MLB Best Bets Today May 1
Baseball early, baseball in the middle, and baseball late. That’s what we’ve got on Wednesday, as games start at 1:10 p.m. ET and the final first pitch will be thrown at 9:40 p.m. ET. It is a very busy Wednesday with plenty of distractions from the work day and plenty of games to enjoy with a cold one on the couch later.
Enjoy it because we only have six games tomorrow.
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Here are the MLB best bets today for May 1:
Colorado Rockies at Miami Marlins (-148, 9)
6:40 p.m. ET
Between the day games and a bit of a late start to focusing on the article because of some personal matters, I found it really hard to find a lot to like today. It took a lot of digging before I could even come up with a player prop, but I found one in this Rockies vs. Marlins game.
Roddery Munoz will make his second career MLB start. He was solid in his first effort with five innings and two runs allowed against the Cubs. Both runs were solo homers and he struck out seven and walked one. However, if you look at the minor league track record for Munoz, one walk is a pretty incredible, hard-to-replicate feat.
The 24-year-old pitched 302.2 innings in the minor leagues and had 326 strikeouts, but he also had 163 walks out of 1,350 batters faced. That is a 12.1% BB% and now he’s facing Major League hitters. He actually had a 77/60 K/BB ratio in Triple-A over 81.2 innings and 381 batters faced, so that’s a 15.7% BB%.
Munoz only threw 50% first-pitch strikes in his first start. He had a 37.6% Ball%, which isn’t awful, but it is definitely something that I would expect to see more than one walk from. He worked 15.2 innings at Triple-A to start the season and had 14 walks in 77 batters faced and had just nine strikeouts. He’s really not the control guy that he showed in his MLB debut and I’d like to think the Rockies are better than a 50/50 shot to draw at least two walks tonight.
This is under the ‘Pitcher Props’ section at DK or any other legal book that you might use.
Pick: Roddery Munoz Over 1.5 Walks (+100)
Washington Nationals at Texas Rangers (-185, 9)
8:05 p.m. ET
This is another one that I looked at for a while and sat on the fence with before ultimately jumping down on the other side. It will be Trevor Williams for the Nationals and Andrew Heaney for the Rangers. We’ve seen ample line movement towards the Texas side here, as a lot of bettors are looking to go against Williams.
Williams is throwing a sweeper a lot more this season and has been leveraging his changeup more effectively. I think there is some degree of staying power here in that his arsenal looks a lot different and he’s been much more effective as a result. However, I do think this is a much tougher matchup for him because of Texas’s lineup composition.
Righties have been held to a .146/.208/.146 slash with a .171 wOBA against Williams. Lefties have a .295/.354/.409 slash with a .341 wOBA. The sample sizes are small, but this follows a career-long pattern for Williams, who has been worse against lefties and his 2022 splits were very stark. He was just bad against everybody in 2023.
This season, lefties own a .444 BA and a .611 SLG on the 16 four-seam fastballs that they’ve put in play. He’s had positive results with the changeup, but his xBA is nearly 90 points higher than his actual BA and his xSLG is 137 points higher than his SLG in the split against lefties. As a result, I think he could struggle here when I anticipate that he’ll face at least six lefties and possibly a seventh depending on how Bruce Bochy decides to handle it.
Heaney has struggled with a 6.26 ERA and a 5.64 FIP over 23 innings. There is some pressure to bring Jack Leiter back up in place of Heaney, who has not fared well in the contact management metrics this season and is actually getting worse. Heaney has allowed seven barrels in his last two starts (Mariners, Braves), and his Hard Hit% and average exit velocity have increased with each passing start.
By start, his HH% is 25, 38.5, 42.9, 53.8, and 62.5 and his average exit velo is 86.3, 90.4, 92.6, 93.3, and 96.1. He’s trending in the wrong direction from a command standpoint. The Nationals finally have Joey Gallo out of the lineup, removing a bad bat from the order and a left-handed one at that, which should make a difference to some degree against Heaney.
He was actually a reverse platoon guy last season, as lefties posted a .362 wOBA, but he has a major home run issue with righties. I think it’s a good balance for the Nationals offense, which puts a ton of balls in play and steals a lot of bases. Heaney has seen 34-of-43 base stealers find success against him in his career.
The juice is a little heavy on the 1st 5 Over 4.5, so I’ll go with the full game here, assuming some trouble in the middle innings for both guys. These are also two unremarkable bullpens.
Pick: Nationals/Rangers Over 9 (-102)
