MLB Best Bets for Friday (8/13)

Wednesday, July 28. Now I know what you’re thinking, “What does Dana White’s and Soulja Boy’s birthday have to do with MLB betting?” But actually, this marks the last day the MLB Best Bets column has lost a bet. We’re on a 10-0 streak with a 15.68u profit over that span thanks to, most recently, Miami blowing the doors off of San Diego to cash the F5RL and the +147 moneyline.

We’re looking to kick off the weekend on a high note and continue our success with Friday’s board that brings us a mostly full 14-game slate. You guys probably know the drill by now, but I’ll scour through the board to see which matchup has the most value on it and highlight how I’m attacking the game.

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St. Louis Cardinals @ Kansas City Royals

Cardinals -134, Unibet and SugarHouse; Royals +125, Caesars Sportsbook and BetAmerica

The quietest intrastate rivalry in the majors, St. Louis and Kansas City, will meet for a three-game weekend series at Kauffman Stadium. St. Louis ace Jack Flaherty will be making his first start since hitting the 60-day IL with an oblique injury and Kansas City will be countering with lefty Mike Minor to try and take game one.

It’s been a while since we last saw Jack Flaherty — May 31 to be exact — but before he hit the IL he was pitching at near-Cy Young levels. Through 11 starts on the season, he has compiled a 2.90 ERA and a 3.75 FIP while always putting his team in a position to win by going 8-1 thus far. To give Flaherty even a little more credit, if you exclude his Opening Day start where he got torched for six earned runs in just 4.1 innings at Cincinnati (like many starting pitchers do), he’s actually been even more impressive with just a 2.18 ERA and 3.32 FIP over his last 10 starts. I don’t typically like taking starters immediately off an IL stint, especially the 60-day IL, but for a starter of Flaherty’s caliber, with how well he was pitching before the injury, and facing a bottom-of-the-league offense, he’s poised for a fairly easy first start back.

Overall, St. Louis’s offense has been pretty lackluster putting up just a .303 wOBA and 90 wRC+ as a collective unit on the year. With a .314 wOBA and 98 wRC+ against southpaws, they’re just slightly below average in the split, but nothing terrible facing a non-All-Star lefty in this game. Recently, however, the offense has started to click as they’ve had a .331 wOBA and 108 wRC+ over their last 30 days and a fairly consistent .326 wOBA and 106 wRC+ over their last 14. Those numbers are decreasing over that time frame so that could suggest their hot streak is waring off, but it’s actually the opposite. Over the last week they’ve turned up the heat again with their highest .358 wOBA, 126 wRC+ and 10% barrel rate over the three time frames. St. Louis’s stats against lefties also get a little bump when just focusing on how their right-handed bats have fared against them as their righties have respectable wOBA (.325) and wRC+ (105) marks. All nine of St. Louis’s projected hitters will be able to hit from the right side against Minor, which could pose significant problems for an opposing starter with weak right-handed batting splits.

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Speaking of Minor, let’s get caught up to speed with how his 2021 is going. Through his first 15 starts he was a fairly average starter, going 6-4 with a 4.48 ERA and a 4.10 FIP, but in his eight starts since then he’s gone just 2-6 with a 7.16 ERA and a 4.70 FIP. He ranks within the bottom half of major league pitchers in terms of average exit velocity and xBA, the bottom-35% in xWOBA and xERA, and in the bottom-25% in xSLG and barrel rate. As I touched upon quickly in St. Louis’s offensive section, Minor’s left/right splits are a bit dramatic. There’s not a huge difference in wOBA against, with a .319 against lefties and a .327 against righties, but his FIP facing righties is over two full runs higher than his FIP facing lefties (4.64 vs. 2.49) and St. Louis is projected to have nine right-handed batters in their starting lineup tonight. He actually just faced this St. Louis offense in his last start where he got the loss and allowed four earned runs in five innings and seeing the same bats in consecutive starts never bodes well for the starting pitcher especially when he was just hit hard by them.

Offensively, Kansas City actually has comparable stats to St. Louis overall on the season with a .299 wOBA and 87 wRC+, but they don’t have the luxury of being hot or being in a split they have an advantage in. They check in with bottom-10 marks in both wOBA (.295) and wRC+ (85) when facing righties and although St. Louis’s stats against lefties aren’t record-breaking, they’re still much better than Kansas City against righties. Going in the exact opposite direction as their opposition, Kansas City has bottom-3 marks over their last 30 days with a .293 wOBA and 82 wRC+ and over their last 14 days they have a mere .261 wOBA, just 61 wRC+, and a 4.4% barrel rate. The best thing they have going for them in this one is that they’re playing at home, but even then they’ve proven to be a slightly below average offense with a .319 wOBA and 98 wRC+ at Kauffman Stadium. Offensive production has been hard to come by for Kansas City and I don’t see that stopping here.

The pick

‘Cause I knew it from the start. Baby, when you broke my heart. That I had to come again. And show you that I’d win. That’s right folks, it’s the Return of the Jack and I’m liking the visiting squad in this one. St. Louis is returning an All-Star caliber pitcher who has the advantage of facing one of the worst performing offenses over the past month. Flaherty was lights out the first two times through the order before he hit the IL limiting the opposition to just a .239 wOBA with a 3.35 FIP the first time through and a .266 wOBA with a 3.76 FIP the second time through. I don’t expect St. Louis to stretch him out in his first start back, so he may only be around for 5 innings max, but he’s shown the ability to silence offenses early in games. On the other side, St. Louis has been lighting it up offensively, while Minor is on a pretty terrible streak of his own. With such a drastic difference between both teams’ lineups and starting pitching, both favoring St. Louis, coupled with two below-average bullpens, I’m targeting just the first five innings in this matchup. I have St. Louis projected to be about -125 to win the first five innings and I’ll gladly hop on the value train seeing their price at just -105. St. Louis F5RL (-.5) -105, DraftKings Sportsbook.