MLB Best Bets for Sunday (8/1)

MLB Best Bets is back and looking to break our current cold streak. Kansas City and Toronto weren’t able to reach their F5 o5.5 line Friday, but we’re quickly turning the page to Sunday’s slate. With no night game, we’re getting thrown right into the action with 15 afternoon games as the new look Chicago Cubs and Washington Nationals kick off the slate at 1:05 p.m. ET. Let’s sift through the board and jump right into the matchup I believe has the most value on the slate.

Baltimore Orioles @ Detroit Tigers

Baltimore and Detroit are wrapping up a four-game series in the Motor City as the Orioles are looking to secure a series win. Spenser Watkins will be making his fifth start of the year for Baltimore as Detroit continues their experiment with starting Tyler Alexander. 

Sunday’s best bet just so happens to be matchup featuring two teams who are a combined 36 games under .500. I should say, a majority of that is due to Baltimore being 29 games under, because Detroit has actually far exceeded the public’s expectations of them this season still sitting in third in the AL Central. Shifting the focus to Baltimore’s starter, Spenser Watkins had actually come up through Detroit’s farm system until making his big league debut this season with Baltimore. Through five appearances and four starts, Watkins has an impressive 3.10 ERA with a much higher 4.53 FIP, albeit still solid for a rookie starting pitcher. He’s been able to mostly miss opposing barrels with a barrel rate just under 8% and has impressively held hitters to just a 28.6% hard hit rate. At almost 4.0 BB/9, his command certainly isn’t as good as you’d like to see, but he’s shown a great ability to limit homers with just 0.89 HR/9 on his young career and induce soft contact. In his four starts, he’s gone at least 4.1 innings and has allowed just one run in three of them, with his best outing coming in Tampa Bay where he went six innings with one earned run and seven strikeouts. He’s faced Miami, Tampa Bay, Chicago White Sox, and Toronto in his four starts and, ironically, Miami was the only offense to get to him for multiple runs to hand him a loss. Watkins doesn’t have a huge sample size, but he’s already been able to quiet three of the best offenses in the majors and if he’s capable of that then I don’t foresee Detroit’s lineup being a problem for him. 

Baltimore is usually thought of as a basement dweller in terms of offense, or pitching for that matter, but they are not a team to sleep on facing lefties. If I told you I’m thinking of a team with top-10 marks in wOBA (.329) and wRC+ (109) that rank better than Boston and Oakland while essentially being equivalent to Toronto versus left-handers, would you have guessed it was Baltimore? They have the fifth-best SLG (.437) and seventh-best OPS (.763) and even from a betting perspective lately have been a top-5 ROI team going 6-4 with a $279 profit and a 27% ROI. Over the past 14 days, Baltimore’s offense owns the second-highest 10.1% barrel rate, eighth-highest hard hit rate, and a top-10 average exit velocity. They may very well be one of the worst teams in the majors, but they’ve been a tough team to beat lately and tough all year on southpaws.

Despite his horrible performances as a starter, Detroit is continuing to roll out Tyler Alexander at the beginning of games. Alexander’s 4.80 ERA and 4.85 FIP are already gross enough over his total 29 appearances this year, but things get even darker when you focus on just his starts. He somewhat surprisingly hasn’t recorded a loss yet, but as a starter on the year he’s allowing a .372 wOBA to opposing hitters with a 6.02 FIP. Offenses have gotten to him early and often with a .370 wOBA/5.27 FIP the first time through the lineup and, when he’s lasted a second time through, he’s allowed a .376 wOBA/7.21 FIP. His .301 BABIP and 13.2% HR/FB ratio are almost as clean as you could ask for, suggesting that bad luck as nothing to do with his results. Alexander ranks in the bottom half of the league in hard hit rate while ranking in nearly the bottom-25% in xwOBA, xERA, xBA, xSLG, barrel rate and K%. He just made three consecutive starts for the first time this year and over that span lasted just 11 innings with a 6.55 ERA and 6.25 FIP. While opposing pitchers typically look at Baltimore as an easy start, Alexander could have his hands full in this matchup.

Even with middle-of-the-pack numbers, Detroit is far exceeding everyone’s expectations of them this year. Facing righties, they’re hitting to the tune of a .308 wOBA and 93 wRC+, good for 15th in the league, but still a below average offense overall. They rank no higher than 14th in any of their slash stats, while coming in with a bottom-10 OBP and the fifth-highest K%. Hitting at home has been one of their Achilles heels this season, where they have bottom-10 marks with a .311 wOBA and 93 wRC+. Much like with Baltimore, luck appears to be no factor here one way or the other, with a .298 BABIP and 15.5% HR/FB suggesting that what you see with Detroit is what you get. They’ve been a bottom-10 profitable betting team over their last 10 games losing bettors $166 and this game doesn’t have the feel of a Detroit winner.

The pick

Am I crazy enough to back a team that is 29 games under .500 and playing on the road? You bet I am. The narrative of Detroit being a lot better than people thought at the beginning of the year has been making the rounds and may be a slight overreaction at this point. Are they better than we thought? Absolutely. Should they be almost -150 favorites with a struggling left-hander on the mound? Absolutely not. I’m looking to ride Baltimore’s success versus lefties and their recent mini hot streak in this one. Baltimore +125