MLB Best Bets for Sunday (7/4)

As the country celebrates the Fourth of July with some burgers, dogs, cornhole and beers, MLB bettors will be celebrating with a 16-game betting slate. The subway series doubleheader blesses us with an extra holiday game today, as there’s sure to be no shortage of games and angles to bet on. Let’s right in to America’s Birthday installment of MLB Best Bets.

Miami Marlins @ Atlanta Braves

After splitting the first two games, Atlanta and Miami will both be looking to take Game 3 and a series win. Miami will send out rookie Zach Thompson to the mound, while Atlanta counters with veteran Charlie Morton.

Atlanta’s offense has been somewhat middling to this point in the year, especially after losing Marcell Ozuna, compared to what people were expecting coming into the season. They aren’t the top-five powerhouse some thought they’d be, but they’ve still managed to scrape out a .321 wOBA and 101 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers, both ranking withing the top half of the league and their wOBA falling within the top-10. Miami, on the other hand, is probably just about where they were expected to be offensively with a .294 wOBA and 90 wRC+, ranking 26th and 20th, respectively. Despite their sub-.500 record, Atlanta has the ninth-highest OBP, SLG and OPS, while checking in with a top-five ISO. Comparatively, Miami finishes at least bottom-10 in all of these same statistics. Even if hits aren’t falling for Atlanta, they have the fourth-highest BB% on the year, while Miami’s ranks 23rd. Regression-wise, both teams’ HR/FB ratios are within a reasonable range, while it’s actually Atlanta that’s trailing .295-.283 in the BABIP category. There’s not much here to suggest positive or negative regression for either team here, so it looks like the talent-discrepancy between offenses is legitimate.

Zach Thompson will be making his fifth career start for Miami. He has a sparkling 1.50 ERA and 1.71 FIP to begin his young career, but those numbers appear to be skewed slightly because of good luck. Thompson is merely a 35-plus FV prospect and didn’t crack MLB’s top 100 list. He hasn’t allowed a homer yet on the year, obviously resulting in a 0% HR/FB ratio, which actually ends up putting his xFIP over double his FIP at 3.58. He has been missing barrels at a respectable 7.5% clip for a rookie, but his hard hit rate thus far is pretty high at 45%. He does strike out a good number of batters (12.5 K/9), but he walks three batters per 9 innings and that could lead to a ton of free baserunners when facing a team with a high BB% like Atlanta. It’s still early on in the year so the sample size for splits is a little small, but he has shown to pitch much worse of the road with a 4.78 xFIP compared to his home 2.81 xFIP. Thompson has put up great starts so far to start his career, but on the road against Atlanta’s offense is a whole other test.

Charlie Morton checks into this matchup with a 3.74 ERA and a 3.47 FIP. He’s been an anchor in Atlanta’s rotation and is currently on a 3-1 stretch over his last five starts with a 2.73 ERA and a 2.89 FIP. His BABIP allowed and HR/FB ratio are perfectly in line with expectations, excluding the possibility of any outside noise in his stats. His average exit velocity, xwOBA, xERA and xBA all rank in the top half of the league, his xSLG, K% and whiff rate all within the top quarter, and, most importantly in my eyes, his barrel% and hard hit% are both within the top 20% of MLB pitchers. He misses barrels and limits hard contact at a borderline elite rate and continues to get better with age.

The pick

Normally I don’t side with the home favorites, but even priced where they are I feel like Atlanta is undervalued. Anything can happen with bullpens and I do like to highlight just the starting pitching matchup in this one so I’m cutting it to a first five bet. Morton is on a great run right now and I don’t expect Thompson’s early career success to carry into this one. I’m liking Atlanta with the first five moneyline and runline in this one. Atlanta F5RL (-.5) -115 and F5 -160.