MLB Best Bets Today August 4
An emotional day for many turns into a standard-issue Tuesday on the diamond with everybody in action and all night games. That doesn’t mean that the emotions have stopped, and it will be interesting to see how the traded players do with their new teams. The pitchers are always the most interesting ones to me because the new teams definitely have tweaks to implement or adjustments to make, plus those guys are throwing to new catchers in organizations that have different philosophies on pitch usage. It’s a lot to take in. As a result, I don’t know that new hurlers will have immediate success. Something to keep in mind as we look at today’s card and beyond.
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 4:
Blue Jays at Astros Prediction
Pick: Blue Jays +109
Yesterday was a tough day for the Blue Jays, as the reality set in that they were saying farewell to some friends, including Daulton Varsho, who simply traded clubhouses during this series in Houston. But, they say that “momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher” and Trey Yesavage is going to give his team a chance more often than not, regardless of what the lineup looks like.
The right-hander has a 3.73 ERA with a 3.34 xERA and a 4.07 FIP. His heightened BB% and lowered K% are hurting his FIP, but his 13.5% SwStr% and nearly 60% F-Strike% suggest to me that they should get better as the season rolls along. The simulation engines agree, with a BB% ranging from 9.9% to 10.9% the rest of the way, lower than his current 11.9% BB%. Most of them also suggest a modest K% increase.
Houston didn’t really find any upgrades to the lineup outside of Varsho, so they’re still running a very right-handed-heavy group out there. Yesavage has a 26.5% K% against RHB in his MLB work thus far with a lower BB% than he has against LHB.
On the other side, the Astros will send out Hayden Wesneski for his second MLB start of the season. He allowed three runs on seven hits to the Angels last time out with just four strikeouts out of 25 batters. He threw the ball pretty well in the minors while coming back from injury, posting a 2.25 ERA over 20 innings, but did allowed five runs on 13 hits in 13 innings at the Triple-A level, so he wasn’t exposed to too many polished hitters.
I think John Schneider is a really good manager and a good speaker, so he should be able to rally the troops a little bit now that the harsh reality of the team’s position has set in. The Jays shook it off last night to win 3-1 and I would expect them to do a good job with run prevention again tonight with Yesavage on the bump and what is still a solid bullpen.
Rays vs. Rockies Prediction
Pick: Under 11 (-108)
The Rays will deploy new right-hander Freddy Peralta and he’ll make his first start in Denver, so this should be an interesting one in a variety of ways. Peralta enters with a 4.99 ERA and a 3.83 xERA, so you can see why he was attractive to a metrics-savvy team like Tampa Bay. He’s also getting something of a defensive upgrade here. While the Rays are not a great team on the infield, they are a great team in the outfield, sitting second to the Cubs in Outs Above Average as an outfield unit at +20. The Mets are -4, so this is a pretty nice upgrade, especially heading into a start at Coors Field with the huge outfield there.
The Rays are a horrendous defensive team on the infield, so we’ll have to see how that whole thing plays out, though the Mets are -15 in OAA themselves. The Rays are the worst in baseball at -30, but maybe the better OF defense will help Peralta’s .313 BABIP against and 68.4% LOB%. Those have been the two major factors this season as to why his ERA is more than a run higher than his xERA.
I would also fully expect the Rays to better utilize Peralta’s changeup. That’s a pitch that the Rays focus on heavily as an organization and Peralta’s is -4.5 pitching runs this season. He’s had a pretty big arm angle drop on the pitch this season that hasn’t worked at all after being +8.6 pitching runs last season and +4.5 pitching runs the season prior with another org that knows how to leverage changeups really well. My guess is that the Rays focus on fixing that pitch and that they will. That will help neutralize Peralta’s ugly platoon splits, as lefties are slashing .269/.333/.478 off of him.
Gabriel Hughes has been a bright spot for the Rockies this season, as he sports a 3.33 ERA with a 2.34 xERA and a 2.36 FIP over his four starts and one relief effort covering 24.1 innings of work. He’s struck out 21 and walked seven with nine runs allowed on 22 hits. Ironically, he’s allowed three runs in each of his two road starts and three runs total over 13.1 innings at home so far this season.
The 6-foot-4 Hughes has 88th percentile Extension, so I’m not really surprised that he’s a guy finding early success, as he only throws around 93 mph, but he’s very close to the plate between his height and delivery, so he’s done a really good job of spotting his fastball and having it sneak up on hitters. To be a 58% four-seam guy and have success these days is pretty incredible.
Tanner Gordon took one for the team yesterday with 58 pitches in relief after Michael Lorenzen got blown up by the Rays offense, so the Rockies pen is very fresh. The Rays pen is also in excellent shape after yesterday, as the game landed 13-9, but none of the leverage guys were really called into action. Kevin Kelly threw one pitch. That should help the cause for the Under tonight.
