MLB Best Bets Today July 9

A full afternoon and evening of baseball starts at 2:10 p.m. ET and runs right on through the final out of some late games on the West Coast. All 30 teams take the field and we’ll have 10 games on Thursday with the All-Star Break looming, so there are a lot of teams wrapping up some pretty grueling schedules.

We may be able to take advantage of some of those teams over the next few days. It is a little bit of a guessing game as to who is still engaged and excited to go to the ballpark and who isn’t, but it may be the tipping point for locking in a bet on a side or total you were thinking about anyway.

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 July 9:

Colorado Rockies at Boston Red Sox (-328, 9)

7:10 p.m. ET

The Rockies and Red Sox play today, as Boston has won seven of their last eight and really seems to be clicking offensively. The Red Sox have scored at least six runs in each of their last five games and have had outputs of 15, 13, 11, 10, 9, and 10 dating back to June 28. They have the opportunity to put a beating on Antonio Senzatela today before a huge four-game series with the Rays gets going this weekend.

Senzatela has a 6.57 ERA with a 6.60 xERA and a 5.34 FIP in his 86.1 innings of work. He has a pathetic 11% BB% and has a .346 BA against. He’s allowed a 45.2% Hard Hit% on the season and now makes a start at what basically amounts to Coors Field East. He’s actually been worse on the road than at home. His home ERA is higher, but he’s allowed a .380/.440/.589 slash on the road and a .441 wOBA. He’s given up seven homers in 37 innings, the same number he’s given up in 12.1 more home innings.

Meanwhile, the Red Sox are getting some strong work from Lucas Giolito. He’s gone at least six innings in each of his last five starts and has only allowed three earned runs and just seven runs total. He’s struck out 31 and walked 10 over those 32.2 innings of work. The Rockies are rather bad on offense, so this should be a good spot for Giolito to continue his fine work. He’s even done an excellent job of limiting hard contact in his last two starts with HH% marks of 26.1% and 31.6%.

Giolito To Record A Win is -130. It’s a good, alternate way of betting on the Red Sox for both the 1st 5 and the full game. Red Sox -1.5 for the 1st 5 is also -110, so that’s not a bad option if you don’t have the win prop. Because not everybody has access to the Win prop, I’ll do the 1st 5 alt run line at -1.5 because that’s widely available. I prefer the Giolito -130 prop if you have DraftKings, but I realize not everybody has that.

Pick: Red Sox 1st 5 Alt Run Line -1.5 (-110)

Chicago Cubs at Minnesota Twins (-114, 9)

7:40 p.m. ET

Youngsters Cade Horton and David Festa are the listed starters here for this interleague matchup featuring Central Division teams. Horton enters with a 4.15 ERA, 4.48 xERA, and a 4.28 FIP in his 52 innings of work. He had great K% numbers in the minors that haven’t translated to the MLB level yet, but he is coming off of a great bounce back start against the Guardians last time out.

Horton had allowed 13 runs (10 earned) over starts against the Mariners and Astros before throwing seven shutout frames against Cleveland. The Guardians offense is terrible, so it may not be the best data point, but the Twins are an average offense. They rank 18th in wOBA for the season with a 97 wRC+, so about 3% below league average. They are 23rd in wOBA over the last two weeks.

Meanwhile, the Cubs are still hitting, as they own a .359 wOBA and a 133 wRC+ over the last two weeks. The North Siders rank third in wOBA for the season at .337. They’ve hit pretty much all season long without fail. Festa has a 5.48 ERA with a 4.66 xERA and a 4.51 FIP in his 42.2 innings. So, both Festa and Horton have below average numbers, but one offense is decidedly better than the other.

Festa also has more of a home run issue than Horton, which could end up being a factor. Also, Jhoan Duran was unavailable yesterday due to an illness and the Twins needed five relievers to get through the day, including the third appearance in four days for Griffin Jax. The Cubs bullpen is in much better shape.

Pick: Cubs -107

Atlanta Braves (-111, 10.5) at Sacramento Athletics

10:05 p.m. ET

The Braves seem like they’d rather be anywhere else than the ballpark these days. Barring a miracle, Atlanta’s run of consecutive playoff appearances will stop at seven and they’re going to finish below second in the division for the first time since 2017. This just isn’t a very good baseball team for a variety of reasons and they have played like it lately.

Atlanta has lost 10 of their last 12 and seemed completely disengaged in last night’s 10-1 loss. During that 12-game stretch, the Braves have scored more than three runs just three times. They’ve scored two runs in their last two games and have a bad starter on the mound tonight in Bryce Elder.

Elder is not a MLB-caliber pitcher. He has a 5.92 ERA with a 6.00 xERA and a 5.51 FIP in 73 innings of work. He’s given up 16 homers in just 73 innings of work and has allowed a 47.4% Hard Hit% with a 10.7% Barrel%. Pitching out in Sacramento probably won’t help those numbers much, especially with first-pitch temps in the low 90s.

I’m not a huge Mitch Spence fan, as he has a 4.06 ERA with a 5.01 xERA and a 4.32 FIP, but Spence at least has better K% and BB% numbers than Elder and also has the benefit of facing a team that seemingly isn’t all that interested in playing baseball these days. I have to take a shot at the A’s today, as they’re at least still playing hard with young guys fighting for reps and jobs.

Pick: Athletics -110