MLB Best Bets Today May 3

A rainy Saturday is on tap for May 3, as the MLB slate is supposed to have 15 games, but St. Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, and other locales may have postponements or delays. It isn’t a coincidence that I talk about the weather every day. It is important to know for a few reasons. For one thing it can keep you from spending too much time on a game that won’t be played. It also keeps you from betting into a game where the starters may get removed due to a delay or something like that. Some players with muscle aches and pains may not play on a wet field.

But, weather is unpredictable and forecasts sometimes don’t come through, so no report should be treated as gospel. We’ll see what happens today, as my focus is on the later games in the interest of lead time for readers.

There was a pitching change yesterday in Cubs/Brewers, as Milwaukee tried to sneak an opener through for Quinn Priester and it backfired. I wrote back in early April that I was just grading games as “Action” even with pitching changes because some books don’t even list starters anymore and others make it very hard to find “Pitcher Must Start” lines, so to spare any confusion, picks are Action and hopefully we don’t have too many of those situations.

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.

Here are the MLB best bets today for May 3:

San Diego Padres at Pittsburgh Pirates (-122, 9)

4:05 p.m. ET

A matinee in the Steel City features the Padres and Pirates, as San Diego took down Game 1 to start their nine-game road trip on a high note. It will be Randy Vasquez and Bailey Falter in the middle game of the series and we’ll have an excellent pitching matchup tomorrow between Nick Pivetta and Andrew Heaney.

But before we get to tomorrow, and a possible lookahead spot for the Padres with a trip to the Bronx on Monday, we have to get through Saturday. Vasquez checks in with a 4.28 ERA, but a 5.85 xERA and a 5.11 FIP in his 27.1 innings of work. The right-hander only has 10 strikeouts against 19 walks on the season over his six starts. The high BB% and low K% are absolutely concerns moving forward, but I can’t argue with the solid contact management. Vasquez has allowed just a 31.9% Hard Hit% and a 7.7% Barrel% on 91 balls in play.

The Pirates started out the season drawing a lot of walks, but they’re just 16th in that department over the last 14 days at 8.8%. They also don’t strike out a lot, so they’re likely to put balls in play and that seemingly works to Vasquez’s benefit.

Falter doesn’t have the same BB% problem that Vasquez has, though he does struggle to miss bats himself. He has 22 K out of 127 batters faced and has had a single-digit SwStr% in five of his six starts, including just a 6.2% output against an Angels team that swings and misses a lot two starts ago. Falter, unlike Vasquez, has allowed a lot of hard contact with a 48.4% Hard Hit% and a 9.5% Barrel%.

The Padres come in as a top-10 offense against southpaws with a .320 wOBA and a 106 wRC+. The Pirates are 25th in wOBA at .293 and have an 82 wRC+ against righties. San Diego also has the top bullpen by ERA and the Pirates rank 19th in that department. San Diego is also third in reliever FIP, while the Pirates are 24th. I’ll take the team with the better offense and the better bullpen in a game where both starters are suspect.

Pick: Padres +102

Chicago Cubs at Milwaukee Brewers (-110, 8.5)

7:10 p.m. ET

A toss-up game on today’s card features the Cubs and Brewers. It will be Jameson Taillon for the division leaders and Jose Quintana for the Brew Crew, who open the day four games back after yesterday’s 10-0 shellacking.

This should be a good matchup for the Cubs for several reasons. First, they are the league’s best offense against lefties with a .378 wOBA and a 143 wRC+. They’ve only struck out 15.9% of the time against southpaws and have walked 11.5% of the time. Their .500 SLG ranks second to the Yankees, but they comfortably lead MLB in on-base percentage in that split.

Second, Quintana is a massive regression candidate. He’s 4-0 with a 1.14 ERA and has been a godsend for the beleaguered Brewers rotation, but I’m not expecting that to continue. He has a 4.42 xERA and a 4.31 xFIP. His 3.35 FIP is a byproduct of a minuscule HR rate, which should normalize a little bit. But, this is a guy with 15 strikeouts against eight walks in 23.2 innings of work. He’s running a .261 BABIP against with a 93.8% LOB%. Those are not sustainable numbers, especially when you consider he’s sporting a Hard Hit% of 47.1% against and what would be his highest Barrel% since 2021.

Taillon is a WYSIWYG pitcher to me. What you see is what you get. He has a 4.01 ERA with a 4.28 xERA and a 4.07 FIP in his 33.2 innings of work. He’s not a big swing-and-miss guy, but he does a fantastic job of limiting walks. His Hard Hit% sits at 39.6% with a 9.6% Barrel%, so he has the chance to give up some long balls and loud contact, but you can bake that in and assume a pretty consistent performance. 

He actually allowed six runs on nine hits in his first start of the season against the Diamondbacks, but has only allowed nine runs over his last five starts combined on just 21 hits. He also has 25 K in 29.1 innings, so he’s doing a bit better of a job missing bats after that rough outing to open the season.

It’s not a huge gap, but the Cubs bullpen has been more effective thus far, so I can get the better offense, the better bullpen, and fade a starter in line for regression for a pretty cheap price.

Pick: Cubs -110

Kansas City Royals at Baltimore Orioles (-115, 9)

7:15 p.m. ET

The Royals and Orioles play Game 2 of their weekend set, as Baltimore drew first blood last night behind seven shutout innings from Dean Kremer. Getting blanked over seven innings by Kremer is a pretty good indicator of a team’s offensive talent level and the Royals are not a good offensive team. They’ll get Tomoyuki Sugano tonight and counter with southpaw Kris Bubic.

Sugano adopted a pretty simple strategy last time out against the Yankees. Throw your worst pitches less often and throw harder. Sugano’s four-seam fastball velo was his second-highest of the season and highest since his first start. His cutter and sinker usage were both cut down significantly. The end result was a season-high eight strikeouts over five shutout innings. His 15.8% SwStr% was easily a career-high for the first-year 35-year-old who came over from Japan.

I can’t help but wonder if the Orioles found something to tinker with to increase the velo and also had a really good gameplan against the Yankees. The Royals don’t swing and miss nearly as often as New York, but they also have a hell of a lot less thunder in their lineup. Sugano has allowed a high rate of hard contact this season, but the two pitches with the highest exit velocity against are – you guessed it – his cutter and sinker. By limiting the usage of those two pitches, Sugano should be much more effective.

I do like Bubic, who comes in with a 2.25 ERA, 3.70 xERA, and a 2.89 FIP to his name over six starts and 36 innings. He also draws a Baltimore lineup that is the worst in baseball against lefties with a .231 wOBA and a 48 wRC+. It should be a good night for hitting based on the weather, as it will be warm and humid with a wind blowing out. That’s part of the reason we’ve seen this total get bumped up to 9.

But, I think both Bubic and Sugano can have success here. I also like Baltimore’s one-shot offensive upside with the long ball over Kansas City’s. The Royals have the worst offense against right-handed pitching with a .281 wOBA and a 76 wRC+. While they are 19th in Hard Hit%, they are 30th in Barrel%. The Orioles, meanwhile, are fourth in Barrel% and Hard Hit%.

I think Bubic can keep them at bay for a while, but the Orioles have a better chance at running into a mistake in a game that I do think stays Under the total of 9. Both bullpens are pretty rested here as well.

Pick: Orioles -115; Royals/Orioles Under 9 (-115)