MLB Best Bets Today May 6
One of the downsides, or upsides, depending on your work schedule and commitment to paying attention in the afternoon, is that a full slate of games on Monday often leads to a lot of getaway day games on Wednesday. That’ll be the case today, as we have six matinees to go with nine night games. In that respect, it’s a pretty spread-out slate with something for everyone.
The two picks I like the most are in afternoon games, so I apologize for the short lead time, but at least it’s during the week and you’re probably perusing VSiN when you’re supposed to be putting data in that spreadsheet or paying attention on that Teams meeting, so I think we can let it slide for today.
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 6:
San Diego Padres (-112, 8.5) at San Francisco Giants
3:45 p.m. ET
Playing hooky to go to a game at Oracle Park is definitely a good use of a Wednesday and we’ve got a businessman’s special by McCovey Cove today. Also, if you’re sitting in the outfield, you might have a good chance at taking home a souvenir, as Matt Waldron comes in with a 9.88 ERA and Adrian Houser checks in with a 7.12 ERA. But, one guy seems to have fallen on the wrong side of luck, whereas the other guy has made the bed he’s lying in.
Waldron, whose season has been a pain in the ass literally and figuratively, has given up 15 runs on 22 hits in 13.2 innings of work. He started the season on the IL after surgery on an infected hemorrhoid, which sounds about as unpleasant as it gets, and now he’s struggled in his first three outings. But, Lady Luck and the BABIP gods should be teaming up to help him soon. Waldron has a 4.61 xERA because he hasn’t allowed a lot of hard contact. His Hard Hit% is just 33.3%. He only has eight strikeouts out of 69 batters, so he’s done well to limit hard contact while pitching to an extreme amount of contact, but has a .373 BABIP against and .355 BA against.
Based on Statcast batted ball data, his xBA is .256, so there are some encouraging signs going forward. I don’t know that he’ll suddenly rack up more strikeouts, but for a guy to be in the 64th percentile in average exit velo, 72nd percentile in BB%, 75th percentile in Hard Hit%, 69th percentile in GB%, and 55th percentile in Barrel% to keep running an ERA near 10 is going to be very difficult to do.
Houser, meanwhile, has earned his ERA north of 7. His K% is actually lower than Waldron’s, leading to a 5.96 xERA. Where Waldron has induced a lot of soft contact that has found patches of green, Houser has a .327 BABIP with a 47.4% Hard Hit% and a 10.3% Barrel%. He’s given up a lot more loud contact and grades so much worse than Waldron in a lot of areas, including his 11th percentile xERA, 6th percentile xBA, 15th percentile Hard Hit%, and 27th percentile Barrel%.
I know this is a day game, but it takes a lot to get an 8.5 at Oracle Park, so that was one of the things that stood out to me. I’m not playing the total, but this is the fourth game of the 2026 season with a total of 8.5 or higher after there were just 10 in 81 home games last season. Just an interesting note. Not a bet of mine or anything.
With Erik Miller on the shelf, Ryan Walker not really useful, and Caleb Killian getting save opps, the Giants bullpen is really in a state of flux. I’ll take the Padres bullpen with an edge there and also some more encouraging signs from Waldron than Houser.
Pick: Padres -112
Atlanta Braves at Seattle Mariners (-136, 8)
4:10 p.m. ET
The Braves and Mariners have traded one-run victories to begin this three-game set and now they’ll square off in the rubber match at T-Mobile Park. The Braves have tomorrow off before opening a litmus test weekend series with the Dodgers, while the Mariners hop on a plane to fly to Chicago for a weekend against the White Sox.
Martin Perez and Bryan Woo are the listed starters here, as Perez makes his fifth start and seventh appearance. The crafty southpaw has a 2.22 ERA with a 4.47 xERA and a 4.45 FIP, so we’ll see how long he can keep walking the tightrope, but as I said on Wednesday morning with Dave Ross and Jensen Lewis on VSiN By The Books, maybe there’s something to throwing 89-90 when everybody else is throwing 95+. It is a bit of a different look for sure.
The Mariners rank 28th in wOBA against LHP on the season, slashing just .200/.286/.341 with a 24.6% K% and a 10.3% BB%. That’s a pretty good walk rate and they’d be even lower without it, as their contact quality against southpaws is just not up to snuff. They do have a .231 BABIP in that split and that should correct itself as the season goes along, but I’m hoping today is not that day.
Atlanta, meanwhile, has pummeled right-handed pitching, leading the league with a .355 wOBA. For some context, a .355 wOBA ranks about 56th out of 178 hitters with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title, so the Braves as a team are roughly the equivalent of a top-50 hitter against RHP this season. That’s pretty damn good.
It also means that it is a bad time for Bryan Woo to be struggling. Woo has a 4.61 ERA with a 4.06 xERA and a 4.22 FIP, as he’s allowed 13 runs on 16 hits over his last nine innings of work. The lack of strikeouts seems to have caught up to Woo, who only has 29 punchies in 166 batters. He’s also allowed a 48.1% Hard Hit% and a 10.1% Barrel%, as he’s surrendered eight Barrels in his last two starts and at least 11 hard-hit balls in each of his last four starts. The command profile is not great right now, whether he’s tipping pitches or something else is going on.
As a result, I’ll take the Braves today. All hands should be on deck in the bullpen and Raisel Iglesias just returned from the IL yesterday. Andres Munoz has worked three of the last four for the Mariners and threw 23 pitches in a losing effort yesterday in a back-to-back. I think the Braves might have the reliever advantage, too, as the M’s have a couple higher-leverage arms on the IL right now.
Pick: Braves +113
