MLB Best Bets Today May 15

Those who have embraced the baseball grind for over a month and a half now get a little bit of a breather today. There are only six games on the MLB slate and three of them are lunchtime East Coast starts, so it is a very light night with just two games in primetime. The Rays and Blue Jays play a midday matinee north of the border as basically a standalone game.

As usual, in the interest of lead time, I didn’t even look at or consider the early games. So that means there were only three games for me to pick from for today’s article.

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 15:

Houston Astros at Texas Rangers (-125, 7)

8:05 p.m. ET

The Battle of the Lone Star State marks the first time this season that the Astros and Rangers have come together. And what a dandy of a pitching matchup we have here, as Hunter Brown goes up against Jacob deGrom. The total of 7 should have been an indicator that we have a really good one here.

Both pitchers have been really good, but Brown has been otherworldly this season. He owns a 1.48 ERA with a 2.84 xERA and a 1.85 FIP in his 48.2 innings over eight starts. His velo is up, his K% is up, his BB% is down, his HR/FB% and HR/9 are down significantly, his GB% is up slightly, and hitters have not been able to pull the ball against him at all.

Brown’s Baseball Savant page is a sight to behold:

Only Bryan Woo has a better Pull% against than Brown, whose 28.4% mark is a big reason why he has only allowed one homer this season. He has arguably the best fastball command this season of any pitcher, as he is +10.6 pitching runs per Statcast on his fastball. And this isn’t a fluke. After the Astros optimized his arsenal last season, he had a 2.51 ERA and a 3.25 FIP over his final 147 innings of work. 

Over his last 32 starts, basically a full MLB workload for a season, Brown has a 2.25 ERA with a 2.90 FIP in 195.2 innings with a 213/60 K/BB ratio and has only allowed 14 homers with a 28% Hard Hit% and a 5.0% Barrel%.

deGrom is special in his own right, as the 36-year-old finally seems healthy. After making nine starts over the last two seasons and 20 over the last three seasons, he’s worked 43 innings this season in eight starts with a 2.72 ERA, 2.82 xERA, and a 3.85 FIP. deGrom’s 27.2% K% is nothing to scoff at, though it is lower than Brown’s 32% mark. deGrom is riding a 90.9% LOB% to the ERA that he has, which is not sustainable, not even for a stud like him. Even Brown’s is 82.8%, a much more reasonable number.

deGrom also has a 36.6% Hard Hit% against with an 8.0% Barrel%. Those are still very good numbers, but they are also a little bit higher than Brown’s. Basically, I think there’s a better chance of Houston hitting a home run or having some doubles than there is of Texas doing the same against Brown based on the contact management numbers and the batted ball distribution.

Options are pretty slim tonight obviously, but we can get Brown and the Astros at +105. The other thing here is that Rangers relievers Luke Jackson and Chris Martin were both unavailable yesterday. Martin just had an MRI on a sore elbow and Jackson was hit in the hand by a comebacker and was still dealing with some swelling.

As a relief corps, Houston has a 2.69 ERA with a 2.95 FIP this season, which ranks second and first, respectively, in the league. Texas is 14th in ERA and sixth in FIP, so they’ve been good with their rebuilt bullpen. While Jackson has struggled and could be addition by subtraction, Martin has been their best reliever.

For today, I’ll put a half unit on Houston 1st 5 and a half unit on Houston full game. Both are +105, but I do prefer Brown to deGrom slightly. If deGrom beats Brown for the 1st 5, the Houston bullpen could be a safety net, especially with the Rangers’ best relief arm likely sidelined. So these are basically .5 to win .525 units bets, equaling 1 unit to win 1.05 units. As always, shop around for the best prices.

Picks: .5 Units on Houston 1st 5 (+105); .5 Units on Houston Full Game (+105)