Saturday MLB Betting Picks & Predictions: Our 2 Favorite Plays, Including Mets-Blue Jays & Brewers-White Sox

It's a weekend of meaningful baseball, as some of the league's best teams face off against each other — including White Sox-Brewers and Mets-Blue Jays.

We're targeting both those marquee matchups in two of our best bets of the day.

MLB Odds & Picks

White Sox at Brewers

Brad Cunningham: This is about as good of a starting pitching matchup as you'll see all season long. Carlos Rodon is having the best season of his career, posting a 2.26 xERA and 2.92 xFIP. He has a ridiculous 13.03 K/9 and he's considerably lowered his BB/9 and HR/9 rate from years past.

One of the main reasons for his improvement is the velocity on his fastball on average is up 3.1 mph from last season, which has allowed him to dominate with it as opponents only have a .225 wOBA against it. However, this is going to be a very difficult matchup for him because not only do the Brewers hit left handed pitching really well (.315 wOBA), but they also have a +19.4 run value against fastballs.

If it wasn't for Jacob deGrom, Corbin Burnes might be the front runner for NL CY Young award because he's putting up video games type numbers. He has the second best xERA in baseball at 1.78. He has a 13.13 K/9 rate, 1.50 BB/9 rate, and a 0.28 HR/9 so his control has been ridiculous.

He has a tremendous matchup against the White Sox tonight because he goes to his cutter more than any other pitch (52.4% of the time) and that is the pitch Chicago has had the most trouble with this season, as they have a -9.7 run value against them.

Additionally his main two offspeed pitches of slider and curveball has allowed a total of 11 hits this season and have over a 48% whiff rate.

I have the Brewers projected at -161, so I think there is plenty of value on them at -122 at FanDuel and would play it up to -140.

Blue Jays at Mets

Sean Zerillo: Taijuan Walker (4.06 xERA, 4.08 xFIP, 4.27 SIERA) has been just as effective this season as Hyun-Jin Ryu (4.12 xERA, 3.97 xFIP, 4.20 SIERA), and my model gives the Mets a slightly better bullpen projection (3.85 vs. 3.91 Model Weighted ERA) on Saturday night too.

While Toronto has a slight offensive advantage in my model (by about 0.3 runs per game), the Mets are a better defensive team (39 Defensive Runs Saved, 3rd in MLB) than the Blue Jays (16 DRS, 12th), which helps to negate that offensive discrepancy.

After accounting for home-field advantage, I projected the Mets as favorites in both halves on Saturday night and would bet their F5 moneyline down to +110 and their whole game moneyline at any plus money price.

Ryu's expected indicators have all regressed by a half to a full run relative to his past few seasons — while his strikeout rate has fallen by 6% – and I think you will continue to find value betting against the former KBO MVP.