MLB Picks

Give a bump to the left-handed bats of the Mariners today. Generous winds are blowing out to right field at PNC Park, and the pitching matchup is working in their favor as well. Josh Naylor at +660 is the target. Mitch Keller has allowed 4+ runs in all but one of his last seven starts, posting a 7.64 ERA over that stretch. At home, he's been even worse, allowing 18 runs in 13+ innings across his last seven starts. His flyball rate is lower than his career average, and his HR/FB rate is starting to normalize after some early-season months of keeping it below 10%. His SIERA and xFIP are both at five-year highs, suggesting these bad times are here to stay.  Naylor has seen Keller eight times in his career, taking him deep once while hitting .375. I love the Mariners team total Over 4.5 today, and Naylor is one of the better +EV home run props on the board with a fair price closer to +520.

This projects as the best ML/RL bet on the slate today, with a projected ROI of 22% and a fair price roughly 65 cents shorter than the current odds. It's a great matchup for the Phillies against Zack Littell, who owns a 6.31 ERA at home and is coming off a start where he allowed seven runs. Left-handed hitters have crushed him this season, accounting for 16 home runs and an OPS north of 1.000. That's good news for Philadelphia's best bats, which lean heavily to the left side. The Phillies' biggest offensive weakness is strikeouts, and Littell simply doesn't miss many bats. On the other side, Jesus Luzardo has allowed two runs or fewer in six of his last seven starts, and Philadelphia also owns the bullpen edge. Everything lines up for the Phillies to win this game by multiple runs.

Pete Crow-Armstrong is the hottest hitter in baseball right now. He leads MLB in slugging over the last two weeks at .935, and his .500 ISO trails only Shohei Ohtani. This is a great price in a game that could feature multiple home runs given the pitching matchup. Kodai Senga owns the 13th-worst HR/FB rate among MLB starters this season, and only three qualified starters have a worse groundball rate. He's allowed multiple home runs in three of his last four starts, and this will be just his second outing after missing three weeks with a spine/arm injury. Senga may be the biggest pitching target on the slate today, and getting a red-hot hitter at +300 or better in a plus-plus home run matchup is an easy way to make the HR card.

The Chicago White Sox are one of the league’s best offenses against southpaws, ranking fifth in wOBA, fourth in OPS, and first in ISO.

Parker Messick owns an xFIP of 4.01 and SIERA of 4.25 over the past 30 days. Both of those outputs are well above the 3.21 ERA he has posted, a sign a dip could be coming.

Back the Sox to -115.

The Dodgers' bullpen has been dominant lately, posting a 2.71 xERA while limiting opponents to a 27.3% hard-hit rate over its last 26 innings. Justin Wrobleski typically pitches deep into games, and Minnesota may struggle to generate enough offense against an elite staff despite its recent hot stretch.

Chicago is hot at the dish with a fifth-ranked wOBA, ISO and xwOBA over the past two weeks while averaging 5.7 runs per game, and New York has statistical correction coming offensively. The Mets rank 23rd in BABIP with their .311 wOBA below their 12th-ranked .321 xwOBA to go along with a sixth-ranked hard-hit rate across the past 30 days.

Okamoto's hitting profile perfectly matches up well against Imanaga’s stuff. The Cubs starter throws a heavy dose of the fastball and gets barreled up at a 10.4% rate. The Jays third baseman barrels the ball better than anyone in the Blue Jays lineup with a 13.5% barrel rate, while owning a 63.2% hard hit rate against the four-seamer. 

Atlanta and Chicago send two of the best lineups in baseball to the dish, and they respectively rank eighth and third in wOBA against lefties for the campaign. The two clubs have also trended to the Over, and I'm particularly expecting White Sox southpaw Anthony Kay to struggle considering he's saddled with the fifth-highest xERA in baseball among the 100 pitchers with at least 60 innings this year.