MLB Best Bets Today May 28
We have about as light of a day as you can get during the MLB season, as only 12 teams take the field across six games, including a couple of early starts. Given that 26 of the 30 teams played on Monday and many teams had played 10+ days in a row, an off day is huge as we head into the weekend. However, our focus is on the 12 teams that don’t have the day off.
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 28:
Blue Jays vs. Orioles Prediction
Pick: Blue Jays +109
For the first time this season, the Blue Jays and Orioles square off, as these AL East rivals are both playing a lot better of late. They are both an embodiment of the “it’s a long season” sentiment, as lackluster starts have turned into a push to get to .500 and hopefully beyond. The Orioles are up to 26-30 after a sweep of the Rays and wins in five of their last six games. The Jays are 27-29 with wins in six of their last eight.
Toronto draws a familiar face here, as they get to take some swings against Chris Bassitt, who spent three seasons north of the border before signing with the Orioles this offseason. Bassitt comes in with a 5.51 ERA, 4.84 xERA, 4.38 FIP, and a 4.76 xFIP, as he’s currently running the lowest HR/FB% since his first season in Oakland back in 2015. He’s also running just a 15.3% K%, the lowest of his career.
The Blue Jays don’t strike out as it is and balls in play have been hurtful for Bassitt with a .306 BA against and a .354 BABIP. To be fair, he deserves a better fate with a 37% Hard Hit% and just a 3.7% Barrel%, but a drop in K% coupled with a spike in BB% have made things difficult on him. The Orioles are also one of the league’s worst defensive teams, coming in 27th in Outs Above Average at -14. They are -7 around the infield, a big deal with Bassitt’s 45.6% GB%.
I don’t know if the Jays truly unlocked something for 36-year-old Patrick Corbin, but he enters with a 3.86 ERA, 5.37 xERA, and a 3.95 FIP. He hasn’t allowed more than three runs in any of his last eight starts since giving up four in his Toronto debut on April 10, a tough outing given how late in the spring he signed. He’s actually coming off of his best start of the season, where he outdueled Paul Skenes with six innings of one-run ball against the Pirates.
Like Bassitt, Corbin has done a great job (and an outlier job) of keeping the ball in the park. He, too, has a lower K% than normal, but the Blue Jays are a better defensive team and that has helped. It should also help Corbin here that being a lefty in Baltimore is a bit more favorable than being a righty, as hitting the ball to the closed side of the ballpark with the deeper wall is a bit tougher than to the warehouse side.
Ultimately, I don’t know which starting pitcher, if either one of them, will pitch well today. If the starters do cancel out, though, Toronto’s bullpen has been masterful of late. Over the last 14 days, the Jays are third in bullpen ERA at 2.25 with a 3.01 xERA and a 3.37 FIP. The Orioles are dead last with a 6.35 ERA. They also have a 4.97 xERA in that span. So, I’ll take my chances in the late innings with the Toronto bullpen having an advantage over the Baltimore bullpen, plus the Blue Jays have a ton of familiarity with their former teammate and his extreme platoon splits – lefties are batting .322/.404/.513 with a .401 wOBA and Toronto should have at least five left-handed bats in the lineup.
Astros vs. Rangers Prediction
Pick: Rangers 1st 5 Run Line -0.5 (-110)
The conclusion of the four-game series for Lone Star State bragging rights is tonight, as Spencer Arrighetti heads to the hill for the Astros and Nathan Eovaldi will go for the Rangers. This should be a really strong matchup for Eovaldi for several reasons and there are a lot of tough signs in the profile for Arrighetti, who has regression red flags all over the place.
Let’s start with Eovaldi, who seems to have figured things out of late. Over his last four starts, he’s allowed just a 29.6% Hard Hit% and only four Barrels, including a start against the Astros where he allowed just four hard-hit balls and threw seven shutout innings with eight strikeouts. Eovaldi has 29 strikeouts in 29 innings in that span with a 1.24 ERA, 3.38 xERA, and a 2.90 FIP.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Eovaldi shut down the Astros. Righties are only batting .215/.295/.333 with a .287 wOBA against him this season. Lefties have hit eight of the 11 homers he has allowed, so he’ll have to be careful with Yordan Alvarez, but the rest of the lineup should be neutralized by the veteran right-hander. Righties only batted .186/.230/.282 with a .226 wOBA last season against him, so this is not a one-year blip by any means.
On the Arrighetti side, he comes in with a 1.32 ERA, but his 4.75 xERA and 3.70 FIP with a 4.89 xFIP are suggestive of tough times ahead. He’s struck out 40 in 41 innings and only allowed one homer and eight total runs with 24 hits, but he’s also walked 25. He’s running a .223 BABIP with an 87.7% LOB% and those are two areas of obvious regression, along with his 2.3% HR/FB%.
He shut down the Rangers with one hit over 7.1 innings two starts ago, though he did walk four. He’s limited opponents to a 29.8% Hard Hit%, but the walks are likely to come back to hurt him at some point soon, whereas Eovaldi is back to not issuing free passes.
If we knock out Arrighetti’s 10-strikeout effort against the Rockies in his 2026 debut, the numbers are even more damning with a 1.29 ERA, 4.85 xERA, 3.87 FIP, and 5.06 xFIP. He only has 30 strikeouts against 21 walks in 35 innings. Removing that start also drops his SwStr% to just 9.2%, well below the league average for starting pitchers. He’s probably a viable fade candidate for a while moving forward, including today.
