MLB Best Bets Today June 2
Much to the chagrin of many, there are no day games on Monday, but we do have a decent slate with nine games. The teams not playing might be more interesting today because a lot of teams had limited off days in May, so the teams that get a little bit of a breather might be able to come back looking fresh and reinvigorated. While that doesn’t help us place bets today, it could help tomorrow and beyond.
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 June 2:
Blue Jays vs. Braves Prediction
Pick: Blue Jays -101
A couple of right-handers meet up here with Kevin Gausman for Toronto and Bryce Elder for Atlanta. The Blue Jays have picked things up recently, despite a couple of setbacks in their last two games, one a blown save from Jeff Hoffman. After a much needed day off, their first since May 14, the Blue Jays are in Atlanta to continue their road trip.
Gausman enters with a 3.13 ERA, 3.44 xERA, and a 2.86 FIP, as he has the same strong ratios that we’re used to seeing from him and a lot of really good starts. Gausman has been susceptible to some huge blow-ups mixed in with a lot of quality outings and he had one of those against the Rays back on May 11 that accounted for seven of the 26 runs he has allowed. In his other 11 starts, he’s allowed a total of 19 runs and just 53 hits in 64.1 innings of work.
Elder got a visit from the Regression Monster last time out and he may not be done making appearances. He allowed six runs on nine hits in 3.1 innings of work to the Red Sox, a start that many people felt was coming. Elder has a .251 BABIP against with a 76.7% LOB%. It’s entirely possible that he is just a guy making strides at age 27, but this was unexpected after he posted a 5.30 ERA with a 4.72 xERA and a 4.55 FIP last season. His 2.50 ERA this season comes with a 3.83 xFIP and 4.03 SIERA, so two of the more projectable run estimators are suggesting he still has more tough times ahead.
There are 16 pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched this season. From a Stuff+ standpoint, Elder’s 86 mark is the worst among the group. His Pitching+ mark of 93 is also the worst. Some of the baseball community’s sharpest minds put together these pitching models, which you can read about here. For a cliff notes version, Stuff+ has to do with the physical characteristics of a pitch, including spin rate, movement, and velocity. Pitching+ basically grades the entirety of a pitcher’s profile, including stuff, location, and also incorporates platoon splits.
Elder is the second-worst pitcher in Stuff+ among those with at least 60 innings (68 pitchers) and tied for the seventh-worst in Pitching+. For what it’s worth, Gausman, who has 69 innings pitched, is 25th in Pitching+ and 37th in Stuff+. He’s an objectively better pitcher this season and has been throughout his career.
Over the last 14 days, the Jays are outhitting the Braves against RHP, albeit slightly, with a .346 wOBA compared to a .343 wOBA. Gausman generally does a good job limiting the long ball and the SLG department is the main area where the Braves are noticeably better in that span than the Jays.
Hopefully Hoffman is nowhere near this game, but Gausman is a guy who can work deep into games and limit the bullpen exposure. Even if not, Hoffman’s fallen down the pecking order with better arms ahead of him.
Giants vs. Brewers Prediction
Pick: Trevor McDonald (SF) Over 15.5 Outs Recorded (-103)
The Brewers had an offensive explosion yesterday against Landen Roupp and the Giants bullpen, as manager Tony Vitello threw a bunch of low-leverage relievers to the wolves after Roupp’s exit. Roupp reportedly said that he was having a back issue during the game that impacted his performance, but opted not to tell anybody about it during the game.
Admirable, a little ill-advised, but the Giants are still going to be looking for length out of McDonald tonight. He’s got a 4.34 ERA with a 3.75 xERA and a 3.25 FIP over his 29 innings of work. He’s gotten at least 16 outs in four of his five starts. He did not when he gave up seven runs to the White Sox on May 22, but he only allowed three hits and one walk, as he got terribly unlucky in that start. He hit two guys with pitches, gave up an infield single, walked in a run, and Ryan Borucki allowed some inherited runners to score. He actually allowed a season-low 27.3% Hard Hit% in that outing.
McDonald has a really nice profile on the whole and is a guy I’ll be looking to back moving forward. He only has a 3.6% Barrel% because he’s a ground ball merchant with a 61.4% GB%. He’s also only issued six walks. He’s a strike-thrower and that’s usually a good thing for pitch efficiency and going over Outs Recorded props.
The Brewers are a league average offense against RHP over the last 14 days, even with what they did yesterday to Roupp and the bullpen, so that gives you an idea of how things were prior to that.
Rangers vs. Cardinals Prediction
Pick: Rangers -112
Nathan Eovaldi and Dustin May are a couple of veteran right-handers and the listed starters for this matchup tonight. May’s career renaissance in St. Louis has been very impressive. The 4.57 ERA is misleading, especially alongside his 3.84 xERA and 3.56 FIP, but also because he allowed 13 runs over his first 7.1 innings this season and has a 3.02 ERA since. He’s only allowed more than three runs in a start once in his last nine outings.
But, I do wonder about the sustainability of what he’s doing. For starters, May gets hurt a ton and we have seen some mild velocity decreases in his last two starts. He has allowed a 47.1% Hard Hit% in that span and even had back-to-back starts in mid-May where he allowed Hard Hit% marks of 73.3% and 73.7%. He’s adjusted now, but just faced two NL Central foes.
Now he’s stepping outside the division again, like he did when he faced the Royals and Padres and allowed all that hard contact. We’ll see if that’s a thing again tonight. He may simply pitch well again, but I fully expect his counterpart to pitch well and that team is on an upward trajectory.
Eovaldi has a 3.93 ERA with a 4.19 xERA and a 4.51 FIP. He’s allowed 16 of his 32 runs in three of his 11 starts, so he’s been really good more often than not and hopefully this is one of those nights. The Rangers have won four in a row and the Cardinals have lost eight of 11, so these teams feel like ships going in opposite directions. Eovaldi has a 3.37 xFIP and 3.39 SIERA, so those two run estimators are looking more favorably upon his performance. On the other side, May’s xFIP and SIERA are both over 4.00.
This is a Cardinals team that has been trending towards this kind of run for a while, as their record in one-run games is moving towards the median and their offense is trending down, slashing just .226/.293/.344 against RHP over the last 14 days with a 24.5% K%. The Rangers are 12th with a .258/.330/.424 slash and a .334 wOBA against RHP in that span.
Last night was the first game for the Cardinals outside the NL Central since May 17 and they dropped a 2-1 decision after playing Sunday Night Baseball against the Cubs. There may still be a bit of a hangover effect tonight.
