MLB Best Bets Today May 9
Baseball begins at 3:07 p.m. ET and ends sometime around midnight with a jampacked slate of games. All 30 teams are expected to take the field, though a few games are definitely at risk of delays or postponements with some rain in the forecast.
Three pitchers will make their ninth starts of the season and 16 more will make their eighth starts, so that sample size keeps getting larger and more telling and we do have a lot of pitchers on today’s card with positive or negative regression signs, so we’ll see if those come to fruition or not.
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 9:
Colorado Rockies at Philadelphia Phillies (-186, 8.5)
6:05 p.m. ET
Kyle Freeland and Aaron Nola square off here in a battle of two starters with well over 500 combined starts. Freeland has made two starts since coming off of the IL and has allowed 10 runs on 13 hits in 9.1 innings of work. While he’s struck out 11 and walked four, he has allowed 13 hard-hit balls out of 29 batted ball events and three Barrels. His velo is not up to where it was pre-injury, as he’s sat about about a mile per hour lower on the four-seam and about 0.5 mph on the sinker since his first couple starts of the year.
The Phillies have had all sorts of problems with southpaws this season, as their right-handed bats aren’t really producing, but there’s too much talent to continue with a .245 BABIP off southpaws, the third-lowest mark in the league. They are batting .206 in that split with a .233 xBA, so not a ton of contact quality, but still better than what their results look like.
Their -.022-point gap in wOBA-xwOBA is the sixth-highest in baseball, so they should be able to see some better fortunes off lefties in the not too distant future and a guy like Freeland definitely allows them the chance to do that today.
Something not really being talked about enough this season is that the Rockies are 14th in road wOBA this season at .315. While not a great number, it’s still way better than what we normally see due to the Coors Field Effect. The Rockies always hit well at home with the hitter-friendly conditions and spacious outfield. But, they rarely, if ever, hit well on the road in a relative sense. Just as one example, they were last in the league in road wOBA last season at .260, so an increase of 55 points is a huge accomplishment.
Nola was terrific last time out with six shutout innings against the Marlins, but he had allowed 11 runs in just 9.1 innings in his previous two starts and at least three runs in five of his first six starts prior to shutting down Miami. He is what he is once again – a guy who throws a lot of strikes, runs a high BABIP, and will give up a good amount of homers. He’s allowed six so far this season and 10 Barrels overall.
The Phillies needed six relievers yesterday and all of them threw at least 16 pitches and four of them threw 20. The Rockies needed five relievers, including closer Victor Vodnik, and this is a suspect bullpen to begin with. I think we have the chance for some runs today.
Pick: Over 8.5 (-115)
Detroit Tigers at Kansas City Royals (-143, 9.5)
7:10 p.m. ET
The Tigers will piecemeal a pitching plan together today, as Burch Smith will open and Ty Madden will follow in some capacity. If Smith gets in trouble, we could see more of a leverage arm come in before Madden so that he can start the next inning clean. It isn’t an ideal situation for the Tigers, who are decimated by injuries right now, but it might work out here.
Smith, who has bounced around the globe trying to catch on after being a one-time highly-touted prospect, has allowed two runs on nine hits in 11.1 innings of work thus far. He’s struck out 16 and walked just four while inducing a lot of ground balls. He’s gone two innings on four separate occasions, so that’s probably what Detroit is hoping to get here.
Madden, who has really struggled in the upper minors, threw five shutout innings against the Red Sox last time out with seven strikeouts. While I’m not really expecting that again, he’s got a really deep pitch arsenal and strikes me as a guy who can have success in a bulk role as a result. He worked 23 innings at the MLB level last season with a 3.99 FIP and a 4.30 ERA, so he’s at least a competent option.
This is mostly a play against Michael Wacha, though. Wacha has a 3.05 ERA with a 4.30 xERA, 4.06 FIP, and a 4.45 xFIP over his seven starts across 44.1 innings of work. He’s always been pretty good with home run prevention, but he’s trending towards his lowest GB% ever and that’s going to eventually lead to a few more dingers, hence the 4.45 xFIP. He also has a .231 BABIP against with an 80.5% LOB%. More ground balls go for hits than fly balls, so carrying a lower BABIP is a possibility, though probably not to this degree, as his previous best was .249 back in 2018 with the Cardinals.
The 80.5% LOB% will have a hard time sticking around with his depressed strikeout rate as well, as he doesn’t generate a lot of swings and misses. He only had a 1.3% SwStr% last time out against the Guardians, who can’t hit changeups and struggled to hit anything hard. The Tigers are seventh in Pitch Value against changeups per 100 pitches and fifth overall.
Kansas City definitely deserves to be favored here, but this price seems a little bit steep to me.
Pick: Tigers +119
New York Mets (-112, 9) at Arizona Diamondbacks
7:15 p.m. ET
Opposing regression signs have created a pretty big line move here, as bettors have been backing the Diamondbacks and Merrill Kelly, who has a 9.95 ERA with an 11.73 xERA, 8.13 FIP, and a 5.97 xFIP over his 19 innings of work. Kelly has allowed 21 runs on 29 hits with more walks (15) than strikeouts (14) and six homers allowed. This will be his second start at Chase Field and he allowed eight runs on 10 hits in the first one.
Kelly is running a 23.1% HR/FB%, a 64.6% LOB%, and a .365 BABIP, which are all numbers that appear to be unsustainably high. That said, he’s earned them with a 44.9% Hard Hit% and an 18.8% Barrel%. He’s gotten a high rate of swings and misses thus far at 12.5% and has gotten ahead in counts, but he hasn’t thrown enough competitive pitches from that point forward and the ones that he has thrown have been hit pretty hard.
The Mets have their issues, including a 29th ranking in wOBA against RHP this season. Maybe it is a spot where Kelly can get back on track. We’ll have to wait and see. I get the sentiment here from bettors, especially with the signs for Clay Holmes that I’ll discuss now, but I think this line has moved too much.
Holmes has a 1.69 ERA with a 3.79 xERA, 3.65 FIP, and a 3.83 xFIP. He’s got a .210 BABIP against and a 90.2% LOB%, two numbers that are going to struggle to have staying power. He hasn’t allowed more than two runs in a start and a blow-up is possible at any time with a 58.2% GB%. Batted balls may just find some holes and create some problems. But, the Diamondbacks have also had their share of issues against RHP, sitting 27th in wOBA.
I wouldn’t consider either one of these bullpens great, but the Mets do have better numbers over the last 14 days with a 3.74 ERA, 2.81 xERA, and a 3.26 FIP, while the Diamondbacks have a 4.33 ERA with a 3.36 xERA and a 3.93 FIP.
At this point, I think this line has just moved too much and I’ll take my chances with the Metropolitans.
Pick: Mets -112
