Monday MLB Best Bets!

Best Bets

Milwaukee Brewers at St. Louis Cardinals (7:45 PM ET)

This might be the most interesting matchup of the day. The St. Louis Cardinals have been playing better baseball lately, winning six of their last seven games. They swept the Red Sox over the weekend, including a finale last night in which they dominated. But the MLB schedule gods did the Cards no favors by having them travel and then play the day after their appearance on Sunday Night Baseball. They also have the privilege of facing a red-hot Freddy Peralta, who has allowed only five earned runs in his last 18 innings, while racking up 23 strikeouts and only giving up five walks. His season 3.32 ERA and 3.70 xFIP are solid, but his month-of-May xFIP of 3.10 suggests that he is finding his stuff. And for what it’s worth, Peralta allowed only one earned run in 6 innings when he faced the Cards in April. On the other side, Jack Flaherty (ERA 6.33) will be on the mound for the Cardinals and he is struggling this season. He tends to walk batters, and he has also given up seven or more hits in 3 consecutive starts. His streak of allowing a home run in 6 consecutive starts is likewise cause for concern. The Brewers' offense is 11th best in wOBA against right-handed pitching. Also noteworthy, Milwaukee’s hitters do a nice job of working counts—with the 5th highest BB% against RHP. If the Cards keep rolling, I will be happy not to fade them in the future. But tonight, all things considered, I think the Brewers F5 is the best play here.

Bet the Brewers to win first five (F5) innings money line (-125).

 New York Mets at Washington Nationals (4:05 PM ET)

This game pits two struggling pitchers against one another. The Mets will start David Peterson, who holds a mark of 1-5 and an ERA of 7.68. His batted ball stats do suggest that he’s been unlucky, especially his xFIP of 3.31 and his SIERA of 3.66. Still, it is hard to back a pitcher who has surrendered a minimum of four runs in five of his 7 starts. Fortunately for the Mets, he faces a Nats offense that languishes near bottom in wRC+ and wOBA rankings. No Nationals hitter currently has more than four homers, and only two hitters (Robles and Thomas) have wRC+ of more than 110. On the other side of the card, the Nats send Patrick Corbin to mound. His batted ball stats—SIERA 4.16 and xFIP 4.48–suggest that his ERA is just about right. We know what we’re going to get with Corbin. He faces a Mets offense that has some potential (though it has been largely unfulfilled potential this season, as Mets fans will quickly point out). Brandon Nimmo’s current batting average (.320) is 5th in the MLB, and it is backed up by a solid wRC+ and wOBA. Pete Alonso leads MLB with 13 homers. In short, we cannot trust these pitching staffs to limit runs so we gotta look at the total, which at 9.5 is super tempting.

Bet the game total OVER 9.5 runs (-120).

Best of the Rest

Bet the Diamondbacks to win first five (F5) innings -0.5 run line (-140).

Bet the CUBS to win first five (F5) innings money line (+140).

Bet the Dodgers to win first five (F5) innings money line (-105).