit% and a 13.3% Barrel% rate over those two starts.
So I can definitely understand why the betting market is down on him and why he’s a home underdog today against the Mariners and George Kirby. Eovaldi actually had a really nice spring coming off of last season’s 1.73 ERA with a 3.02 xERA and a 2.80 FIP, but the 36-year-old hasn’t had good outcomes in his first two regular season starts. After inducing 36 ground balls in Spring Training over five starts, he only has 12 in two regular season outings. He has allowed as many fly balls (13) as he did all spring. For whatever reason, he’s struggling to get the ball down with an average launch angle against of 14.7 degrees, which would be the highest of his career.
This should be a better situation for Eovaldi, who resides in one of the league’s better pitcher’s parks and one of the best for hurlers in terms of BABIP against. The Mariners are 28th in SwStr% this season and have the eighth-highest Chase Rate per Statcast. Philadelphia is 14th and Baltimore is 17th – the two offenses Eovaldi has faced so far. Eovaldi was in the 70th percentile in Chase Rate last season and sits in the 86th percentile this season over those two starts, even though he’s been hit hard. The Mariners should expand the zone today and Eovaldi should be more comfortable at home. Seattle is also off to a terrible start offensively, slashing .188/.292/.318. Their 10.8% BB% is doing some heavy lifting, but Eovaldi usually limits walks as well as anybody.
Kirby has one good start and one not-so-good start, as he threw six innings of one-run ball against the hapless Cleveland offense before giving up four runs on five hits to the Yankees over six innings. Even though Arlington features a good pitcher’s park, it’s still the first road start for Kirby, who had a 3.36 ERA with a .275 wOBA against at home last season compared to a 5.16 ERA with a .327 wOBA against on the road.
The Rangers offense hasn’t really gotten going either, slashing just .237/.298/.387 on the season, but Kirby’s a pretty straightforward guy with a big spike in fastball usage this season. He’s actually been more of a fastball/changeup guy thus far while not really throwing his slider at all. Some extreme platoon splits by plate appearance are a big reason why, but Kirby only leveraged the changeup 2.1% of the time last season, so I’m not sure if this will stick or not. But, it is another wrinkle to add to the start of the season.
Both of these bullpens have been excellent, but my hope is that the Rangers have the lead and can turn it over to theirs ahead on the scoreboard.
Pick: Rangers +100
Atlanta Braves (-143, 8.5) at Los Angeles Angels
9:38 p.m. ET
A late one at The Big A brings together the Braves and Angels, as it will be veterans Reynaldo Lopez and Yusei Kikuchi on the bump for their respective teams. Lopez, who missed virtually all of last season, has had a nice start to 2026 with two runs allowed on seven hits over 11 innings of work. But, he only has six strikeouts against three walks. His 1.64 ERA comes from a 100% LOB% and a .161 BABIP against, as the only two runs he’s allowed this season have come on solo homers.
He has a 3.65 xERA with a 5.27 FIP and a 5.04 xFIP. To his credit, he has induced a lot of weak contact, with just a 33.3% Hard Hit% and a 6.1% Barrel%, but with decreased fastball velocity, ongoing injury concerns, and a major decline in Stuff, I can’t see a lot of this sticking around. In fact, of the 86 pitchers entering today with at least 10 innings pitched, Lopez ranks 82nd in Eno Sarris’ Stuff+ metric. He’s only better than Rhett Lowder, Simeon Woods Richardson, Tomoyuki Sugano, and Michael McGreevy.
Kikuchi has only thrown 9.2 innings, but if he had recorded one more out, he’d be in the upper 50s in Stuff+, so basically a tad worse than league average. He’s had a couple of tougher assignments than Lopez, facing the Astros and Cubs over his two outings thus far. He’s allowed seven runs on 14 hits with an 8/5 K/BB ratio, but this will be his first start at home where he posted a 2.93 ERA over 89 innings last season with a .298 wOBA against. He had a 5.04 ERA in 89.1 road innings with a .354 wOBA against, so he was way more comfortable in Anaheim.
Also, we’ve seen what Mike Maddux has been able to do with Jose Soriano and others already in his first season with the Angels. I have to assume that they isolate Kikuchi’s early-season issues and fix them sooner rather than later.
Both bullpens have been solid thus far, but I do think that the Angels have some value at this underdog price tonight, as the Braves have struggled over the last few games a long way from home.
Pick: Angels +119
The post MLB Best Bets Today: Adam Burke’s Picks for Tuesday, April 7 appeared first on VSiN.
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