MLB Best Bets for Wednesday (4/21)

Wednesday’s gift to us is yet another fully loaded slate of MLB games. A couple of afternoon matchups (San Francisco/Philadelphia, Baltimore/Miami) to fill the mid-day lull will kick off the day. We’ll dive into the matchups and stats below to see where the value is hidden in Wednesday’s board.

Arizona Diamondbacks @ Cincinnati Reds

Arizona and Cincinnati will run it back for Game 2 of their three-game series. Arizona will send former KBO great Merrill Kelly to the mound, while Cincinnati is giving the ball to Tyler Mahle.

Kelly turned in a fairly successful shortened season in 2020, throwing 31 innings through five starts with a 2.59 ERA and a 3.99 FIP. He’s gotten off to a rocky start this year, but projections have him settling down to be about an average starter with a 4.83 ERA and a 4.69 FIP. His hard-hit rate is certainly on the high side, but it’s still within the ballpark of what he put up in last year’s successful season, so it’s not entirely alarming in my opinion. He’s added about half a walk to his BB/9, decreased his LOB% by 40%, and decreased his groundball rate by 9%, all of which most likely contributing to his bad start. However, with that low of a LOB%, a high .339 BABIP, and a HR/FB ratio double the league average, Kelly does appear to be a decent positive regression candidate.

Arizona’s gotten off to a fairly slow start out of the gates, posting a middle-of-the-pack .308 wOBA and 91 wRC+ overall. Some of their underlying stats, however, are leaning positive so it may only be a matter of time before we start seeing some better performances by this group. They’ve been pretty unlucky, posting the sixth-lowest .261 BABIP, but they’ve been getting on base even without hits as they have the third-highest BB% and BB/K in the league. Arizona is an extremely patient bunch with the fourth-lowest O-Swing% and they’re one of the harder teams to strikeout with a swinging-strike rate in the bottom half of the league and a bottom-10 K%. If they can continue to get on base, their bad BABIP luck should eventually start to turn and this could be a solid buy-low offense.

So far, Mahle has been what Cincinnati thought Luis Castillo would be for them coming into the year. He’s off to a hot start with a 2.57 ERA and 3.31 FIP through three starts and 14 innings. His hard-hit rate is below league average, he’s added almost 3 strikeouts to his K/9, and has increased his groundball rate by about 10%. These numbers all do point to Mahle being hard to hit, but Arizona is already having bad luck with hits dropping, so it’s a bit redundant. He has only allowed a BABIP of .200 so far on the year, so this is a matchup of an offense with some positive regression facing a pitcher with possible negative regression. What sticks out to me though, is his 4.5 BB/9, over half a walk higher than last year, and his 12.5% BB%. If those numbers stay constant while the regression kicks in, there could be plenty of runners on base when the BABIPs start to normalize.

Aside from Boston (had to give the Sox a shoutout), Cincinnati may be the hottest offense in the league to start the year. Their .350 wOBA and 116 wRC+ are good for second and third in the majors, respectively. They have top-three marks in AVG, OBP, SLG, OPS and ISO, with no real indicators of negative regression. Their BABIP is higher than league average, but not egregiously so at .315, so it’s not even as though their success has been explained mostly by luck. Cincinnati’s lineup appears to be firing on all cylinders with no signs of slowing down and not many negative stats to talk about, but their BB% is only 21st in the league so that’s something, right?

The pick

If you haven’t caught on by this point, I’m a big fan of dogs and plus-money bets, so naturally I’m looking at Arizona in this matchup. The stats don’t look great on paper, but at their current prices my model is showing them as undervalued. I still project them as the underdog, but only at a price of about +130. I’m seeing them currently listed at +165, so I’ll be hopping on that and buying Arizona’s value. Arizona +165.

Unfortunately, Arizona is the only team I’m seeing any value on at this point, with a few teams to have not even named a starter yet. Sometimes the best bets are no bets and having the patience and discipline to pass on action is just as important as being able to pick games correctly. I’ll be checking the updated odds and lineups as the day rolls on, so be sure to follow on Twitter (@pattymatz2) for any mid-day analysis and last-minute picks.