MLB Best Bets Today May 22

A full slate of American League action highlights the nine-game card for Thursday across Major League Baseball. We have some getaway day games and the start of some new series to think about.

As usual, in the interest of lead time, I skipped over the early games in my handicapping for the article to focus on the ones that start later in the day, with one bet that made the cut.

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 22:

Milwaukee Brewers (-115, 9) at Pittsburgh Pirates

6:40 p.m. ET

This is a one-sided handicap for me, as I’m looking to back the Milwaukee offense against Mike Burrows, who is making his first MLB start and second MLB appearance. Burrows was throwing the ball well in Triple-A, as he posted a 2.51 ERA over 32.1 innings of work. But, let’s look a bit deeper because there are a lot of underlying metrics that have hidden the true level of his pitching.

Burrows had a .236 BABIP against and a 93.8% LOB% over his six starts and one relief outing. He allowed six home runs out of his 23 hits and homers don’t count towards BABIP, so that’s why he was so low at .236, but I would not expect even that to continue at the MLB level. I do think the homers could very well continue.

Last season, Burrows allowed a ton of loud contact on fastballs, as opposing batters had a xwOBA over .400 on the pitch. This season, he’s been missing bats and mixing his pitches a bit more, but still allowed a 50% Hard Hit% prior to his call-up. This is a guy that allowed nearly a 51% Pull% last season and is around 47% this season. Hard contact to the pull side is extremely problematic and I expect the Brewers to take full advantage in this one.

Pick: Brewers 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 (+114)