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.
Projection guru Jon Anderson has that job for Monday, March 11.
MLB Predictions, Picks for Monday, May 11
Follow Anderson in the Action Network App for additional bet notifications.
- Yankees ML
- Rays vs Blue Jays Over 7.5 Runs
Yankees vs Orioles Picks
Ryan Weathers is a joy to watch pitch. A shorter frame lefty with a 96-98 mph fastball and a really good changeup. And the Yankees are enjoying his services this year. He's given them a 3.03 ERA with a 1.19 WHIP on an elite 22% K-BB%.
He'll get the nod here after being delayed a bit by illness. But even with some delays and slight injuries along the way, he's thrown at least 86 pitches in every start since his first one. So we should get a full allotment of pitches for Weathers.
The Orioles are a bottom-10 lineup in the league against lefties. The best way to measure that, in my book, is by using expected wOBA over expectation.This is a stat I developed over at MLB Data Warehouse. It takes xwOBA, a stat you're probably familiar with, and adjusts it for the pitch quality faced.
So if a team is mashing fastballs right down the middle, that's accounted for. It's a strong stat with tons of predictive power. The Orioles have a -.034 xwOBA OE against left-handed pitching this year. Only eight teams are worse. The O's are also in the bottom ten in strikeout rate against southpaws.
So it's a great spot for Weathers, and he gets the advantage of a positive park shift pitching in Camden Yards. Weathers has pitched extremely well this year, as we've detailed, and his win chances are helped by his counterpart, Brandon Young.
This is not a guy that Baltimore was hoping to have to count on as part of their rotation, but here we are. Young sports a 6.5% K-BB% (15% K%, 8.5% BB%), and he's not a guy getting ground balls either (38% GB%). Against the Yankees, who lead the league in homers and barrel rate.
Pick: Yankees ML
Rays vs Blue Jays Picks
This is the same pitching matchup I lost you money on about a week ago! It's Drew Rasmussen visiting the Blue Jays and Kevin Gausman after those two pitched to a 4-3 Rays win in Tampa.
So these teams are familiar with the opposing pitcher. They've seen a lot of each other in recent years playing in this division, and this matchup happened just six days ago, as we mentioned.
I checked the data, and a pitcher's ERA increases by +0.05 points when they're facing the same team a second time consecutively. That's a small increase, but it's an increase. Their strikeout rate ticks down slightly as well, and we have six years' worth of data in here, so it's not a super small sample.
They're both super contact-heavy offenses that can run the bases. I'm betting on familiarity and BABIP to favor the offenses.
Pick: Over 7.5 Runs
Jon Anderson's MLB Predictions and Picks for Monday, May 11
Follow me in the Action Network App for additional bet notifications.
- Yankees ML
- Rays vs Blue Jays Over 7.5 Runs
