MLB Best Bets Today April 21:
A new full week begins, as the 2025 MLB season rolls onward. We’ve got eight games to think about today and, much to the chagrin of those looking for a distraction from their 9-5s, the only day game on the docket features a -300 favorite in a laundry battle royale between the Sox.
But, we do have some rather intriguing night games to ponder and so that gives us something to discuss as we shake off the holiday weekend and get back into the rhythms of normalcy.
Top MLB Resources:
This article will run Monday-Saturday and I’ll write up a standalone preview for Sunday Night Baseball on Sundays. This year, we’ll also have MLB best bets from Greg Peterson posted with overnight lines.
My tracking sheet is here. For transparency sake, I also have tracking for my three MLB seasons at VSiN (2024, 2023, 2022). This year, I intend to work in more props, derivatives, and maybe even some parlay bets to have a more diversified MLB portfolio and attack some different markets. What worked for me in the past has not worked as well the last two years, so I’m looking to make some changes and that includes my bet distribution by type and market.
Odds are from DraftKings Sportsbook because they are widely available to readers and because of some of our betting tools. I highly, highly, highly encourage you to shop around for the best lines. Sometimes they will be at DK. Oftentimes, they will not. Do what you can to shop around and get as much bang for your buck as possible.
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.
Here are the MLB best bets today for April 21:
St. Louis Cardinals at Atlanta Braves (-192, 8.5)
7:15 p.m. ET
We head to Atlanta where the Cardinals square off against the Braves. It will be Erick Fedde and Spencer Schwellenbach here, as the Braves right-hander looks to bounce back from a bad outing against the Blue Jays. Everything under the hood for Schwelly looks okay. The velo and spin rates were mostly fine. His release point seems to be dancing around a little bit right now and maybe the Blue Jays picked up on something, but I think he has a good chance to return to form.
Nevertheless, my handicap is not about him. It is about the Braves offense against Fedde. Let’s start with the fact that Fedde is a massive regression candidate thus far. He’s allowed six of his eight runs in one start, as he comes in with more walks than strikeouts and a 3.43 ERA with a 4.89 FIP and a 5.50 xFIP. Fedde has a .181 BA against and a .183 BABIP against as a guy who ranks in the 41st percentile in average exit velocity, 14th percentile in Whiff%, 25th percentile in Chase%, and ranks below the league average in Barrel%.
Fedde has a xERA of 4.99 taking into account the lack of strikeouts and the contact quality against. In his four starts, he’s faced the Twins, Red Sox, Pirates, and Astros, who currently rank 24th, 15th, 27th, and 26th in wOBA against RHP. If you’re wondering which one was the bad start, it was against the Red Sox, who rank 15th. The Braves come into today’s action ranked 13th.
It should be a good night for hitting at Truist Park with temps in the 80s and the humidity and dewpoint numbers you would expect at this time of the year in Atlanta. Fedde was able to shut down the Astros last time out, but he did allow 10 hard-hit balls for a Hard Hit% of 55.6%, his second start at 50% or higher this season.
Atlanta’s offense seems to be getting back on track after a slow start to the season and Fedde’s lack of swing and miss coupled with an 80-point difference between his wOBA (.279) and xwOBA (.359) should make this a good matchup for the Braves.
Pick: Braves 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 (-110)
