MLB Best Bets Today September 18
Friday Night Lights: MLB Edition! All 30 teams take the field and all of the games are at night, with the first first pitches of the evening at 6:40 p.m. ET in Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. Those tosses will be thrown by Paul Skenes and Chase Burns, so not a bad way to start a critical Friday night on the diamond. This is the penultimate Friday night of the regular season, as Sunday, September 27 is the last day of action before the playoffs begin on Tuesday.
I’ll be posting my daily best bets Monday-Saturday with a Sunday Night Baseball preview on Sunday, as all the day games make it tough to get something out with lead time out here in Las Vegas. All lines are from DraftKings and are current at the time of publish. Please take the initiative to SHOP AROUND for the best odds. It matters. A lot.
One new offering this baseball season is our Opta AI Player Prop Projections. They are for VSiN Pro Subscribers only, so you can check out our current offers here. Zachary Cohen will be using those projections and his own handicapping to write up MLB player props.
Greg Peterson will have his best bets posted the night before and you can also check out his daily lines to see what looks to be off-market.
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 MLB tools powered by Ballpark Pal: Strikeout Projections, Park Factors, and YRFI Report.
Here are the MLB best bets today for September 18:
Red Sox vs. Rays Prediction
Pick: Red Sox +113
A couple of southpaws match up here, as Ranger Suarez goes for Boston and Ian Seymour for Tampa Bay. The Red Sox have gotten a couple of looks at Seymour this season. The Rays have not had a Suarez start fall on their schedule, so that could provide a modest advantage for the first-year Boston player.
Over two September starts, Suarez has allowed one run on 10 hits over 14 innings with an 11/1 K/BB ratio. He had a rough outing in the Bronx on August 30 and gave up four runs to the Diamondbacks at home on August 18 in a game where the average exit velocity against him was just 80.6 mph, so there was some bad luck in that effort. On the whole, Suarez has been solid with a 3.33 ERA, 3.69 xERA, and a 3.08 FIP. He’s stingy with walks and is a little shy of a strikeout per inning, but his best attribute is easily his 6.9% HR/FB%.
The Rays, like many low-payroll teams, employ a lot of platoons. Suarez, because of the depth of his changeup and sharp horizontal bite to his cutter, has actually been better against right-handed batters, holding them to a .229/.290/.311 slash and a .271 wOBA. Lefties have a .267/.329/.420 slash. Suarez has also been better on the road, posting a 2.95 ERA with a .290 wOBA against. He’s only given up three homers in 76.1 innings away from Fenway Park. All of those things should be positives today against the Rays.
Seymour has a 4.27 ERA with a 3.50 xERA and a 4.02 FIP during what has been a stellar season. He’s struck out 150 batters against just 34 walks in 122.1 innings of work. I don’t think that the workload is becoming an issue, as he threw 145.1 innings in 2024 and 143 innings in 2025, as he’s thrown 122.1 innings at the MLB level this season. But, it could be a bit of a factor in his recent downturn. Over his last five starts plus a bulk relief effort, Seymour has a 4.78 ERA with a 4.78 FIP. He has a 44/4 K/BB ratio, but has allowed 10 home runs and 34 total hits in that span. He’s given up at least three runs in all but one of those outings.
So, I think that Boston is a perky pup tonight. Suarez could exit with the lead, leaving it in the hands of a pretty rested bullpen. It’s been quite the week for the Rays, who clinched a playoff spot while sweeping the lowly A’s. They’re facing a much better team here and a hungry team looking to move closer to a playoff spot of their own.
Braves vs. Astros Prediction
Pick: Astros +100
The Braves should come into this game refreshed following a rare off day, but the Astros may very well have the upper hand in the pitching matchup this evening. Tyler Mahle and Peter Lambert are the listed hurlers here and Mahle’s reverse platoon splits could be a pretty big factor. So far this season, righties are batting .300/.369/.448 against him with a .360 wOBA, while lefties are only slashing .212/.261/.365 with a .274 wOBA.
Mahle has a higher K% and lower BB% against lefties, so you can see why he’s had some success this season, because most lineups are going to stick to their guns and load up lefties against a right-handed pitcher. The Astros don’t really have the ability to do that with such a right-handed-heavy lineup and it may very well work to their advantage here.
Mahle only has six strikeouts out of 49 batters faced this season, but has only allowed 10 hits and one earned run. He’s running very well on the batted ball luck side of things and we’ll see if he’s able to continue that.
Lambert has been a huge find for the Astros as they needed to replace innings from Framber Valdez and also dealt with some injuries, namely Hunter Brown, this season. Lambert has a 3.71 ERA with a 3.68 xERA and a 3.81 FIP over 145.2 innings of work. Even though his ERA is higher at home than on the road, Lambert is actually better across the board from a slash line standpoint, holding the opposition to just a .217/.305/.326 slash with a .287 wOBA. Recently, he’s battled some control issues, but he hasn’t walked anybody in his last two starts covering 13 innings, so maybe the Astros corrected that mechanical issue.
Everybody should be available in the Houston pen, except for maybe Bryan King, who has worked back-to-back days. Otherwise, everybody is good. The Braves bullpen is extremely rested, so maybe a live Under is a good position to take if this game has some runs early.
