MLB Best Bets Today October 5
It is hardly a day of rest for the four remaining NL teams, as a “day off” means a long flight, with the Brewers heading to San Diego and the Dodgers heading to Atlanta. Game 3 in those two series will be tomorrow, which will be a travel day for the four teams in the Junior Circuit, though Cleveland to Chicago and Tampa to New York are much shorter jaunts. With the day off yesterday on the AL side, all four teams should be rested and re-energized as we look ahead to today’s matchups.
Throughout the playoffs, I’ll look at every game on the schedule, even if I don’t have any bets. I’ll typically do this on the morning of the games, trying to achieve as much lead time as possible. Bullpen usage is critically important in the postseason, so I’d be doing a major disservice to do anything before the games are finished and that usually means writing up my thoughts in the morning.
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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, the 1st 5 Innings Analyzer, and Umpire Stats.
Here are the MLB best bets today for October 5:
White Sox vs. Guardians (-157, 6.5)
5 p.m. ET
A lake breeze will be blowing in on a cooler day in The Land, which is probably part of the reason why this total sits at 6.5. Of course, we also saw a 3-0 decision in favor of the White Sox in Game 1, so that’s certainly playing a role as well. Cleveland had chances and left the bases loaded twice, while the White Sox got a Munetaka Murakami blast and one of the weirdest RBI doubles you will ever see.
Anthony Kay gets the start here today for Chicago, as he’ll open for Sean Burke. Kay threw 22 pitches and got four outs in Saturday’s series opener. He didn’t register any swings and misses in his outing, so maybe Cleveland will be able to get to him and do a little bit of damage, but they didn’t for the most part over the course of the regular season. Kay allowed just three earned runs over 20 innings against the Guardians with a 17/7 K/BB ratio and just 12 hits allowed.
What this does is mess with Cleveland’s desire to deploy platoons and it limits their ability to pinch hit later in games. Will Venable was masterful in Game 1 and it seems like he’s got a pretty good plan here heading into Game 2. Righties hit .293/.382/.489 off of Kay and lefties slashed just .183/.247/.257, so the Guardians will have a litany of right-handed bats in the lineup at the outset, but then have to deal with the right-handed Burke and won’t be able to match up as well late in the game with lefties like Sean Newcomb, Bryan Hudson, and maybe even Hagen Smith.
Burke gave up three solo homers to the Astros in his Wild Card start, but also struck out eight of the 16 batters that he faced with no walks allowed. He had over a strike out per inning during the regular season with 185 in 172.1 innings of work. Overall, Burke had a 3.34 ERA with a 3.78 xERA and a 3.62 FIP during what was a breakout season for him. Righties only batted .218/.301/.345 against him, so Guardians manager Stephen Vogt will have to get those guys out in favor of lefties, who hit .230/.302/.405 against Burke. But, like I said, that limits Cleveland’s ability to match in high-leverage plate appearances down the line.
Gavin Williams gets the ball for Cleveland today in a much more traditional pitching setup. Williams posted a 3.76 ERA with a 3.82 xERA and a 3.47 FIP over 184.1 innings in the regular season, striking out 248 batters against 61 walks. Williams bumped his K% from 24.6% to 33.2% year over year and cut his walk rate down from 11.1% to 8.2%. Those are the good things.
The bad is that he allowed 28 home runs and had a 17% HR/FB%. That said, while lefties and righties each hit 14 home runs, lefties only batted .197/.268/.353 against Williams during the regular season and he was far better at home, limiting the opposition to a .269 wOBA with a 2.84 ERA compared to a .327 wOBA and a 5.05 ERA on the road. With a pretty stiff breeze blowing in off the lake to hopefully knock down any fly balls from the White Sox, Vogt and the Guards will hope that Williams can avoid the long ball.
I still think there’s value on Chicago at this number. I was surprised to see Daniel Espino as the first arm out of the Cleveland pen and he got an inning-ending double play, but then the first two batters of the next inning reached. Erik Sabrowski gave up a run. Tim Herrin and Cade Smith threw scoreless innings, but Herrin is not somebody that I trust. The White Sox mixed and matched perfectly and recorded 12 strikeouts from a contact-oriented lineup.
Admittedly, maybe it’s a bit of an emotional hedge, too, but I do think Chicago is the better team and worthy of the investment here.
Pick: White Sox +130
Yankees (-131, 6.5) vs. Rays
8 p.m. ET
Cam Schlitter was magnificent in his Wild Card start against the Red Sox and he’ll be looking to do his part to even up this series against the Rays. It will be Trade Deadline acquisition Freddy Peralta for Tampa as they look to take a 2-0 advantage north to the Bronx.
Let’s start with Peralta because Schlittler is elite and probably pretty projectable. He joined the Rays roster and his first start was in Colorado, so it’s probably fair to draw a line through that one, as it was a bad venue to pitch in and the Rays were working on some changes. Still, he allowed 17 runs over his first four starts with Tampa. But, things started to change after that. In his final six starts of the regular season from August 26 on, he allowed just three runs and only one home run.
Peralta only had 27 K in 34 innings in that span, but held opponents to a .187 BABIP, resulting from a 30.4% Hard Hit% and a 3.3 Barrel%. Staying off the barrel is how you neutralize the Yankees because this is a lineup built on power production. The other thing that happened in that span for Peralta is that he started getting lefties out at a higher rate. For the season, lefties slashed .254/.318/.439. Over those final six starts, lefties slashed just .164/.253/.224. That’s the key to today’s game for Peralta.
Aaron Boone was willing to push Schlittler against Boston because he knew he had some extra time to recover if the Yankees were able to advance to the ALDS. Schlittler went 6.1 innings and struck out 10 with just one walk and two hits allowed in that 117-pitch effort. How’s this for absurd? Schlittler had a 1.16 ERA over 109 innings on the road, holding opponents to a .153/.206/.250 slash and a .206 wOBA. When he should have been tiring, Schlitter had a 1.20 ERA in September with a season-best .174 wOBA against.
So, today’s game is all about how well Peralta can hang in there and neutralize the Yankees’ left-handed bats. This total of 6.5 is low with limited margin for error, but Schlittler will probably be dominant and Peralta will bob and weave his way through a lot of weak contact and these are two pretty solid bullpens.
Pick: Under 6.5 (-107)
