MLB Best Bets Today April 28:
A new week begins across Major League Baseball with zero interleague games. Four games in the NL and four games in the AL are all we have on the schedule for April 28, as it feels like a throwback kind of day. Action starts at 4:05 p.m. ET in Washington D.C. and will wrap up at Dodger Stadium whenever Marlins vs. Dodgers is completed.
For the first time in what feels like a very long time, we don’t really have any major weather concerns, as this past weekend featured some postponements and doubleheaders. It should be all systems go tonight and the five outdoor early games have first-pitch temps in the 70s. Perhaps offense will start ticking up league-wide as the temperature does.
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 28:
New York Yankees (-130, 9) at Baltimore Orioles
6:35 p.m. ET
Will Warren and Tomoyuki Sugano are the listed hurlers here as a big series gets underway at Oriole Park. Baltimore is not off to the start that they envisioned, but they can get a little positive momentum going with a good showing against the Yankees this weekend. We’ll see if Sugano can help them with that quest.
I’m actually looking at Warren and his Strikeout prop here. Warren is still learning how to be a starter at the MLB level, but he has four pitches that grade above average per Stuff+. He has a 77.1% Z-Contact% thus far. His problem is that he hasn’t gotten a lot of guys to expand the zone and hasn’t consistently thrown competitive pitches, but even with just a 9.3% SwStr%, he’s gone over this 4.5 number in three of his five starts and three of his four that have lasted longer than 1.2 innings.
The Orioles are third in K% over the last 14 days at 25.5%. They rank around the league average in Z-Contact%, but these two teams know each other inside and out and so I think pitching coach Matt Blake can help Warren maximize his arsenal here to best attack the O’s. He’s only allowed 16 hits in 20.2 innings of work, so the stuff has been really good. I think it should start translating into more swings and misses as we go forward.
Pick: Will Warren (NYY) Over 4.5 Strikeouts (-110)
St. Louis Cardinals at Cincinnati Reds (-122, 9.5)
6:40 p.m. ET
NL Central rivals clad in red come together on the banks of the Ohio River for the series lid lifter between the Cardinals and Reds. The Reds got home around 10:40 p.m. ET last night after wrapping up their three-city, nine-game road trip with stops in Baltimore, Miami, and Colorado. They swept the Rockies and ride a four-game winning streak into their return to Great American Ball Park, but that first home game back can be a tricky one.
And I think will be especially tricky for Nick Martinez. I don’t think this is a good matchup for him, as the Cardinals lead MLB in Pitch Type Value for Batting Runs on changeups according to Statcast and that is Martinez’s most effective pitch historically. The Cardinals also grade as a top-five offense against fastballs. Martinez may go slider-heavy here, but he has four starts with a changeup percentage over 20% and just two starts with slider usage north of 20%. His fastball mix does include four-seamers and sinkers, but Statcast has classified his hard stuff as a four-seam fastball more in his last three starts than his first two.
Martinez has seen an uptick in Whiffs recently, but the Cardinals are a top-five team in SwStr%, so I don’t think he’s going to have that to fall back on here after facing the Giants, Mariners, and Marlins, who are 16th, 28th, and 24th in SwStr%.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge Andre Pallante fan and the command has been iffy this season, coming in with a 4.05 ERA and a 5.41 FIP. He had problems locating in his last start against Atlanta with four Barrels, but he had only allowed three over his first four starts. Pallante has faced the Twins, Red Sox, Phillies, Mets, and Braves so far, so even though the Reds are swinging it better lately, this should be a downgrade.
Mostly, this is a situational play to fade the Reds coming home off a long trip that ended in Colorado and a play on the Cardinals offense against a guy that they should match up well with in Martinez. Neither team used their primary relievers on Sunday, so the bullpens are on pretty equal footing, though I do like some of the positive regression signs for the STL pen, as they have a league-low 61.3% LOB%. The Reds also have the biggest differential between ERA and FIP on the negative regression side.
Pick: Cardinals +102
