MLB Best Bets Today August 6

Plenty of getaway day game action is on the Wednesday slate. Six games start at 2:35 p.m. ET or earlier and we have several more that get going in the 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. hours, so this is a limited nighttime slate for those who want to finish up the work day before getting on the baseball train.

We only have four games on Thursday, so a lot of teams could be looking ahead to a day off, whether that’s at home or in the next town. That can make the handicap a little bit trickier since you also have to try and do some amateur psychology along with digging into the numbers and matchups.

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. Check out our new MLB tools powered by Ballpark Pal: Strikeout Projections, Park Factors, and YRFI Report.

Here are the MLB best bets today for August 6:

St. Louis Cardinals at Los Angeles Dodgers (-209, 9.5)

4:10 p.m. ET

The Cardinals and Dodgers play a matinee in Chavez Ravine today, as we’ll get Matthew Liberatore and Shohei Ohtani, at least for a little while. Ohtani left his last start due to cramps after facing a season-high 16 batters. He hasn’t recorded more than nine outs in a start thus far, as the Dodgers are bringing him back slowly, but surely. This will be his eighth start.

But my focus is on the Dodgers and their matchup against Liberatore. The Cardinals are actively looking to limit Liberatore’s innings, as the 25-year-old southpaw has made 20 starts over 109 innings this season. He pitched 86 innings, primarily in relief, last season. He did throw 126.1 innings in 2023 with about a 50/50 split between MLB and Triple-A, but the Cardinals want to protect him as much as possible as he’s one of their only starting rotation building blocks with MLB experience.

Liberatore has worked 4.1 innings in each of his last two starts after being down for about 15 days. He’s given up six runs on 10 hits with four strikeouts and four walks out of 42 batters faced, with both starts coming against the Padres. San Diego is a low-strikeout team, but Liberatore has had a single-digit SwStr% in eight of his last nine starts. His last six starts have all had Chase Rates below his season average. The quality of the stuff seems to have dropped off.

The Dodgers have had their problems with lefties, but they did add a low-strikeout bat in Alex Call at the Trade Deadline. Liberatore’s K% by month has been 23.1%, 20.1%, 16.5%, 11.1% and 5.0% in his lone August start. He’s progressively been missing fewer bats and with a day game at Dodger Stadium, I think this could be another short outing without a lot of whiffs.

Pick: Matthew Liberatore (STL) Under 3.5 Strikeouts (+105)

Milwaukee Brewers at Atlanta Braves (-133, 8)

7:15 p.m. ET

The Brewers and Braves meet again, as Milwaukee looks to polish off a sweep of Atlanta before heading home to face the Mets. It will be Jose Quintana and Spencer Strider in this one, as Strider has mostly regained his ace-like form and Quintana sits on a bubble of regression. I guess that’s a spoiler alert.

Quintana enters this start with a 3.50 ERA, but a 4.84 xERA and a 4.85 FIP over his 87.1 innings of work. As I talked about when taking Quintana and the Brewers on the run line in his last outing, the Brewers are really good at getting pitchers to outperform their advanced metrics. They almost always have a good defensive team and find ways to get outs without relying on punchouts.

But, still. Quintana has a 76.8% LOB% with a very poor 15.9% K%. He has a 6.5% K%-BB%, which is awful. The Braves are second in wOBA against LHP over the last 30 days at .356 with a 129 wRC+. They’ve batted .260/.350/.469, including a 12.1% BB%. Along with the poor K%, Quintana has issued too many walks for a pitcher with his skill set.

I did dig a little deeper into Strider and there are a few BB concerns and he also only had three strikeouts last time out against the Royals, though they had a lot of weak contact and early-count swings. So, I’ll stay away from the 1st 5 run line on Atlanta, but I do think they score here against Quintana.

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

San Diego Padres (-139, 9.5) at Arizona Diamondbacks

9:40 p.m. ET

Nestor Cortes makes his Padres debut in this one against Anthony DeSclafani and the Diamondbacks. The Snakes are obviously dealing with their Trade Deadline sell-off, which has pushed Tony Disco into the rotation. The Padres picked up Cortes from the Brewers, who traded from a position of strength. This will be Cortes’ first MLB start since April.

Nasty Nestor allowed three runs on 10 hits in 18 minor league innings with an 18/3 K/BB ratio to work his way back to the big leagues. He got stretched out a bit to 5.1 and 5.2 innings, respectively, in his last two starts, so he should be good to go here, even though he hasn’t pitched since July 24 with the trade and everything associated with it.

The Diamondbacks are just 19th in wOBA against LHP at .303 with a 92 wRC+ over the last 30 days. They haven’t drawn a lot of walks and haven’t had a whole lot of contact authority. Those numbers are actually down a bit from their full-season numbers, so perhaps a byproduct of some of the trades.

Over the last 14 days, the Padres are a top-10 offense against RHP with a .353 wOBA and rank sixth in wRC+ at 131. They obviously made a ton of additions at the Trade Deadline, including some additions to the bullpen. I like San Diego in this matchup quite a bit, as Cortes joins a pitching-savvy team with a top-tier pitching coach in Ruben Niebla and should get offensive support.

DeSclafani has made two starts and has thrown 50 and 59 pitches while recording 19 combined outs. I think his Outs Recorded prop at 14.5 is too high, especially to be at plus money on the Under. Also, Over 2.5 Earned Runs at +100 looks like a good bet when you consider that the Padres 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 is -115.

Pick: Padres -1.5 Run Line (+112); Anthony DeSclafani (ARI) Under 14.5 Outs Recorded (+115), DeSclafani Over 2.5 Earned Runs Allowed (+100)