MLB Best Bets Today August 23
Key Highlights:
- Red Sox vs. Orioles Pick
- Rays vs. Guardians Prediction
- Padres vs. Mariners Best Bet
It is a very busy Monday in the Major League Baseball world, as we actually have 13 games featuring 26 of the league’s 30 teams. That is a lot for a Monday, but the last few Thursdays have been pretty light on action. The series of the week is Phillies vs. Mets, as New York comes in trailing by seven games, but Philly has to shake off the bad news about staff ace Zack Wheeler, who will miss the remainder of this season and more.
Padres vs. Mariners is also a really good one with some interleague action in the PNW. San Diego is coming in off a series win against the Dodgers to leave things tied in the NL West. Did either one of those games make the cut for me today?
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).
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. 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 August 25:
Boston Red Sox (-119, 9.5) at Baltimore Orioles
6:35 p.m. ET
The Red Sox and Orioles open up a weekday set as Boston got to town around 1 a.m. after playing Sunday Night Baseball against the Yankees. I dug up a tweet that I saw from VSiN colleague Wes Reynolds who noted back on July 28 that teams going to a new city were 2-11 this season. I presume that “new city” means not going home, but continuing a road trip or starting one without a travel day. If so, the Mariners made this trend 2-12 by losing in Philly last Monday after the Little League Classic in Williamsport, PA.
The Red Sox only had an hour-long flight from EWR to BWI, but still. They fell short of completing their first 4+ game sweep of the Yankees in the Bronx since 1939, so it wasn’t as joyous of a flight as it could have been.
Boston sends opener Brennan Bernardino out there to get things started and Richard Fitts will follow as the bulker. Bernardino has started one game this season and 10 in his career. He has a 2.93 ERA with a 3.41 xERA and a 3.37 FIP, as the Red Sox go with the lefty/righty setup here. Fitts has a 4.83 ERA with a 5.56 xERA and a 5.72 FIP over his 41 innings of work across 10 starts. It will be his first MLB appearance since July 28 and his first appearance overall in 10 days.
Tomoyuki Sugano gets the call for the Orioles, as there are some concerning regression signs with a 3.97 ERA, 5.63 xERA, and a 4.79 FIP, but he has a 1.91 ERA with a 2.87 FIP over his last five starts covering 28.1 innings of work. Sugano has only allowed one home run in that span and just six walks. He threw five shutout against Boston last time out at Fenway Park.
Baltimore doesn’t have much to play for except for spoiler, but they are within 10 games of .500 now and have played a lot better since going 18-34 in April and May. I think they’re in a pretty good spot tonight given that season-long trend and a Red Sox lineup that is much better at home than on the road.
Pick: Orioles -102
Tampa Bay Rays at Cleveland Guardians (-122, 7.5)
6:40 p.m. ET
Ian Seymour and Tanner Bibee are the listed starters as the Guardians return home following a miserable road trip. Mother Nature may give them a day off depending on how the weather sets up around the ballpark, but I don’t think they’ll get that lucky.
Seymour is a lefty whose most-used pitch is a changeup, so I just assume Cleveland won’t do anything of consequence against him. The Guardians are batting .211/.275/.335 this month with a .268 wOBA. Despite an historic percentage of platoon advantages, this is a terrible offense. It has only been a sample size of 89 plate appearances, but Cleveland has a .238 wOBA and a 52 wRC+ against LHP over the last 14 days. For the season, they have a .281 wOBA and a 79 wRC+.
Bibee has given up four runs in five straight starts and five in his first start after the All-Star Break. In fact, Bibee, who is up to a 4.62 ERA with a 4.50 FIP, has allowed 4+ runs in all but two of his last 11 starts. His pitch usage has been mystifying this season. In those 11 starts, Bibee’s pitch usage is 24% four-seam fastball, 20.6% cutter, 20.1% sinker, 16% slider, 4.7% curve, 14.6% changeup. Last season, when Bibee had over a strikeout per inning and a 3.47 ERA with a 3.56 FIP that got him a five-year extension, he was 43.4% fastball, 27.8% slider, 10.5% cutter, 18% changeup.
I’m not really sure where this sinker came from, but it needs to go away with an 11.4% Whiff% and a .296 BA, .443 SLG against. His fastball and cutter have both been hit hard. His Whiff% on the four-seam has dropped significantly. I’m not sure why the Guardians haven’t fixed these issues, given their history of maximizing pitchers and their arsenals, but Bibee is not good right now.
I have to look at the Rays for the 1st 5. Maybe coming home gives Cleveland a jolt, but on a rainy Monday night with kids back in school or close to it, you’ll be able to count the fans in the stands.
Pick: Rays 1st 5 (-105)
San Diego Padres at Seattle Mariners (-126, 8.5)
9:40 p.m. ET
The Padres failed to finish off the sweep of the Dodgers, but they flew up to Seattle tied for first place and that was a good outcome for the weekend. The Padres landed at SeaTac at a reasonable time, getting to the team hotel before 10 p.m. to rest up for this series.
JP Sears gets the call here for the Padres in his third start with them, while Bryce Miller makes his second start since returning from the IL for the M’s. I fully expected this to be a brutal year for Sears, a fly ball, pitch-to-contact southpaw who needs a favorable environment to produce some margin for error. With the A’s leaving the cavernous Coliseum for Sacramento, and with his poor road splits, he was in trouble.
He actually pitched to a 2.94 ERA over his first 33.2 innings with a .288 wOBA against, but as it warmed up, things went south. The Padres threw him a lifeline in the Mason Miller deal and he sports a 4.94 ERA with a 4.15 xERA and a 5.00 FIP for the season, but he’s had one good start and one bad start for the Friars. It’s actually going to be a pretty hot day in Seattle with clear skies, so maybe it won’t be as beneficial for Sears as it might be on another night, but I’ll take my chances.
While he’s allowed six runs on 14 hits, five and 10 in his start at Arizona, he has only allowed 11 hard-hit balls in 40 batted ball events. The Padres are good with pitchers and I feel like Ruben Niebla can maximize his arsenal.
Miller was shellacked in his return to the rotation with four runs on four hits and two homers against the Phillies. It is obviously worth pointing out that it was a road start and his first MLB one in more than two months. But, he allowed an average exit velocity of 100.8 mph and 13 hard-hit balls for an 81.3% Hard Hit%. His command profile was simply not there.
The Padres are a very good team and the bullpen got a break in yesterday’s blowout loss. The Mariners haven’t won consecutive games in nearly two weeks and have dropped eight of their last 11. I’ll take the Padres at the dog price.
Last thing worth noting about the Padres – their home offensive numbers look way better than their road ones. A high BB% is a big root cause there, as it’s helping their OBP and wOBA numbers. They actually have the same batting average and a higher SLG on the road.
Pick: Padres +104
