MLB Best Bets Today April 3:
Our first super small Thursday card of the MLB season has arrived. There are only five games on the betting board and a couple of them are very early in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The MLB season is a week old today and we’ve seen a ton of interesting developments, but it is the “torpedo bat” that has grabbed most of the headlines.
You never really know what to expect at the start of a MLB season because the baseball has been fundamentally different on an annual basis. There are also a lot of tweaks and adjustments made by both hitters and pitchers, especially in terms of velocity, pitch usage, where they are positioned on the mound or in the batter’s box, and a lot of other variables.
Top MLB Resources:
Do I have any big takeaways yet? Well, yes and no.
Looking year over year at the first week of games…
2025: .230/.307/.384, 23.1% K%, 9.2% BB%, 89.1 mph avg exit velo, 39.6% Hard Hit%, 8.8% Barrel%
2024: .244/.320/.394, 22.9% K%, 9.0% BB%, 88.8 mph avg EV, 39% HH%, 7.6% Barrel%
2023: .247/.320/.406, 22.5% K%, 9.0% BB%, 88.8 mph avg EV, 39% HH%, 8.6% Barrel%
2022: .230/.311/.382, 23.2% K%, 9.3% BB%, 89.3 mph avg EV, 39.8% HH%, 8.9% Barrel% (note – season started April 7; others all started last week of March)
In 2023 and 2024, we had a batting average on balls in play (BABIP) of .294 and .295. This season, the BABIP is just .272, despite a higher average exit velocity and higher Hard Hit%. Home runs don’t count towards BABIP, as they are not balls in play. This year’s HR/FB% is 12.6%, which is well above last year’s 11.5%, but on par with 2023’s 12.6%.
Continuing a trend that we’ve seen several years in a row, average fastball velocity is up from 94.1 mph to 94.2 mph. Most of the other stats are pretty sticky year-over-year, like fastball percentage, Swing%, Chase Rate, and swinging strike percentage (SwStr%).
So long story short, I don’t see anything that really stands out as a huge outlier. Although, without the Yankees’ ridiculous offensive production over their first few games, the league-wide numbers would look a lot worse than they did and right now they look like the dead ball start to the 2022 season. Average fly ball distance is the highest it has been over the last four years. I’m not sure what to make of that, but the increased exit velo and Barrel% compared to the last two seasons is playing a role.
I do think the quest for bat speed is playing a part. That seems to be one of the latest frontiers, at least publicly, that hitters are trying to work on. There is a lot of bat tracking data now as hitters try to combat pitch velocity. Teams have probably prioritized this internally for a long time, but now it is out there in the public eye more frequently.
Alright, well, I’ll keep track of this stuff more and more as we get additional data and the weather warms up a little bit. For now, let’s look at the Thursday card.
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 3:
Cincinnati Reds at Milwaukee Brewers (-120, 8)
7:40 p.m. ET
The Reds hit the road for the first time this season and go to a familiar venue to face the Brewers at AmFam Field. Both teams are off to slow starts with 2-4 records and both pitchers are off to a bit of a slow start. While Nick Lodolo did go six innings with two runs allowed, he only struck out one batter, as he went very sinker-heavy in his outing against the Giants. He pitched around an average exit velocity of 92 mph to throw a quality start, but he had a really low CSW% (called strike + swinging strike percentage) of just 18.6%. League average for starting pitchers is 27.6% this season thus far.
Maybe it was part of the gameplan, but Lodolo didn’t seem to have his best stuff in that outing and now he draws a Milwaukee team that has had a hard time making contact this season. We’ll see if he changes it up to throw some more swing-and-miss stuff here, but I do think that the sinker will be a big part of Lodolo’s plan to neutralize the platoon split a bit by working inside more with the pitch. In fact, Lodolo threw 48 sinker/four-seam fastballs to righties against the Giants, accounting for 64% of his pitches.
I think that will help the Brewers, who lead the league in GB% this season. They’re not elevating the baseball much, which is a big reason why the offense has struggled, but they’ve got excellent team speed and that could lead to some base hits. Lodolo only got four Whiffs on 29 swings against sinker/fastball pitches, something else that should help a Brewers lineup that does whiff a lot.
Maybe it was just a one-off thing because of the matchup with the Giants, but Lodolo did have his third-highest sinker usage game against the Brewers last year and I think we get that again here.
Pick: Nick Lodolo Over 4.5 Hits Allowed (-110)
