MLB Best Bets Today March 28
For the first time this season, all 30 teams take the field at the same time, as we have a full dance card for Saturday. After three different Opening Days and that built-in weather day for home openers in chilly locales, the Saturday slate looks like what we can expect most days going forward.
While that means a lot more opportunities to find plays, it also means a lot more handicapping, digging in to some of the pitchers further down the rotation and guys that have a wider range of outcomes. But, hopefully these are the guys that showed signs one way or another in Spring Training that you can capitalize on early in the season before the oddsmakers take notice.
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 March 28:
Boston Red Sox (-143, 7.5) at Cincinnati Reds
4:10 p.m. ET
Cincinnati fans were seeing red after the first game of the season, as top prospect Sal Stewart was 3-for-4 with two doubles, but also took an absolute rocket to the left wrist on a line drive from Roman Anthony. He stayed in the game, as his teammates collectively went 1-for-28 with 12 strikeouts in the Opening Day loss to the Red Sox. The task at hand is a little easier today against Sonny Gray as opposed to Garrett Crochet, but Gray is still a very good pitcher.
He may even get better this season. As I’ve talked about a lot, the Red Sox are lessening four-seam fastball usage as an organization. That led Gray to throwing more sinkers in Spring Training and he induced an average launch angle of 5.5 degrees. That’s half of last season and more than half of the season prior, where he became more of a strikeout pitcher with the Cardinals. While the revamped arsenal may be tricky to control at the outset, as he threw about 58.8% strikes in Spring Training after throwing 66% strikes last season, it should be a long-term positive.
Gray’s four-seamer yielded a .376 BA with a .594 SLG last season over 127 batted ball events. Gray’s sinker usage was 18%, as he was classified with eight different pitches, so it’s not like he’s learning a new pitch. He’s just leveraging it more and throwing fewer of his worst pitches. Amazingly, despite throwing 589 four-seamers, according to Baseball Savant, he only had seven strikeouts on the pitch after having just 12 the year prior.
In other words, we’re likely to see more swing and miss, less hard contact, and more ground balls from Gray. Those are all positive things. Meanwhile, Brady Singer, who had a blister problem of his own in ST that didn’t put him on the IL like it did rotation mate Nick Lodolo, saw a big spike in his average launch angle last season and gave up a career-worst 9.4% Barrel%. Here in the spring, Singer increased his sinker usage and maintained his slider/sweeper usage, but he’s basically a 2.5-pitch pitcher, with two slider variants and the sinker. He did a better job of inducing grounders in the spring, but he also only had a 7.2% SwStr% with a 92.1% Z-Contact%. He doesn’t really have an eye-level changer without the four-seam, so hitters can eliminate that from their minds more often than not.
Against a very potent Red Sox lineup, that’s not an ideal situation to me. The 36-year-old Gray is tweaking and, while the results didn’t look great for the spring as a whole, he was excellent in his final tune-up. Singer gave up six runs on six hits in his.
This is a juicy price, and I do like the Red Sox bullpen more than Cincinnati’s, but with a total of 7.5 and a cool day along the Ohio River, everything suggests another low-scoring game. It can be tougher to win those by margin. So, while I do like -1.5 (+113) and it’s a viable play if you’d rather go that route, I’m more comfortable just taking the moneyline.
Pick: Red Sox -143
Colorado Rockies at Miami Marlins (-193, 7.5)
4:10 p.m. ET
The Rockies and Marlins continue their series in South Florida, as Miami drew first blood with a 2-1 win on Friday. I watched a lot of that game and 2-1 really didn’t tell the whole story. The Marlins lineup looks substantially better than Colorado’s and a 1-for-10 performance with RISP was a big reason Miami didn’t do more at the dish.
They get another pitch-to-contact guy today in Michael Lorenzen, who had a great time with Team Italy in the WBC and a not-so-great time in Rockies camp. In one start and one relief outing, Lorenzen allowed three runs on six hits with a 4/3 K/BB ratio for Italy. In Rockies camp, he allowed 13 runs on 15 hits in 10.2 innings of work with nine walks against just six strikeouts.
I really, really like this Miami lineup. They’re very young and they’re going to get carved up sometimes, but Lorenzen’s not that kind of guy. With the move to Coors Field, it’s not surprising that Lorenzen shifted his focus to sinkers and changeups in the spring, moving away from his four-seam fastball. It’s certainly not a bad idea, given that he allowed a .282 BA and a .545 SLG on his fastball, but it did generate more Whiffs than his sinker. Lorenzen mostly used his four-seam against lefties and his sinker against righties, which is often the opposite of how it would be used. But, with increased sinker usage across the board, I think he really opens himself up to some gnarly platoon splits.
He’s likely to see six left-handed bats in this one and a team that will be aggressive on the bases. With the Royals, an organization having a serious moment in terms of pitcher development, Lorenzen had a 21% K%, the best he’s had since the 2020 COVID year when he was still a reliever. I don’t expect that here with the Rockies at all, as they simply can’t develop pitching. I expect a lot of balls in play and some baserunning chaos from the Fish here.
Pick: Marlins 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 (+110)
Los Angeles Angels at Houston Astros (-149, 9)
7:10 p.m. ET
This is one of the more interesting pitching matchups of the day for a nerd like me. Reid Detmers is back in the Angels rotation after a very successful season as a reliever. Cristian Javier is allegedly healthy after making just 15 starts over the last two seasons. But, as you can see from the total of 9, bettors and oddsmakers are not expecting either guy to find much success.
I’m looking more at Detmers than Javier in this one. I have always liked him and have wished he could get away from the Angels org and go somewhere that actually knows how to develop pitching. Well, he learned while out in the bullpen and figured out how to better leverage his stuff and also cut down his arsenal to focus more on his better offerings. I’m sure first-year pitching coach Mike Maddux and former MLB catcher Kurt Suzuki will help him along as the season progresses.
But, in this start, Detmers is in a tough spot. For starters, the southpaw is going to face eight right-handed bats. Yusei Kikuchi did yesterday, too, and navigated very well with his slider, but he did allow nine Hard Hit balls in 18 batted ball events and gave up eight hits over 4.1 innings of work. He needed 86 pitches to get 13 outs.
Today, Detmers’ Outs Recorded prop sits at 14.5. The starter turned reliever turned starter threw 61, 64, and 66 pitches over his three Cactus League starts in March and never got more than 12 outs. In his final start on Mar. 23, he needed 66 pitches to get just nine outs, as he only gave up two hits and didn’t allow a run, but had a lot of deep counts with three walks and three strikeouts.
What really helped Detmers last season was a 2 mph bump on his four-seam and a similar bump on his slider. As a starter, he’s unlikely to be able to maintain that kind of velocity and Spring Training reports had him back around 92-94. With a tough assignment, a lot of deep counts, and a return to the rotation, I think it’d be a big push for Detmers to get 15+ outs, especially with the reduced juice.
Pick: Reid Detmers (LAA) Under 14.5 Outs Recorded (-102)
