MLB Best Bets Today May 7
The Major League Baseball season rolls along with all 30 teams back in action on Tuesday. We do have a day game in Oakland, so that handicap will be hurried a tad, but the rest of the games take place at 6:10 p.m. ET or later. We once again have five games in each league and five interleague matchups. Remember, all 30 teams will play each other at some point, a change made going into the 2022 season.
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Here are the MLB best bets today for May 7:
Toronto Blue Jays at Philadelphia Phillies (-122, 8)
6:40 p.m. ET
American League Pitcher of the Month Jose Berrios draws a tough assignment today against the Philadelphia Phillies. The home team will counter with southpaw Cristopher Sanchez in hopes of improving upon the best record in baseball in Game 1 against the Blue Jays.
Toronto has gotten a nice start from Berrios, but the underlying metrics are very, very concerning. Berrios has a 1.44 ERA with a 4.87 xERA, 4.01 FIP, and a 4.22 xFIP. He’s running a .229 BABIP and a 96.6% LOB%, which is obscenely low and completely unsustainable for a guy with an 18.3% K%. The .229 BABIP is also not sustainable for a guy with a 49.2% Hard Hit%, which is more than 10% above the league average.
Berrios just made back-to-back starts against the Royals and allowed 20 hard-hit balls out of 36 batted ball events. He’s allowed six of his 10 Barrels over his last two starts. He has a .272 wOBA against and a .348 xwOBA per Statcast. Based on contact quality, batted ball type and direction, and other factors, Berrios is overachieving on every single one of his pitches in terms of BA-xBA and SLG-xSLG.
The Phillies are a top-five offense against righties this season with a 113 wRC+. Only the Dodgers, Angels, and Yankees have hit more home runs. With so many negative regression signs in the profile for Berrios, I’ll put my trust in the Phillies here.
As far as Sanchez goes, he has a 3.68 ERA with a 3.66 xERA and a 2.94 FIP. The southpaw has had a mild walk rate issue, but he’s been on the wrong side of luck to a degree with a .348 BABIP and a 64.2% LOB%. He’s got a 62.2% GB%, so he’s done an excellent job of keeping the ball on the ground. BABIPs usually run higher with ground ball guys, especially in a post-shift world, but his 37.8% Hard Hit% would support a lower BABIP for sure.
Unlike Berrios, who has big regression signs in the expected stats, Sanchez has a .312 wOBA with a .306 xwOBA and he has a .260 xBA compared to a .269 BA. So, the positive regression signs are minor, but are definitely more favorable than what we see from Berrios, who has gotten extremely lucky this season.
The Toronto pen is a lot more rested, but the Phillies pen isn’t in bad shape. Also, Phillies 1st 5 lines are going to be really inflated right now because they’re cashing so many of them. They’re 18-1 in the last 19 games for F5 records. That’s one of the many reasons why the 1st 5 is -140 at DK while the full game is -125. I think they win both, but I’ll trade the 15 cents and take the full game. The 1st 5 Run Line at -0.5 and +100 might not be a bad look either.
Pick: Phillies -122
New York Mets at St. Louis Cardinals (-125, 8.5)
7:45 p.m. ET
Jose Butto and Miles Mikolas are the listed starters here, as the Mets and Cardinals continue their weekday series. The Mets just missed the card for me yesterday and came away with a 4-3 win over the struggling Cardinals, who have a whole lot of problems and no end in sight for them. Well, they could decide to fire Oliver Marmol and get rid of one of them, but who knows when that will happen.
In any event, Butto comes in with a 2.57 ERA and a 3.68 FIP. There are some regression signs in the profile, including an 82.8% LOB% and that ERA/FIP discrepancy, but his heightened walk rate has a lot to do with that. Otherwise, he’s done a good job generating swings and misses and inducing chases outside the zone.
The Cardinals rank 26th in Hard Hit% and 23rd in Barrel% over the last 14 days and rank 26th in wRC+ in that span. They’re 26th in wRC+ for the full season as well, so things are not getting better with this offense. I recently saw some splits regarding their performance with former hitting coach Jeff Albert and without and they were stark. That is another symptom of the sickness plaguing the Cardinals these days.
I wouldn’t say that the Mets are setting the world on fire offensively right now either, but Mikolas has been objectively bad this season. He has a 5.68 ERA with a 5.31 xERA and a 4.72 FIP. He’s building upon last year’s rough season and his lack of swing and miss is really catching up with him. The biggest difference this season is that his Hard Hit% is up to 45.2% with 11 Barrels, including eight in his last three starts.
He’s in his mid-30s now and it appears he’s in the throes of the aging curve, as he had a career-high 42.8% Hard Hit% last season with a 9.8% Barrel% and he seems hellbent on continuing that type of contact management performance. His SwStr% is about half of Butto’s at 6.3%, so I expect that the Mets make more contact and more authoritative contact in this one.
The Mets have one of the top bullpens in baseball, as they rank second in fWAR, fourth in ERA, and second in FIP. The Cardinals are top 10 in FIP and fWAR, but 14th in ERA. I’m okay with laying the full-game price here, especially for those that can shop around. All odds are from DraftKings for the purposes of this article, but other shops have a better full-game moneyline price.
Pick: Mets +105
