MLB Best Bets Today September 1
The final month of the MLB regular season is here, as the stretch run for the playoffs is officially on. The teams have separated themselves a bit in each league in some cases, but the Wild Card spots and some AL divisions are still up for grabs, so it should be a fun four-week sprint to the finish line. Most games will have some kind of meaning on a daily basis, but not all of them, so you’ll want to consider that in your handicapping the rest of the way.
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 1:
Padres vs. Reds Prediction
Pick: Padres 1st 5 Team Total Over 2.5 Runs (-110)
A pretty simple handicap here, as Nick Lodolo still just doesn’t seem right and it’s going to be a hot, humid day in Cincinnati with first-pitch temps in the low 90s, so the ball should be exploding off the bat at Great American “Small” Park.
Lodolo has made four starts since coming off the IL and he’s got a 7.71 ERA with an 8.29 xERA and a 7.62 FIP, as he’s given up 14 runs on 20 hits in 16.1 innings of work and that includes five shutout innings against the Marlins at home on August 16. He’s struck out 14 and walked six, but his under-the-hood numbers look pretty worrisome to me. His fastball spin rate has decreased with each successive start and his fastball and sinker velocity readings were both down last time out against the Giants.
Lodolo has allowed nine Barrels for a 15.5% Barrel% in this data set with a 43.1% Hard Hit%. After racking up a big 17.1% SwStr% against the White Sox, who are a pretty left-handed-heavy lineup, his SwStr% by start have been 8.2%, 8.8%, and 8.4%. Maybe he settles in at home and dances around the hard contact like he did against the Fish, but I’ll take my chances here with the Padres. It’s also an alternate way to support them while avoiding Randy Vasquez and all of his regression signs.
Blue Jays vs. Guardians Prediction
Pick: Blue Jays +163; Over 8 (-104)
Gavin Williams or not, the Guardians shouldn’t be priced like this against a team playing pretty good ball. Cleveland’s run against the Rockies and Angels seemed to fool some people into thinking that this is a team on the upswing. They just took advantage of a soft part of the schedule. Keep in mind, they still lost two of three to the last-place Royals when they got back home.
For all the ace-like tendencies Williams has shown, he still has a 3.98 ERA with a 4.01 xERA because he’s allowed 27 HR in 156 innings. He has a 4.43 ERA post All-Star Break because he’s allowed 10 homers in just 42.2 innings of work. While he’s missed a ton of bats this season, the Blue Jays are a lineup that doesn’t swing and miss a lot and Williams has been punished when he’s left mistakes out there. In eight second-half starts, he’s given up five runs in three of them. He’s also allowed 11 Barrels and a 44.4% Hard Hit%.
Toronto had just an 18.8% K% against RHP in the month of August. One of the teams with a lower K% was Cleveland, as the Guardians had a 17.8% K% in that split. Spencer Arrighetti has a 4.81 ERA with a 5.14 xERA and a 5.14 FIP over his 95.1 innings of work. In two starts with the Blue Jays, he hasn’t found much success with seven runs allowed on eight hits in just 7.1 innings of work. He’s struck out eight and walked four.
Lefties have done quite well against Arrighetti this season with a .391 OBP, as he’s got a 55/42 K/BB ratio in that split. The Guardians are going to throw a ton of lefties at him tonight, so that should help their offensive profile. Like the game in Cincinnati, it’s going to start out pretty warm in Cleveland tonight and the breeze is not blowing in off the lake to knock anything down.
But, it was announced this morning that Spencer Miles will open for Toronto and that Arrighetti will “likely” follow for bulk relief. I left in all the Arrighetti stuff just in case, but Miles is a big upgrade and the line didn’t really move much. Miles has a 2.92 ERA with a 2.98 xERA and a 2.81 FIP over 83.1 innings. He’s had a couple of bad outings as a starter, giving up six runs to Baltimore and six runs to Chicago, but he went two shutout against the Royals on August 26 in his last start and I expect him to only throw an inning or two here.
Along with simply not believing in Cleveland at a price like this in pretty much any game, the Blue Jays were ninth in ERA at 3.56 as a bullpen in August, while the Guardians were 18th at 4.03. The Jays’ high-leverage arms were all outstanding. I can’t say the same for Cleveland, as Colin Holderman has worked himself out of that role and others not named Cade Smith have had their issues as well. I just can’t pass on a team playing pretty well at this price against Cleveland.
Orioles vs. Rockies Prediction
Pick: Kyle Bradish (BAL) Over 16.5 Outs Recorded (-114)
Baltimore paid Bradish like a front-of-the-rotation arm earlier this season, signing him to a five-year, $90 million extension. Today’s the kind of day where he needs to show it and I think Craig Albernaz is going to ask a lot of the 29-year-old.
Baltimore has been on a real heater, but they’ve also been winning a lot of close games. Andrew Kittredge, Rico Garcia, and Alex Hoppe have all worked three of the last four days. Yennier Cano pitched all three games over the weekend. Right now, unlike most teams, the O’s are running a seven-man relief corps, though they do have Cade Povich up as some long relief support.
While the pitch counts haven’t been all that high, and that is a determining factor for Albernaz, something he picked up under Stephen Vogt in Cleveland, I feel like he’s going to ask Bradish for length, even if he’s struggling a little bit. Bradish has gone Over this number in eight of his last 12 starts and this is the type of spot where his team and his skipper need him to be pushed.
I do lean pretty hard to Orioles -140 here as well, but that bullpen usage gave me enough pause to hold off. If the price comes down, I’ll revisit.
Phillies vs. Diamondbacks Prediction
Pick: Phillies -129
Southpaws come together here as Jesus Luzardo and Eduardo Rodriguez toe the rubber for their respective teams. Yesterday was a weird day for the D-Backs with the return of Ketel Marte and the fans did not seem to appreciate his return with a chorus of boo birds. The Phillies won 2-1 in the series lid lifter, as Marte went 1-for-3.
Had Luzardo not had a few blow-ups early in the season, he’d be listed on the Cy Young odds board and might be closer to Jacob Misiorowski than anybody else. Luzardo allowed 20 earned runs over his first three starts, somehow only allowing one run at Coors Field with 11 strikeouts while giving up 6, 5, and 8 in his other three efforts. Since then, so starting April 21, he has a 2.31 ERA with a 2.72 xERA and a 2.79 FIP over 140.1 innings of work. He’s struck out 173 and walked just 45 with only 11 HR allowed and just a 9.1% HR/FB%. He’s been outstanding.
Rodriguez has fired back-to-back scoreless outings, including a gem against the Cubs, who have decimated left-handed pitching in the second half and just rocked Kyle Harrison last night. But, I’m still skeptical about E-Rod. He has a 2.50 ERA with a 4.43 xERA and a 3.70 FIP on the season. He has an 18% K% and has been living off of a .265 BABIP and an 82.9% LOB%.
With runners in scoring position, Rodriguez has allowed just a .150/.237/.193 slash with a .206 wOBA and a .202 BABIP. At this point, there’s probably more staying power to it than there would be at another time since he’s done it all season long, but the Phillies were a top-five offense against LHP in August and that’s good enough for me to take a shot.
The Phillies also had a top-five bullpen ERA in August, while the Diamondbacks were 19th in ERA, 29th in xERA, and 24th in FIP. Even if Rodriguez continues his magic run, he may get let down by the guys after him.
