MLB Best Bets Today May 4
Twelve games are on the Monday MLB schedule, though weather concerns are present in a few of them, so we’ll have to see how the radar is shaping up as we get closer to first pitch. All in all, though, it’s a busy Monday with only six teams idle. We also only have two interleague series, so we’ve finally got some nice intraleague matchups when it seems like we’ve had a lot of AL vs. NL games thus far.
We’re seeing rotations turn over again, so there are actually five guys making their eighth starts of the season and 11 more that are making their seventh starts. In today’s day and age, that’s at or above 25% of the workload we can expect for a guy who is healthy all year long, so we really are starting to get some meaningful sample size.
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 May 4:
Cleveland Guardians at Kansas City Royals (-122, 9)
7:40 p.m. ET
We start in the AL Central with the Guardians and Royals. It will be Tanner Bibee for Cleveland and Michael Wacha for the Royals. Wacha profiles a lot to me like Nick Martinez, who completely shut Cleveland down last week when the Guardians hosted the Rays. Any pitcher with a plus changeup is somebody that has a great chance of having success against Cleveland and that’s Wacha’s best pitch.
I’m not keen at all on pitcher vs. team splits because the players change and the sample sizes are rarely significant, but Wacha allowed one run over seven innings to Cleveland back on April 6. In two starts last season, he allowed two runs on seven hits over 9.1 innings. He allowed eight runs over three starts in 2024, as he did give up five in one start, but two were inherited runners and he allowed an average exit velocity of just 83.6 mph with a 7/0 K/BB ratio.
Historically, Wacha has been better against left-handed batters because of that changeup, holding them to a .292 wOBA and just a .368 SLG. Righties have a .326 wOBA and a .440 SLG, but the Guardians are built to deploy platoons and that means a steady diet of lefties against Wacha. So far this season, lefties have a .293 wOBA with a .358 SLG in 90 PA, so he’s right on schedule.
It has been a weird season for Bibee, who has a 4.08 ERA with a 4.27 xERA and a 4.36 FIP, but it sure feels like he’s been worse than that. He allowed eight of his 16 runs in his April 12 start against Atlanta, so he’s allowed eight total runs in his other six starts, but at no point has it felt like he’s been dominant. His 48.6% Hard Hit% probably has something to do with that. To his credit, he has only allowed two Barrels in his last four starts.
Cleveland’s 2.50 bullpen ERA over the last 14 days stunned me with how they’ve looked. They have an 18.5% K% with a 10.1% BB% and have been helped by a .256 BABIP and a 78.4% LOB%. They have that 2.50 ERA, but a 3.60 FIP, 4.37 SIERA, and 4.66 xFIP in that span. I don’t trust that group in close games. Hunter Gaddis is unusable. Franco Aleman is inexplicably still in Triple-A. It’s just not a particularly good group, despite what the recent numbers say.
Both teams are coming back from the West Coast, so they’re in similar situations from a travel standpoint, but I’ll trust the home team in what might be a close, tight game late with a guy in Wacha who fits the profile of shutting down the Guardians offense.
Pick: Royals -122
Cincinnati Reds at Chicago Cubs (-207, 11.5)
7:40 p.m. ET
I stared at this game for a long time this morning before ultimately deciding on a home run prop and a big underdog ticket. There are a lot of concerning developments with Edward Cabrera in my opinion. His velocity and spin rates are down across the board and so is his arm angle. Now, that may be a concerted effort by the Cubs to help him get in the zone and harness his stuff better. Even though he’s running a career-best Chase Rate of 34.3%, his 20.1% K% is easily the lowest of his career. His BB% is identical to last season, so those gains have stayed, but he hasn’t really improved upon them either.
Cabrera has allowed an 11.8% Barrel% thus far, as he’s become more of a fly ball pitcher. With the increase in fly balls, we’ve seen improvements in his HR/FB%, as he sits at 8.3%, easily the best mark of his career. But, I have to be honest, I don’t see it staying, especially running a double-digit Barrel%. His xFIP of 4.05 suggests something similar.
So far this season, 52% of the balls in play against Cabrera have been pulled. He’s been fortunate to run an 11.1% pop up rate, which is why his HR/FB% is so low. I don’t know if that’s sustainable while running the highest Z-Contact% of his career at 89.3%, which is well below average. His Zone% of 41.4% also suggests either an impending increase in his walk rate or maybe an underlying injury, which wouldn’t be surprising for a guy who has eclipsed 100 innings at the MLB level just once.
The player I’m looking to take advantage of these things with Cabrera is Nathaniel Lowe. So far this season, he’s slashed .327/.407/.712 against righties with a 201 wRC+ and five homers. Over the last 14 days, Lowe has hit all five of those homers while running a 21.4% Barrel% and a 50% Hard Hit%. Collectively over the last 14 days, the Reds lead the league in Barrel% at 14.1%, which is over 2.5% higher than the next team (Detroit) and they are third in Hard Hit%.
Hopefully that’s enough offensive support for Chase Petty and the beleaguered bullpen. I like Lowe +491 to hit 1+ HR and +5000 to hit 2+ HR as a lottery ticket play today. The wind is blowing out pretty stiffly to RF at Wrigley Field and first-pitch temps are in the 70s.
Petty at least has some swing-and-miss upside and games like this, with these weather conditions, can be a big crapshoot. The Reds have hit the second-highest rate of fly balls this season. The Cubs are ninth, but Cincy has a higher HR/FB%. Also, as a side note, Cabrera has been one of the worst pitchers at holding runners. He was -17 in Net Bases Prevented per Statcast last season and is already -3 this season.
Shop around, as DraftKings has the worst price in the market on the Reds.
Picks: Reds +169; Nathaniel Lowe (CIN) 1+ HR (+476), 2+ HR (+4900)
Milwaukee Brewers (-118, 8.5) at St. Louis Cardinals
7:45 p.m. ET
Chad Patrick comes into this game with a 2.57 ERA, 4.26 xERA, 4.33 FIP, and 5.52 xFIP over his 28 innings of work. He’s building up a big ball of regression and his .241 BABIP, 83.9% LOB% with a 14% K% and 2.6% K%-BB%, and 4.8% HR/FB% are all going to lead to bad things at some point.
Maybe it happens today, but even with all of those red flags blowing in a stiff breeze, the Brewers have been the preferred side based on the line movement that we’ve seen thus far. Everybody is looking at the same numbers that I am and the market movers and quants that bet into the baseball market know what’s coming at some point for Patrick. He’s a ticking time bomb that will explode – we just don’t know when.
Either the betting market doesn’t believe it will be today or the prospects of backing Kyle Leahy are worse. I’m thinking more the latter. Leahy has a 5.52 ERA with a 6.01 xERA and a 5.64 FIP over his 29.1 innings of work. His K% and K%-BB% are both poor, much like Patrick, but he’s allowed a .344 BABIP and a 24% HR/FB%. The other big differences are a 49.5% Hard Hit% and an 11.1% Barrel%.
Leahy is a reliever trying to convert to a starter and it’s not going well thus far. The Cardinals are wasting his 97th percentile Extension because any perceived velocity spikes have been wiped out by making him throw more pitches and work deeper into games, so his fastball velo is down. As a reliever last season, Leahy had a 22% Whiff% on his fastball with a .238 BA and a .388 SLG. As a starter this season, he has just a 9.8% Whiff% and has allowed a .412 BA with a .735 SLG. Velocity matters. He’s down 1.8 mph on his four-seamer and has been leveraging a sinker a lot more, which has also not been an effective pitch for him.
It’s early, but lefties are slashing .388/.446/.642 over 74 PA with a .473 wOBA against him. They’ve hit four homers and have an 11/7 K/BB ratio. The Brewers may want to get righty Andrew Vaughn back into a game right away, but if not, the only right-handed batter in the lineup today should be William Contreras.
If Patrick staves off regression and this bet loses, it is what it is, but the context clues in the betting market and the stats in this matchup tell me that the Brewers offense is expected to do well tonight.
Pick: Brewers 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 (+114)
