MLB Best Bets Today August 11
Everybody is back in action on Tuesday, as all 30 teams will take the field, so long as Mother Nature is willing to comply. It’s been a humid and wet weather pattern in a lot of places and that could have an impact on tonight’s slate of games. It seems as though some teams will be dodging raindrops. Keep that in mind. For example, the Guardians/White Sox game on Sunday started, played for an inning, and then had a long delay that knocked out both starters. Weather angles can be very good for pitcher player prop Unders.
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. Steve Makinen has also released his updated Bullpen Betting Systems and DraftKings Splits Systems, plus he’ll have a daily analytics report.
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 August 11:
Guardians vs. Tigers Prediction
Pick: Tigers -124
A massive series in the AL Central gets underway tonight, as the Guardians are falling backward in the standings and the Tigers have been surging for a while. Being the best offense in baseball against RHP in the second half has certainly been a huge help for Detroit, as they enter this one against RHP Tanner Bibee slashing .293/.362/.489 with a league-leading .368 wOBA.
Bibee has turned into a pitch-to-contact guy almost exclusively now. He did strike out 10 last time out against the Mets, but also allowed three home runs. He’s sporting a 3.85 ERA with a 4.41 xERA and a 4.58 FIP due to his lower K% and a fairly high home run rate. Cleveland is batting .251/.316/.390 against RHP in the second half, so the Tigers appear to have a pretty significant offensive advantage in this one.
It’ll be a Johnny Wholestaff approach today for Detroit, beginning with Asian import Drew Anderson. The 32-year-old righty spent the last two seasons in the KBO after spending the previous two seasons in Japan. He’s come back stateside and been a very effective swingman for the Tigers, posting a 4.01 ERA with a 3.38 xERA and a 3.80 FIP over 67.1 innings of work.
He’ll likely go a turn-plus through the lineup, as he went 3.1 innings last time out. With the importance of Game 1, I’m assuming that AJ Hinch will deploy Ty Madden in a piggyback role, as Madden threw 27 pitches on Saturday and hasn’t been used since. Madden has a 2.25 ERA with a 2.95 xERA and a 3.00 FIP over 32 innings of work.
Cleveland has had all sorts of bullpen problems lately, can’t hit, and looks to be at a starting pitcher disadvantage if you look at Bibee vs. Anderson/Madden, which is what I project for this one.
Cubs vs. Nationals Prediction
Pick: Cubs Run Line -1.5 (-103)
The Cubs and Nationals square off in D.C. tonight with a matchup between the surging Shota Imanaga and the working-his-way-back Jake Irvin. Imanaga has been outstanding after making some in-season adjustments and sports a 2.06 ERA over his last 10 starts. While I would not anticipate seeing his 96.5% LOB% in that span going much farther, he’s got a Hard Hit% of around 27% and has really cut down on the Barrels.
That’s huge because Imanaga had a major home run issue early in the season that he has mostly fixed now. In that 10-start span, he’s allowed just eight homers and three of them came in one game against the Mets. The Nationals do have some guys that make violent contact and they’ve hit lefties very well since the All-Star Break, ranking eighth in wOBA against LHP, but his Barrel% around 6% shows that he’s done a much better job on the command front.
Irvin has made two starts since coming back off the IL. He has allowed seven runs on six hits, including three home runs. He isn’t a guy with a whole lot of margin for error right now, as he has only struck out four of his last 40 batters. He looked great in the minors over three rehab starts with 12 strikeouts over 11.1 innings and just two hits allowed, but his command mistakes have been punished at the MLB level.
The Cubs lead the league in wOBA against LHP in the second half, but have also been really good against righties as well, slashing .260/.343/.409. Irvin isn’t a big free pass guy, but the Cubs have a 10.3% BB% in that span against RHP, so they’re not going to chase at the same rate that other teams might. That will force Irvin into the zone and he has a 13.2% HR/FB% against on the season with some pretty pedestrian stuff.
The other factor here – and one I always consider with run lines – is that the Nationals bullpen has gotten a lot of work in recently. They swept the Reds over the weekend and, while yesterday’s off day was definitely beneficial for them, there are a lot of guys working in high-leverage that typically don’t and the workload may be a bit for them.
I typically don’t like the “double negative” with the minus price on -1.5, but the Cubs are playing well right now and have a really big pitching advantage.
Red Sox vs. Blue Jays Prediction
Pick: Red Sox (+127)
We can all agree that Dylan Cease is a better pitcher than Patrick Sandoval, but some of the context we can apply to this game pushes me in Boston’s direction. Let’s start with the total of 7, which implies a tight, low-scoring game. If Sandoval can match, or even out-pitch, Cease, then I think we’re sitting in a pretty good spot here. There’s no guarantee that will happen, but there are a few red flags waving in a slight breeze for Cease.
He threw 120 pitches when he finished off his complete-game shutout against the Red Sox. His velo trailed off a little bit in that start, as you would expect with such a heavy workload. But, it hasn’t really bounced back the way you’d like to see. Look, he’s been extremely effective with 13 innings of one-run ball and just five hits allowed with 17 strikeouts. I’m not going to pretend like the velo drop has done anything too costly, but it is a consideration. Maybe it does catch up with him at some point. His last four starts are his only four starts of the season with an average fastball velo under 97 mph.
Then there’s the matter of the Toronto bullpen. Louie Varland has worked four of the last six days and has thrown 85 pitches, including 15 yesterday. Tyler Rogers has worked back-to-back days with 76 pitches in total over his last four appearances covering six days. Braydon Fisher and Brendon Little have both worked three of the last four days, so it would be a 4-in-6 for them as well. The Red Sox have nowhere near that workload.
Then there are the second half batting splits. Sandoval is left-handed and the Blue Jays are just 28th in wOBA against LHP since the All-Star Break with a .192/.266/.266 slash. That’s about as bad as it gets. Sandoval has been very good for Boston thus far as well, posting a 3.38 ERA with a 4.01 FIP, as four of his five starts have been extremely solid. He gave up five runs, four earned, to the Rays in his second start. Otherwise, he’s allowed a total of five earned runs in his other four efforts. He’s also done a really good job of limiting hard contact with a 35.6% Hard Hit% and just a 4.1% Barrel%.
The Red Sox are a top-five offense against RHP in the second half with a .272/.348/.459 slash. Even against a really tough customer like Cease, it isn’t hard to see how Boston could have more offensive success than Toronto. Add in the heavy bullpen usage for the Jays and Boston looks interesting. Also, Cease, who is among the Cy Young favorites and has been, is a relatively small favorite by ace standards here.
