Wednesday MLB Best Bets: Expert Picks Today (April 3)

The MLB regular season continues on Wednesday with all 30 teams in action. There are 10 day games this afternoon, including both matchups featured by our experts below.

Find our experts' Wednesday MLB Best Bets for April 3 below.

MLB Best Bets

The team logos in the table below represent each of the matchups that our MLB betting staff is targeting from today's slate of games. Click on the team logos for any of the matchups below to navigate to a specific bet discussed in this article.

By Kenny Ducey

Nerves may have gotten the best of A.J. Puk last week when he made his first career big-league start with his parents watching in the crowd. The former top-10 pick walked six batters and recorded just six outs, something that was frankly stunning.

Puk emerged as one of the best high-leverage relievers in the National League a year ago, pitching to a solid .209 Expected Batting Average and striking out 32.2% of the batters he faced. In doing so, he walked just 5.4% of them, continuing with an improving trend over the last two years as he’s overcome injury to make it through two full seasons.

Given Puk’s great strides in the walk department and has incredible strikeout potential, which he flashed when he started four games this spring and allowed just two earned runs with four walks and 23 strikeouts, he’s an excellent buy-low candidate on Wednesday.

The Angels were already a middling offense last season prior to losing Shohei Ohtani, and so far this year things have gotten much worse with that loss and some head-scratching lineup decisions from new skipper Ron Washington. This is not an offense worth trusting, and this is a great bounce-back spot for Puk.

On the flip side, Patrick Sandoval was absolutely dreadful on MLB Opening Day and will now face a Marlins lineup which raked against lefties, relative to their overall offensive numbers in 2023. They return their core players this season and should be ready to feast on a soft-tosser with poor strikeout and walk numbers who has had a myriad of issues getting outs via contact dating back to last spring. I'll play the Marlins to -115 on the moneyline.

Pick: Marlins ML -108 (Play to -115)

By Tony Sartori

When playing Arizona in the F5 3-way market, you their moneyline is priced at +120 instead of -115 in the head-to-head market. If the game is tied after five innings, then the wager is graded as a loss instead of a push, but I think there is more value in the +120 number in the 3-way market as left-hander Carlos Rodon gets the ball for New York.

Rodon is coming off a terrible 2023 campaign, and I do not think he will make much of a turnaround in 2024. Last season, he posted a 3-8 record with a fade-worthy 6.85 ERA and 1.45 WHIP through 14 starts.

His underlying metrics were just as poor, ranking in the 35th percentile or lower in xERA, xBA, Average Exit Velocity, BB%, Barrel% and Hard-Hit%. I want to sell high on Rodon after he just allowed one run in his first start of 2024, a result that was more fortunate than it should have been.

He posted a troubling 1.85 WHIP through those 4.1 innings pitched, and opposing hitters produced a .306 xBA, .379 xwOBA and .452 xSLG. There are also some troubling trends with Rodon from that outing, given that his velocity is down compared to 2023.

Meanwhile, right-hander Merrill Kelly gets the ball for the DBacks, and he is coming off a performance where he allowed just one run on three hits through nearly seven innings pitched. He was also better than Rodon last year both statistically and analytically, ranking higher in ERA, WHIP, xERA, xBA and Barrel%.

Finally, the Diamondbacks' bats have gotten off to a better start this season than the Yankees' bats, ranking higher in runs scored per game, hits per game, BA, OBP, SLG, OPS and home runs.

Pick: Diamondbacks 3-Way F5 ML (+120)