Welcome to The Leadoff, a daily column featuring our top expert’s MLB picks, predictions, and best bets for today’s slate.
With Sean Zerillo making significant changes to the structure of Opening Pitch, we thought we could use another similar daily piece breaking down a few of our favorite bets on the day’s top games.
Each day, Monday through Sunday, one of our top staff members will provide news, notes, and betting analysis on that day’s group of games.
Jon Anderson has that job for Monday, June 8.
MLB Picks, Predictions for Monday, June 8
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- Will Warren Under 4.5 Strikeouts (-147), Daniel Schneemann Over 1.5 Total Bases (+212)
- Phillies vs Blue Jays Under 7.5 Runs (-112)
- Angels Moneyline (+109)
- Giants Moneyline (-163)
- Chourio Homer (+265), Athletics Over 4.5 Team Runs (-115)
Yankees vs Guardians Picks
Things are starting to regress for Will Warren.
- First 8 GS: 30.5% K%, 6.3% BB%, 2.43 SIERA
- Last 4 GS: 17.5% K%, 8.2% BB%, 4.36 SIERA
Over the last month of play, he has a pathetically low 6.2% K% against left-handed hitters. This was a major, major problem for him last year. And he somehow got by early on in the year, keeping lefties at bay. But he just doesn't have a pitch mix that is fit to handle big league lefties.
The changeup he has is used just 16% of the time, speaking to a lack of confidence in the pitch. He has no feel for the pitch, with a 22% Strike% on it to lefties in these last four.
The Guardians have a whole bunch of left-handed hitters, including a handful of switch hitters, so they'll be able to stack them up against Warren here, and that is greatly to their advantage.
To give Warren some credit, he hasn't been hit hard over any significant stretch of this year. His xwOBAs allowed have been consistently below the league average line (around .320), even against those lefties recently. So we don't think the Guardians are necessarily going to be scoring a bunch of runs in this one. But we do have some real leverage on Warren's strikeout unders, I believe.
That's my pick for this one. You'll have to go line shopping, because I'm supposing the books will be privy to what we're talking about here. But I'll be projecting Warren under five strikeouts here.
But there's one more interesting angle in my data (check out MLB Data Warehouse for more). I have a "BOOM Hitters" model that calculates hitter performance against the specific movement profiles of the pitches they'll see from tonight's starter.
And Daniel Schneemann for the Guardians makes the list today in this matchup with Warren. In 502 pitches seen, he has a .462 xwOBA with a 19.7% Brl%. He can hit these types of righties.
Pick: Will Warren Under 4.5 Strikeouts (-147), Daniel Schneemann Over 1.5 TB (+212)
Phillies vs Blue Jays Picks
The Phillies have been playing ball in hot temperatures at home recently, but they'll head north of the border and indoors to take on Patrick Corbin in Toronto. We have two lefties of much different talent levels, you could say.
Sanchez is on one of the best runs in MLB history. He's allowed one run since May began. One! In 46 innings. So we don't think the Blue Jays are in real good shape to be scoring much tonight.
We're always looking for the unders on these games started by aces. The books will not go to a 6.5 line, and they certainly won't be doing so with Corbin lined up for this one.
The Phillies lineup does have a weak spot. And that's against these southpaws. They're at a .216/.296/.370 slash against lefties this year. And that was predictable with so much of their juice coming from Schwarber, Harper, Marsh, and Stott. The righties they have in their regular lineup have been struggling so far in 2026.
Philly have two hitters above an .800 OPS against lefties this year. Schwarber clears .900; still a stud. Adolis Garcia barely crosses .800, and everybody else has been pretty much a non-threat.
Will they still scratch 4-5 across? Most likely. But with the Blue Jays as a real goose-egg threat for this one, the under 7.5 looks pretty good.
Pick: Under 7.5 Runs (-112)
Astros vs Angels Picks
Two bad pitchers in an AL West showdown. And not everybody would agree with me on that. Some people think Arrighetti is good right now, and some people are still holding onto hope from the days of Grayson Rodriguez being the game's #1 pitching prospect. But believe me, these guys are bad.
- Arrighetti: 1.94 ERA, 4.73 SIERA
- Rodriguez: 9.50 ERA, 5.01 SIERA
The SIERA would tell you these guys are only about a quarter of a run different in expected future ERA. Which is wild to see. Arrighetti has a K-BB% below 10% and a .220 BABIP that would be one of the lowest in recent history if it holds. It won't hold.
The whiffs aren't there for Arrighetti. His fastball is not Major League caliber, so he's up there throwing curveballs more than 40% of the time recently, as the Astros have clearly identified the weakness of the heater. And throwing a bunch of breaking balls will usually turn into walks and inefficiency.
He does not have a high ground ball rate to clean up the walks with, and he seems like a guy who is about to make us look back and wonder how he ever had the good first month and a half that he did.
What we can do on the Astros side is look for the guys who will make him earn it. A low swing rate will turn into walks. Mike Trout is the team's most patient hitter with a 37% Swing% this year.
Intentional walks don't count as hitter walks for betting purposes, which seems like a cop-out on the books' behalf, but that's okay – intentional walks aren't popular these days.
In the first few years of the new rule where pitchers didn't have to throw the four balls to walk a guy intentionally, that happened in around 0.4% of plate appearances. It's fallen below 0.3%, to an at least seven-year low of 0.28% this year. Trout has just six of those, tying him for 3rd in the league behind Yordan and Ohtani.
So I'm on a trot to first from Trout. Those lines aren't always easy to find, and they usually show up pretty late.
So I can't recommend a particular line, but it's a sneaky market to exploit in situations like this where we have a super patient hitter who pitchers don't like to face in the first place, facing a pitcher who is going to be feeding the guy a heavy dosage of a pitch he throws out of the strike zone almost half of the time.
As for G-Rod, the magic is gone. He has a 9.8% SwStr% with a K% under 20%. All of those years of injury and surgical procedures will do that to a guy.
So both offenses should be liking their chances. Lefties have really feasted on Grayson so far with a .400 xwOBA and just an 18% K%. That'd be the good news for old Yordan Alvarez, the team's lone lefty masher. I spotted Traylor Trammell's .300+ batting average, but a .475 BABIP is the reason for that. He has not hit the ball well at all. So this truly is a one-man show in Houston when you're talking about hitters coming up on the left side.
I suppose that's good news for Grayson, who has been decently effective against righties with a 23% K% and a .240 xwOBA allowed. His pitch mix works a lot better with the platoon advantage, and the Astros don't have lefties to stack against him.
So I kinda like the Angels as a slight underdog at home in this one.
Pick: Angels Moneyline (+109)
Nationals vs Giants Picks
Logan Webb looks to be back to his old form after a slow start to the year and an IL stint. He's given up just four hits in his last 11 innings, no homers, and an xwOBA allowed just north of .200. The guy has a 63% GB% this year, that's his highest mark since 2021.
The Giants offense has been awesome. They are second in the league in runs scored with 124 since May 15th. Some of the dudes contributing to that:
- Jung Hoo Lee 1.100 OPS
- Willy Adames 1.017 OPS
- Bryce Eldridge .931 OPS
- Luis Arraez .930 OPS
- Casey Schmitt .898 OPS
You know by now that Miles Mikolas can get hit around. He's followed an opener the last four outings, but he's still throwing as many innings as they can reasonably let him. The Nats know the guy is bad (6.07 ERA, 2.24 HR/9), but you have to play 162 games and get 27 outs in most of them, so sometimes you just need a body up there who can throw it over the plate.
Mikolas is impressively bad at this point in his career, though. 14 homers allowed. Two on his four-seam, seven on his sinker, two on his slider, two on his changeup, one on a sweeper. He has allowed a .352 xwOBA with a 14.7% K%. There's no better pitcher to face.
Slight downgrade since this game is in AT&T Park, where it's tough to hit homers. There have been 1.68 home runs per game hit in AT&T Park this year, the third-lowest number in the league. Lefties have a 25% HR/Brl in San Francisco this year. It's very tough to exit the yard as a southpaw hitter in SF.
The hitter target to me is Willy Adames. Over his last 100 PAs, he's hitting .291/.354/.663 with a 23% K% and a 10.8% BRl%. The xwOBA is up there at .348. He's been awesome for about a month now, really shaking off that slow start. Six of his eight homers have come on the road, so that speaks to the tough home park factor.
We can get some correlation going with the Giants against Mikolas by picking off a couple of the guys in the heart of the Giants lineup for over 1.5 H+R+RBI.
- Jung Hoo Lee Over 1.5 HRR (-150)
- Willy Adames Over 1.5 HRR (-104)
- Luis Arraez Over 1.5 HRR (-144)
The Giants are a -163 favorite on the moneyline. That's pretty juiced up, but I expected it to be a little bit worse than that.
Pick: Giants Moneyline (-163)
Brewers vs Athletics Picks
I don't fully understand how Kyle Harrison has done what he's done this year. He struck out 12 in his last start to get to a 32% K% on the year. This despite 59% usage of his four-seam fastball which grades out about average in Stuff+ models.
The tunneling, command, and deception must all be near perfect for this guy to be doing what he's done. I do think harder times are ahead for the guy; you just don't see heavy strikeout rates from pitchers like this very often.
But my attempts to go against him in fantasy leagues, DFS, and betting have mostly failed. I do think the Athletics can get him out of the ballpark once or twice tonight. The game's in Sacramento, where it's pretty easy to hit homers. Harrison's 35% GB% shows you that the ball is being elevated on the somewhat rare occasion a guy gets a ball into play.
On the other side is a great matchup for the Brewers. Jeffrey Springs has really struggled against right-handed pitchers, having allowed ten homers to them already. That's a homer in 4.7% of their trips to the plate. With that going on, plus the ballpark, we're on the hunt for Brewers righties who can lift the ball.
That leads us right to Jackson Chourio and his 33% FB% on the year. His price on DraftKings is ridiculous at +265, though. So go line shopping there; maybe some other books aren't being so tough. I expected to get at least +375 or something.
Pick: Chourio Homer (+265), Athletics Over 4.5 Team Runs (-115)
Anderson's MLB Picks and Predictions for Monday, June 8
Follow me in the Action Network App for additional bet notifications.
- Will Warren Under 4.5 Strikeouts (-147), Daniel Schneemann Over 1.5 Total Bases (+212)
- Phillies vs Blue Jays Under 7.5 Runs (-112)
- Angels Moneyline (+109)
- Giants Moneyline (-163)
- Chourio Homer (+265), Athletics Over 4.5 Team Runs (-115)
