MLB Best Bets Today April 21
The baseball grind rolls on with 15 games that start at 6:10 p.m. ET or later. Just as we all expected, Parker Messick and Keider Montero are the fWAR leads among tonight’s starting pitchers, so a little food for thought as we dig into tonight’s card.
There are 19 starting pitchers making their fifth starts of the season tonight and five more making their fourth, so sample sizes keep growing and that should benefit all of us moving forward.
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.
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 April 21:
Houston Astros at Cleveland Guardians (-149, 8.5)
6:10 p.m. ET
The first game of the night is the first wager of the night, as the Astros and Guardians battle it out at Progressive Field. Players and fans were bundled up last night with temps in the 30s, but the Jekyll and Hyde weather pattern in Cleveland brings warmer weather today, with a high in the low 70s and a first-pitch temp in the upper 60s. We also have a rare south breeze in the forecast, as the wind usually comes off of Lake Erie from the north, but it will be blowing out to right center field tonight.
Parker Messick is having a spectacular season and threw eight no-hit innings last time out before a seeing-eye single ended his bid at history, as Cleveland hasn’t had a no-hitter since Len Barker’s perfect game in 1981. In his quest, Messick threw 112 pitches last time out and completed eight innings for the first time in pro ball. I think this has the potential to be a bit of a rough start for him.
As it is, Messick has some built-in negative regression with a 1.05 ERA, 2.69 xERA, and a 2.51 FIP. It doesn’t take much to regress from a 1.05 ERA, but his .200 BABIP and 91.4% LOB% are likely to get hit sooner rather than later. He’s also going to get a platoon-heavy lineup today with I would assume eight right-handed bats plus Yordan Alvarez.
The Guardians lead the league in pitches per plate appearance and that’s a bad sign for Ryan Weiss. The former farmhand turned KBO starter turned MLB depth arm has a 6.75 ERA with a 5.69 xERA and a 6.27 FIP thus far. He’s faced 72 batters with 18 strikeouts and 10 walks. He’s also given up 12 runs on 20 hits and four home runs. He’s allowed a 54.5% Hard Hit% and an 11.4% Barrel%. It’s not a particularly impressive profile.
Then there’s these two bullpens. The Guardians bullpen has been awful. Usually a team strength, Cleveland has a 5.18 ERA with a 4.36 FIP. Hunter Gaddis just returned from injury and looks very shaky with depressed velo and even Cade Smith has had major issues, let alone the other guys. Even Erik Sabrowski got hit on Sunday.
Houston is 29th in bullpen ERA at 5.66 and has a 5.79 FIP that is the worst in baseball. Both bullpens have been susceptible to the long ball, ranking first (HOU) and fourth (CLE) in HR/9. With that helping breeze hanging around through most of the game, that could be a factor.
Pick: Over 8.5 (-118)
Cincinnati Reds (-115, 7.5) at Tampa Bay Rays
6:40 p.m. ET
The “Redgression” hasn’t happened yet and Cincy rolled to a win by more than one or two runs on Monday. I’m still looking for spots to go against this team and there should be a lot of them as we go forward, but fading them in a Chase Burns start might be a little bit tricky. Burns has a 2.42 ERA with a 3.86 xERA and a 4.12 FIP, so there is definitely some hardship potential there with his .222 BABIP and 90.9% LOB%. But, the stuff is really good and he’s a high-velo guy with tremendous upside.
His counterpart in this outing, Steven Matz, is not really a high-velo guy, but he’s off to a nice start this season with a 3.80 ERA, 4.44 xERA, and a 3.37 FIP. This will absolutely shock you with a guy acquired by the Rays, but they’ve made some tweaks with Matz, who is on pace for his best K% since 2022.
So, what have the Rays done? Well, Matz is throwing his sinker less often and has replaced some of the usage with changeups and sliders. The depth and usage of his changeup has paid immediate dividends, as he has a 35.1% Whiff% against RHB with that pitch compared to 20.4% last season. He’s also getting more whiffs with his sinker by locating it closer to the edges up in the zone instead of the heart of the plate. The shape of his slider is much different as well.
Matz has only made one start in climate-controlled Tropicana Field and struck out seven Yankees over five innings of work. He struck out eight Twins in a road start on April 4 and went Under his K total in his two other road starts. He’s had his two highest Chase Rate starts in his last two outings as he and the coaching staff continue to make subtle changes.
The Reds have a 27.2% K% against LHP so far on the season while batting just .195/.282/.374 in that split. They do have a 9.7% BB%, but Matz has only walked six of the 85 batters he has faced, so I’m hoping that’s a good sign for his pitch efficiency here.
Pick: Steven Matz (TB) Over 5.5 Strikeouts (+125)
Pittsburgh Pirates at Texas Rangers (-115, 8.5)
8:05 p.m. ET
We’ve got a really interesting handicap here in this interleague tilt between the Pirates and Rangers. Carmen Mlodzinski gets the straight start here for the Buccos after following an opener last time out. The Rangers will send out Kumar Rocker for his fourth start of the season. Both guys are heavy ground ball pitchers with similar strikeout rates and slightly elevated walk rates.
In the case of Rocker, who has a 4.30 ERA with a 3.80 xERA and a 4.63 FIP, there’s a lot less diversity to his arsenal, as over 75% of his pitchers are sliders and sinkers. Usually those types of right-handers end up with some gnarly platoon splits. To this point, Rocker has allowed a .362 wOBA over 37 PA to lefties and a .303 wOBA over 30 PA to righties. It was similar last season, as lefties slashed .319/.386/.522 with a .388 wOBA and righties .229/.289/.424 with a .308 wOBA.
To me, that benefits the Pirates here, as lefties Ryan O’Hearn, Oneil Cruz, and Brandon Lowe, along with switch hitter Bryan Reynolds, have carried the load on offense. This should be a pretty good matchup for those guys.
Conversely, Mlodzinski mixes his pitches more effectively and he’s relied even more on his splitter this season. Splitters are platoon advantage neutralizers and also pitches that can generate swing and miss or weak contact. He has a 1.77 ERA with a 3.10 xERA and a 2.49 FIP on the season thus far. Lefties have a .336 wOBA against him compared to a .218 wOBA for righties, but a .382 BABIP from lefties has a lot to do with that. Lefties have a .295 BA against him with a .257 xBA, so I’d expect to see some improvement moving forward.
Rocker has forced righties into a 52% GB% and lefties into a 47.4% GB% for his career and the difference this season is 59.1% for righties and 47.8% for lefties. The splits are not as stark this season for Mlodzinski and Globe Life Field is annually a ballpark where ground ball batting average lags behind expected BA on those batted ball types. Generally speaking, this is a pretty good pitcher’s park.
Both bullpens are rested from the off day, but I do like this matchup more for Pittsburgh’s lineup and, while both teams are experiencing some developmental wins on the pitching front, it really seems like the Pirates are making a lot of strides lately.
Pick: Pirates -105
Los Angeles Dodgers (-186, 7) at San Francisco Giants
9:45 p.m. ET
Our final first pitch of the night comes in San Francisco, as the Giants host the Dodgers. I’m wondering if the Dodgers might come out a bit sluggish here, as they just wrapped up a four-game set at Coors Field and got into SFO a little after 1 a.m. It was a weird weather series for LA, including a bitter cold game to get things started. Wraparound series are always a little bit strange as well.
The Dodgers played a four-game set in Colorado last year and lost the next day 2-1 against the Padres.The Diamondbacks played four in Colorado last season and lost 3-1 to Cleveland at home the next day. The Phillies played four in Colorado last season and won 4-3 against the A’s the next day in Sacramento, but it was a 1-0 game until the teams each scored three runs in the ninth. (here’s the query I ran at Killer Sports to see the four-game series if you want to research other instances)
It’s a small sample size, but four games in the elevation in Denver is a slog. Giants starter Landen Roupp has been outstanding so far this season, posting a 2.38 ERA with a 2.56 xERA and a 2.21 FIP in 22.2 innings of work. Roupp has been extremely efficient with 24 strikeouts against seven walks. He hasn’t allowed a home run and three of his four starts have been away from the pitcher-friendly vibes of Oracle Park.
Roupp has gone six innings in each of those three road starts. He fell victim to the BABIP gods against the Mets, as he allowed seven hits in 4.2 innings with a .467 BABIP against despite a 33.3% Hard Hit% and a -1.8 average launch angle. He has not allowed a Barrel yet this season with a 50.9% GB% and a 26.7% K%. His Outs Recorded prop sits at just 15.5 here and I’d expect Roupp to have a strong effort tonight.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto goes for the Dodgers and he’s usually extremely efficient, which should keep Roupp in rhythm and not create any long innings where he’s sitting for a while. He’s topped out at 95 pitches, so that shouldn’t be a factor and the Giants bullpen has had some issues this season. I’ll take Over 15.5 Outs at plus money here.
Pick: Landen Roupp (SF) Over 15.5 Outs Recorded (+103)
