MLB Best Bets – Free (Wednesday 9/11)
Daniel Kelley
It’s another installment of Paul Skenes Day around baseball Friday, although his props may not be the route we want to take. His strikeout numbers are very juiced up against the Mariners but there are plenty of other options. Let’s figure things out with the help of the FTN Betting Model.
MLB Best Bets
Spencer Arrighetti Over 6.5 K’s
(-115, BetRivers)
I thought I might be getting greedy, but the Prop Tool has Spencer Arrighetti projected for over seven strikeouts. He has been on a tear with his strikeouts with a total of 33 in the past three games. That’s not predictive of future success but what can help us feel comfortable with this number is the matchup with the White Sox. They have a K rate of 24% against righty pitching while Arrighetti is at 27.9%. The 5.14 ERA might be a little scary, but the 4.04 xFIP looks way more appealing, as does the 3.98 xERA. When we dive into the pitch mix, it looks even better for Arrighetti. He uses the curveball against lefty hitters and no White Sox hitter hits that pitch well. Two of the four projected lefties have a 14.4% swinging strike rate or higher and Arrighetti generates a whiff rate of over 40% with the curve and his sweeper. He breaks out the sweeper against righties and all five projected righties are over a 13% swinging strike rate.
Francisco Lindor Over 1.5 Total Bases
(+100, DraftKings Sportsbook)
The Mets take on Roddery Muñoz of the Marlins Friday, and he has some major splits we can try and take advantage of. Muñoz has faced 156 lefties this season and they have a .434 wOBA, a 1.052 OPS, a 3.66 HR/9, a 1.78 WHIP, an 8.62 FIP and a 5.84 xFIP. While 156 batters is not the largest sample size we’ll see, those are some absurd numbers and Francisco Lindor is perfectly suited to take advantage. Muñoz is using the four-seam and sinker roughly about 48% of the time against lefty hitters. Lindor has an ISO of over .200 and a wOBA of over .350 against both pitches so I don’t even hate looking at Lindor’s home run prop along with the bases.
