MLB Best Bets Today April 3
It’s a full day on the diamond, as we have a handful of early afternoon and mid-afternoon starts with teams playing their first home games of the season. We also have nighttime action, as some series continue and others get underway. We were only supposed to have 14 games today, but the Blue Jays and White Sox pushed back the home opener on the South Side, so all 30 teams will take the field.
For lead time purposes, I’ll be only looking at the later starts on the slate, as the early games just don’t leave myself or readers much time.
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 3:
Tampa Bay Rays at Minnesota Twins (-110, 7.5)
4:10 p.m. ET
It’s going to be a chilly day in the Twin Cities, as the Rays and Twins get together with Joe Boyle on the bump for the visitors and Bailey Ober for the hosts. Ober is a guy who had a rough spring and saw some major decline in his numbers in 2025. The hope was that he’d come back with a little more velo and showcase some more upside in Spring Training, but that was not the case and he’s even dealing with a loss of velo.
In his first start against the Orioles, Ober struggled through four innings and 17 batters with three runs on four hits. He only struck out one batter with a 3.6% SwStr%. His 9.2% SwStr% in the spring was the first time he’d had a Whiff Rate under 10% in any MLB sample size, Spring Training or regular season.
As a fly ball guy, the cold conditions today may really help him and mask some of his obvious shortcomings, but he’s a pitcher to fade right now at any reasonable price.
On the Rays side, Boyle had a solid 2026 debut against the Cardinals with two runs on three hits over six innings with four strikeouts and zero walks. He’s a guy that has 96th percentile fastball velo and really leveled up his slider usage in that first start, contributing to a 30.3% Chase Rate per FanGraphs. It was lower per Baseball Savant, but I’m always excited to see a guy make an arsenal change to more swing and miss at the expense of fastballs.
The Rays are off to a solid start offensively, due in large part to their ability to hit singles, paired with a 21.3% K%. The Twins have a much higher K% and have been more dependent on the walk and slugging percentage to score. Against Boyle, on a day like today, I don’t love that offensive profile at all.
I’ll fade Ober here and back a guy in Boyle during his second season with the Rays, an organization that has a very deep and detailed plan in place for everything that they do.
Pick: Rays -110
Seattle Mariners (-163, 8) at Los Angeles Angels
9:38 p.m. ET
The Mariners and Angels get together for an AL West showdown at The Big A in this one, as we get a very solid pitching matchup with Bryan Woo and Reid Detmers. Detmers is back in the rotation after a season as a reliever and his first start was better than what the results would indicate. In total, Detmers allowed three runs on six hits, but he didn’t allow a single barrel and allowed just a 36.4% Hard Hit%.
More notably, he struck out nine and didn’t walk a batter. With a really good pitching coach in Mike Maddux, I don’t think Detmers taking a leap should come as a surprise, if he is indeed able to do that this season. Plus, we’ve seen quite a few guys go to the bullpen, learn how to simplify their arsenals, and get more efficient outs and often more strikeouts. I think that’s the case with Detmers, who has always had great swing and miss upside.
Woo was very good in his first start, striking out nine over six innings with two runs allowed on four hits. He’s coming off of a season in which he fell just shy of 200 strikeouts in 186.2 innings of work with a 2.94 ERA, 3.07 xERA, and a 3.47 FIP. He’s emerged as one of the AL’s top starters and is just another developmental win for Seattle, who has had a lot of them on the pitching side of the ledger.
While these two teams are both above league average offensively thus far, the Angels have a 29.6% K% and have been pretty reliant on the walk with a 14.1% BB%. Woo doesn’t walk anybody, though, so that’s a problem for today. The Angels are only batting .205 as a team with a .362 SLG.
The Mariners have also struck out a lot, carrying a 27.8% K% into this series with a .205/.297/.362 slash. Not great numbers in the early going, as a lot of key bats are struggling. The Angels don’t really have a lot of key bats.
Both bullpens are well-rested with yesterday’s off day and some limited usage over the previous two days.
Pick: Under 8 (-112)
