Fifteen games, and the temperature at first pitch spans 27 degrees from one end of the country to the other. That usually tells you where to hunt for offense. Today it tells you the opposite, because the coldest game on the card is carrying half the priced edges on the board.
Michael Lorenzen — one of the featured players on today's slate.
The Quick Answer
The best MLB bet today is Michael Lorenzen under 3.5 strikeouts at -120 (Bet365) in Rockies-Giants, a 6.51-K/9 arm who hasn't finished five innings in a month facing a Giants lineup that whiffs less than the league does. It's also the only play on this board where I'd lay juice. Below: why six of the day's twelve biggest edges sit in one 65-degree afternoon game, the full de-vigged board, the two-leg parlay I like most, and the lineup trap that hangs over ten of these twelve tickets.
Saturday's Weather Spread: 92 In Atlanta, 65 At Oracle Park
Start with the environment, because it multiplies everything else. Truist Park sits at 92 degrees for Diamondbacks-Braves and Great American Ball Park at 91 for Marlins-Reds, the two hottest first pitches on the card. Great American is the best home run park in baseball, and hot air carries. The day games cut the other way: Wrigley Field is 76 degrees with a 7 mph wind out of the northeast for Cardinals-Cubs, which is the wind coming in off the lake toward home plate. Call that the version of Wrigley that plays small.
Then there's Oracle Park: 65 degrees for Rockies-Giants at 1:05 p.m. Pacific, 80% humidity, a 9 mph wind blowing across it. Twenty-seven degrees colder than Atlanta, in the most run-suppressing park in the majors, in a game started by a Rockies pitcher carrying a 6.83 ERA. That's why the board looks the way it does.
One caveat before the plays: I'm not handing you a game total with a number on it, because no totals price was in the verified market pull behind this article and I don't quote numbers I haven't checked. The weather is the lens here, not the ticket. For the park-by-park grid, Eytan Shander's MLB weather report is the standing page.
The Plays At A Glance
Every number below comes off the OddsShopper +EV board, captured this morning: the de-vigged fair price against the best takeable price across the odds screen. Edge is the gap between the two, not the longest odds. And it's the whole argument for line shopping in one column, because nine of these twelve best prices sit at Bet365 and three at BetMGM. Bet only the BetMGM side and you're taking a worse number on three-quarters of the board.
| Play | Game | Best price | Fair | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Andruw Monasterio Under 0.5 Hits | Red Sox at Pirates | +130 (Bet365) | +108 | +10.6% |
| Victor Bericoto Under 0.5 Hits | Rockies at Giants | +190 (Bet365) | +163 | +10.3% |
| Jacob Gonzalez Under 0.5 Hits | Red Sox at Pirates | +125 (Bet365) | +105 | +9.8% |
| Evan Carter Under 0.5 Hits | Rangers at Athletics | +155 (BetMGM) | +134 | +9.0% |
| Osleivis Basabe Under 0.5 Hits | Rockies at Giants | +190 (Bet365) | +167 | +8.6% |
| Tommy White Under 0.5 Hits | Rangers at Athletics | +190 (Bet365) | +167 | +8.6% |
| Lane Thomas Under 0.5 Hits | Diamondbacks at Braves | +125 (BetMGM) | +110 | +7.1% |
| Bryce Eldridge Under 0.5 Hits | Rockies at Giants | +185 (Bet365) | +167 | +6.7% |
| Hayden Wesneski Under 4.5 Hits Allowed | Mariners at Astros | +125 (Bet365) | +111 | +6.6% |
| Drew Cavanaugh Under 0.5 Hits | Rockies at Giants | +130 (Bet365) | +116 | +6.5% |
| Cole Carrigg Under 0.5 Hits | Rockies at Giants | +180 (BetMGM) | +163 | +6.5% |
| Michael Lorenzen Under 3.5 Strikeouts | Rockies at Giants | -120 (Bet365) | -138 | +6.3% |
Read the Game column top to bottom and the story writes itself. Six of the twelve rows are the same baseball game. Rockies at Giants is producing half the value on a fifteen-game Saturday, and it's the only game where the market and the weather agree.
Now read the bottom row, because it's the one I lead with. Lorenzen is the smallest edge on this board at +6.3%, dead last of twelve, and he is still my favorite bet, because he is one of only two on this board that cannot be erased by a lineup card, and the shorter of those two prices. The other ten need a manager to cooperate, and that trade is the thread running through the rest of this page.
Michael Lorenzen Under 3.5 Strikeouts (-120, Bet365)
Lorenzen has thrown 112 innings across 24 starts, which is 4.7 innings a night, and the recent trend is worse than the season line: 3.2, 4.0, 3.0 and 4.1 innings in his last four. He carries a 1.88 WHIP and 13.18 hits allowed per nine. He doesn't get deep into games because he doesn't get outs.
He also doesn't miss bats, at 6.51 strikeouts per nine. Both roads end in the same place: at that rate even a full five innings projects to roughly three or four strikeouts, and his recent workload keeps stopping short of five. He has finished with three or fewer in six of his last eight starts, including a one-strikeout, five-inning outing against these same Giants on July 12.
The lineup cooperates. San Francisco strikes out in 20.9% of its plate appearances against a 22.1% league average, a contact-leaning group in the park where fly balls go to die, in 65-degree air. The market says -138. Bet365 says -120. That's the cleanest number on the card.
The Oracle Park Hits Unders: Four Giants And A Rockie
Square one thing first, because it cuts against me. Four of these five bats are Giants, which means they're hitting against Lorenzen, the easiest pitcher on this card to get a hit off at 13.18 hits allowed per nine. I just spent three paragraphs proving he can't get outs. That is already in the price. What isn't fully in the price is whether these four get three trips to do it.
So sort them by plate appearances per game, which is the number that actually decides a 0.5 hits line:
| Bat | Price | PA per game | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Victor Bericoto | +190 | 2.6 | .282 OBP, no appearances at all between July 9 and Aug. 11 |
| Drew Cavanaugh | +130 | 2.8 | Backup catcher, .265 SLG, 0 HR in 82 PA, last played Aug. 12 |
| Osleivis Basabe | +190 | 3.4 | Full workload, hitting .283. A price bet, not a playing-time bet |
| Cole Carrigg | +180 | 3.9 | Everyday, .292/.375/.489, facing Logan Webb's 1.08 WHIP |
| Bryce Eldridge | +185 | 4.1 | Everyday, 13 home runs. The least comfortable under here |
The top two rows are the bet, and read Cavanaugh's row carefully, because it isn't the rest-day story you'd assume. He hasn't caught since August 12, three days ago. The bet isn't that he's due a breather; it's that a backup catcher who has already sat three straight might not be in there today either, and if he is, a .265 slugging mark with zero home runs in 82 plate appearances is the profile that reaches the ninth inning with two at-bats and nothing to show.
Bericoto is the same playing-time bet from the opposite direction. He's a live bat when he's in there, .486 slugging with four home runs in 71 plate appearances, which is precisely why the price is +190 and not +130. You're betting the plate appearances, not the profile.
The bottom three are everyday bats getting priced like part-timers, and I'm not paying for that. Basabe is a 3.4-PA-per-game hitter batting .283. If you like his under, like it because +190 is long against a fair +167, not because you think he's sitting.
Hayden Wesneski Under 4.5 Hits Allowed (+125, Bet365)
Wesneski has made three starts, and his innings have climbed: 5.2, then 6.0, then 7.0 last time out, with seven, four and five hits allowed. That climb is the one thing I don't love here, because an under on hits allowed wants fewer innings and 7.0 is seven innings of chances. His three-start log is 1-for-3 to this number.
It's playable anyway, and the reason resolves the innings problem rather than ignoring it. Seattle hits .229 as a team, second-lowest in Major League Baseball, and strikes out in 23.0% of its plate appearances, above the league's 22.1%. A seventh inning against that lineup isn't the same seventh inning it would be against Colorado, because close to a quarter of those extra hitters never put a ball in play. Length costs Wesneski less than it would cost almost anyone else on this card.
The path the under needs is the shape of his August 4 start: through six innings with four hits or fewer. He's done exactly that once in three tries, and he did it against a Toronto lineup hitting .242, thirteen points better than the one he draws today. Fair is +111 by the de-vig; Bet365 will give you +125.
Evan Carter Under 0.5 Hits (+155, BetMGM)
The biggest outlier among everyday players on this board is a .194 average over 104 games and 348 plate appearances, a full-time center fielder having a season that would option most hitters.
August has been worse. Carter went hitless in seven straight games from August 4 through August 11, an 0-for-19 stretch, before scratching out one hit in each of his last three. The counterweight deserves naming: Sutter Health Park sits at 84 degrees for the 6:40 p.m. Pacific start, which is the part that helps the ball travel, and Carter has the platoon edge as a left-handed bat against right-hander J.T. Ginn. The environment argues against this one. The bat argues louder.
A fair +134 against a takeable +155 is the fourth-biggest edge on the card, and the biggest one attached to a hitter getting three-plus trips every night. That distinction is worth more than the point and a half separating him from the top of the table.
Across the diamond in the same game, Athletics third baseman Tommy White at +190 gets there a different way. He has the platoon edge, a right-handed bat against left-hander MacKenzie Gore, and it still doesn't move me, because a .275 slugging mark and zero home runs in 93 plate appearances is exactly the whiff-and-weak-contact profile a 10.0 K/9 arm punishes regardless of which side of the plate you stand on.
My Favorite Parlay On The Card
Two legs, both pitcher-side unders, both at Bet365 so they go on one slip, and in two different games with two different pitchers, so nothing about one leg tells you anything about the other:
- Michael Lorenzen under 3.5 strikeouts (-120)
- Hayden Wesneski under 4.5 hits allowed (+125)
I'm not quoting a combined number, because a parlay price is whatever your book prices it at and the only prices I verified this morning were the two legs. Multiply them yourself at whatever you're offered. The reason I like this shape over piling up hitter unders: stack five under-0.5-hits legs and you've built a bet that needs five separate lineup cards to break your way on the same afternoon. Two independent pitcher props, both above their fair number, is the cleaner structure, and it's the same logic behind building parlays around value instead of recency.
The Lineup Trap That Hangs Over Ten Of These Twelve
Here's what separates a hits-under board from a home run board. Ten of these twelve plays are hitter hit-total unders, and a hitter who never comes to the plate doesn't produce a winning under. He produces a voided ticket, or a grading rule you didn't read. Books split on it: some grade a hits prop as action on a single plate appearance, some require a start.
Which way that cuts depends on the leg, and most advice gets this backwards. Waiting for the lineup card doesn't protect the short-day plays, it resolves them against you: if Cavanaugh isn't in there your ticket voids anyway, and if he is, the price shortens the moment the card posts. So on those two, know your book's void rule and then fire early. On the everyday bats, the lineup card is genuine information worth waiting for.
Two names on the board are pure versions of this problem. Jacob Gonzalez at +125 is the third-biggest edge of the twelve, and his last ten games read 3, 1, 2, 1, 5, 0, 3, 3, 4, 1 at-bats: a zero-at-bat night and three one-at-bat nights inside ten games. That's the profile the whole piece is hunting, and it's also the profile most likely to hand you a void instead of a win. Lane Thomas at +125 is more extreme still, 13 plate appearances across seven games with no appearance since August 12. Both are legitimately live at those prices, and both are decided by a lineup card neither of us has seen yet. I'd rather be in the Cavanaugh-Bericoto version of that bet, where the price is +190 and +130 rather than +125 twice.
The two pitcher props sidestep all of it, which is the other quiet argument for the parlay above. And it's worth spending five minutes on your book's void rule once today with the same care you'd give reading a fair price against a market price, because you'll use the answer every day of the season.
What I'm Passing On
Four of these twelve I'm not touching, and they're the ones that look most tempting in the edge column. Bryce Eldridge at +185 and Cole Carrigg at +180 are everyday bats getting quoted like bench pieces, and Carrigg is hitting .292. Osleivis Basabe at +190 is the same story at 3.4 plate appearances a night. Long prices on hitters who play nine innings are how a hits-under board separates you from your money, and the edge column can't tell the difference between a bat that might sit and a bat that's simply cheap.
Andruw Monasterio sits at the top of the table at +10.6% and he's the fourth pass for the same reason. He's a regular, roughly 3.2 at-bats a game across 82 games, hitting .270 with a .443 slugging mark. That's a price bet with no structural help, not the kind of under this board is built to find.
What's left is the shape I actually like: one pitcher who can't miss bats, one pitcher facing the second-worst hitting team in baseball, and two Giants who may not get a third trip to the plate in 65-degree air. The heat in Atlanta and Cincinnati is real, and if you want to chase run environments today those are the parks to build around, the same hunting ground behind our daily MLB home run picks and the park-and-pitcher framework underneath it. The priced edge just isn't there. It's 27 degrees away, at 1:05 p.m. Pacific, in a ballpark that eats offense for a living.
For the rest of the day's numbers the game-by-game board lives on MLB odds today, Lindy's most recent card is in his Thursday leans and likes, and June 21's hits props ran this identical process on an earlier card.
