MLB Best Bets Today June 19
A full dance card on the diamond includes a 1:20 p.m. local time start between the Blue Jays and Cubs at Wrigley Field, as the other 28 teams play late. Tarik Skubal is on the hill again for the Tigers, while we also get Jacob Misiorowski for the Brewers, Cam Schlittler for the Yankees, and Jacob deGrom for the Rangers as we have new superstars and old on the docket today.
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 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.
Here are the MLB best bets today for June 19:
Reds vs. Yankees Prediction
Pick: Rhett Lowder (CIN) Under 14.5 Outs Recorded (+109)
A player prop to start things off today as the Reds and Yankees open up a weekend set in the Bronx. It should be a good matchup for Cam Schlittler, but a less good matchup for Rhett Lowder. Lowder enters this start with a 4.60 ERA, 4.94 xERA, 4.07 FIP, and a 4.92 xFIP in his 47 innings of work.
His 5.7% HR/FB% is going to regress and a venue like Yankee Stadium seems like a reasonable place for that to occur. He only has a 17.9% K%, so he’s a pitch-to-contact guy at the MLB level, at least when he’s not issuing walks. He’s pitched to a 12.1% BB% this season. Maybe it’s anecdotal, maybe it’s not, but I do feel like young pitchers do wind up intimidated going into the Little League park that is Yankee Stadium and end up nibbling a lot. That drives up pitch counts and creates traffic on the bases.
Lowder already sports a 5.84 ERA on the road with more walks (19) than strikeouts (15) and he has allowed a .273/.378/.442 slash with a .365 wOBA in 90 plate appearances the first time through the order. So, he’s a guy who struggles to settle in and this isn’t a venue for that.
Lastly, the Yankees are likely to run seven left-handed hitters at him tonight. Lowder has 20 walks and 20 strikeouts in 122 plate appearances against LHB. Put him on the road and that ratio is 16 walks and 9 strikeouts in just 71 PA.
It looks like there’s a lot of potential for a short outing tonight, especially with warm weather and the wind blowing out to right.
Giants vs. Marlins Prediction
Pick: Marlins -120
The Marlins will use opener Lake Bachar and likely turn it over to recently-recalled southpaw Dax Fulton. The Giants will use Landen Roupp, who has deserved a much better fate this season, but just can’t seem to get through the middle innings and give himself a better chance at picking up victories.
Roupp was supposed to face the Braves yesterday, but the game was washed out, giving him an easier assignment against the Marlins. He has a 4.24 ERA with a 3.37 xERA and a 2.96 FIP, as a 63.9% LOB% has really held him back this season. But, if we look deeper, his first month of the season is doing a lot of heavy lifting, as he had a 2.55 ERA over 35.1 innings with a .149/.248/.207 slash and a .219 wOBA. Since then, he’s given up 27 runs in 39 innings and opposing batters have hit around .300 with a SLG butting up against .500. This month, Roupp has a 14/10 K/BB ratio, a major departure from his 68/22 K/BB ratio over the first two months of the season.
Since the start of May, Roupp has a 5.77 ERA with a 4.13 xERA. He has a 3.17 FIP and maybe positive regression is on the horizon, but his recent returns from a K/BB standpoint have me a bit pessimistic about that. Along with the control issues, his spin rates were down a little last time out and I do wonder if maybe something is amiss on the health front.
Bachar has a 2.97 ERA with a 2.64 xERA and a 3.68 FIP in 23 appearances, including three starts, across 39.1 innings. He has a 28.8% K% and an 8.3% BB%, so he has good ratios and has maxed out at 11 batters faced, so this may not just be a one-and-done outing from him. The 6-foot-2 right-hander may very well be followed by the 6-foot-7 southpaw Fulton, who has electric stuff, but isn’t always sure where it’s going and hasn’t been able to stay healthy.
That said, going from Bachar to Fulton is a pretty big departure and the Marlins will be using relief arms throughout the game, while the Giants will be hoping to push Roupp a bit, despite his 9.22 ERA the third time through the order.
I’ll back the Fish here.
Pirates vs. Rockies Prediction
Pick: Rockies +119
Bubba Chandler and Kyle Freeland are the slated starters here, as the Rockies host the Pirates. Chandler has never pitched at Coors Field, so this will be quite an experience for him and it may not be a very good one. As it is, Chandler sports a 4.76 ERA with a 4.19 xERA and a 4.52 FIP over his 68 innings pitched. He’s been better of late with five runs on just four hits in his last 11 innings of work, but it’s been a struggle. Most notably, it’s been a struggle with walks.
Chandler’s 22.6% K% is fine, but his 13.6% BB% is not. He’s very fortunate to have allowed just a .205 BA and a .247 BABIP, but Coors Field is a tough venue for a variety of reasons, including the size of the outfield, where a lot of balls happen to find patches of green. The Pirates are 29th in Outs Above Average at -12 as an outfield and this is not the type of place where you want to be a bad defensive ballclub.
Chandler has been excellent with the bases empty, posting a 45/19 K/BB ratio and just a .163/.256/.281 slash, but the pressure has been on with men on base. He’s got a 23/22 K/BB ratio and has allowed a .391 wOBA in that split with a .275/.406/.490 slash. Guys get on base in Denver. That’s just how it goes and I find that concerning for Chandler here.
Of course, there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about Freeland, who owns a 7.98 ERA with a 6.05 xERA and a 5.60 FIP over his 58.2 innings of work. He’s been objectively terrible this season and really hasn’t been good of late, but his last start did come in the launching pad that is Las Vegas Ballpark, so we can draw a line through that one. We can’t draw a line through the rest of his performances, but he is left-handed and the Pirates have been significantly better against RHP than LHP this season, hardly surprising given that all of their best performers are left-handed bats.
With that in mind, and with a poor projection for Chandler, I’ll take my chances with the Rockies at an underdog price.
