Welcome to the weekend in Major League Baseball. It’s a huge day with some excellent matchups ahead including the Braves and Rays, Cubs and Yankees and Mets and Padres. Let’s get into my MLB best bets for Saturday, and be sure to also visit our MLB predictions for all of today’s games.
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Boston Red Sox -1.5 (-118) over Oakland Athletics
Available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing
James Paxton will make his first start for the Red Sox since being named the Pitcher of the Month in June. The southpaw has been a pleasant surprise for Boston this season with a 2.70 ERA and a 3.28 xERA through 9 starts. In June, the Big Maple was 3-0 with a 1.74 ERA and a 0.77 WHIP in 5 starts. He gave up only 18 hits during the 31 innings in June, and he capped off an excellent month with 7.2-scoreless innings against the Blue Jays last week. That start against Toronto happened 8 days ago, so you may be wondering why the extended rest for the Canadian. Don’t worry, it was nothing bad — Paxton was on the paternity list. So that means his first start since having a kid will be on extra rest at home. That sounds like an opportunity for a lights-out start if you ask me.
The Athletics were able to stay decently competitive in Friday night’s series opener as they lost by only 4 runs. But that was against a Red Sox team throwing a bullpen game with Nick Pivetta doing the majority of the pitching. Let’s just say although Pivetta and Paxton are alike in the fact that both are Canadian, but that’s about all they have in common. Pivetta tends to get barreled and give up hard hits while Paxton has limited hitters to a .216 xBA and just a 38.8% hard-hit rate. But hold on, it gets worse for the A’s. In the last 30 days, Oakland has a 64 wRC+ against left-handed pitching. That mark ranks dead-last in the league, and they also rank 30th in batting average, on-base percentage and OPS along with the highest strikeout rate. I’m backing the reigning Pitcher of the Month in the American League and expecting another Red Sox win by a few runs.
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San Diego Padres F5 -0.5 (-130) over New York Mets
Available at DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publishing
Did it happen? Is the Padres’ offense finally… good? During their 6 games in July, the Padres are averaging 7.17 runs per game. Manny Machado is hitting .440, Jake Cronenworth is hitting .368, Fernando Tatis Jr. is hitting .407 and Juan Soto is… walking as usual, so everything seems to be working in San Diego. They even had a 3-game winning streak before the Mets broke it last night, but I think the Padres can get back on track tonight. They will be facing David Peterson of the Mets, who started in the rotation at the beginning of the season but slowly pitched his way out of a job. He landed in Triple-A for a while, and after a 4.86 ERA in 7 starts, he’s back in the Majors. The southpaw’s 2 starts back have actually been pretty good, but they were against the Brewers and Giants, offenses that I have very little faith in. Peterson should come back to reality tonight against a Padres lineup that has a 116 wRC+ against left-handers since June 1.
Blake Snell has been absolutely fabulous recently. Since May 25, he has allowed only 4 earned runs in 47 innings – that’s a 0.77 ERA in his last 8 starts. He’s coming off another shutout performance against the Angels as Snell threw 5 scoreless innings and surrendered 7 hits while striking out the same amount. Even though he didn’t let up a run, it wasn’t his best performance because he allowed 4 walks and had a lot of deep counts which skyrocketed his pitch count. Still, the Padres won the first 5 innings with him on the mound, which means San Diego has won the first half of the game in 7 of Snell’s last 8 starts. I’m backing the trend and taking Snell to shove against a weak Mets lineup.
You can also read today’s MLB mega parlay, YRFI/NRFI Best Bets and MLB player props
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