Welcome to our first baseball weekend of the season. What a beautiful sight to see!
After a small Friday slate, we’re granted a full baseball buffet, and bouncing around the American League and National League today. On the platter is a stolen base prop with tons of value, a strikeout number that is just too low, and more.
Join us as we plate up our best MLB player prop picks for Saturday, April 1.
MLB props for April 1
Picks made on 4/1/2023 at 10:30 a.m. ET.
Click on each pick to jump to the full analysis.
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Best MLB bets today
The odds widgets below represent the best odds currently available for each betting market at regulated sportsbooks.
Stealing the show
You may have noticed that steals are, uh, up. Of course, it's a small sample size, but the pitch clock is doing precisely what the MLB wanted and making the game more exciting.
Opening Day saw 21 stolen bases, which were the most since 1907. The stolen base success rate was 91% on Opening Day compared to 56% the year prior. I'm going to be betting these daily until the market accurately adjusts. My favorite today is Tommy Edman. Why? Well, for starters, Edman gets on base. His .324 OBP was one of the best on St Louis last season, and it was made more impressive because no Cardinal played more games than him.
Secondly, no Cardinal stole more bases than Edman a season ago, and he gets a good target today. Kevin Gausman takes the mound for the bluebirds, which is good for us. He finished 2021 allowing the seventh-most stolen bases, with 27 — a number you'd expect to only go up here. I was expecting to see a number closer to +250. I'll happily take the value.
Tommy Edman Prop: To steal a base (+310)
Wizard of Os
Value play here. I projected this number at +125, so getting it near +200 is an immense value I will not pass on. The call-up of Anthony Volpe to the bigs has taken the spotlight off the massive young Yankee talent, but Cabrera is coming off an impressive season. It seems it's earned him some safety in a starting spot for New York over veteran Aaron Hicks, too. Manager Aaron Boone noted that Cabrera "earned it" and hinted that this wouldn't be likely to change anytime soon.
Beyond the projections, the handicap of this play is relatively simple. Alex Cobb has had an issue with hard contact throughout his career, and Cabrera is the perfect "sneaky" option to take advantage of it. Cabrera finished in the top half of the Yankees in hard-hit rate and can fly under the radar against opposing pitchers because of all the other power in the lineup.
Oswaldo Cabrera Prop: Over 1.5 bases (+195)
The Ef word
I think the Detroit Tigers could be bad (again) this season. They mainly looked lifeless in their opener against the Tampa Bay Rays, and their season projections across the industry aren't exactly kind.
Four of the Tigers' nine starters finished last season in the upper half of the league in whiff rate. Additionally, the Tigers finished last season with the fourth-highest strikeout rate in baseball while not getting some of the power-hitting tradeoffs of some of the teams surrounding them.
The big issue in this matchup against Eflin is that they were just so bad against right-handed pitching last season. More pressing to this prop is that their strikeout rate per nine innings doubled against righties going from 3.4 to 6.4. Some of that is a product of simply more right-handed pitching, but that's extreme.
One last thing in our favor? The sinker, Eflin’s preferred pitch, gave the Tigers issues the previous season. Today, they'll start three players with a strikeout rate of over 25% against it. I like Eflin here to do just enough to eclipse this plus-money number.
Zach Eflin prop: Over 5.5 strikeouts (+106)
