We have a typical schedule of 15 Major League Baseball betting matchups on Sunday, with 14 afternoon games plus Sunday Night Baseball.
We have three plays for Sunday that we feel hold great betting value after looking at the MLB odds posted by the top-rated sportsbooks. Our second selection comes in the most marquee matchup of the weekend, as our proprietary model has a best bet on a side when the Braves visit the Dodgers.
For our other best bets check out:
MLB Best Bet: Braves ML (-129) at Heritage Sports (visit our Heritage Sports Review)
Atlanta Braves vs. Los Angeles Dodgers
Sunday, May 05, 2024 – 04:10 PM ET at Dodger Stadium
In a game with two pitchers that have deceiving ERAs in opposite directions, we are backing Max Fried and the Braves as road favorites over James Paxton and the Dodgers.
Worst xFIP in Majors
Paxton comes in at 3-0 with a 3.51 ERA through five starts. While that sounds great, he also has the highest xFIP in the Major Leagues among pitchers with at least 20 innings pitched at 6.23! That makes him an obvious candidate for highly negative regression in upcoming starts, which may begin today against an Atlanta offense that has been pummeling left-handers with a wRC+ of 120.
Paxton has somehow benefitted from a lucky 82.1% strand rate despite having a higher walk rate (7.71/9) than strikeout rate (5.26/9). He has also allowed a low .253 BABIP despite a bad soft/hard contact ratio of 18.2% / 35.1%.
Add in a huge dip in velocity to 93.9 MPH from 95.3 MPH last year leading to a horrible swinging-strike rate of 7.6%, and James’s luck does not figure to continue.
Better Than ERA
Fried enters at 2-0 with a 4.02 ERA through six starts, but he is the opposite of Paxton in that he has a very good 3.28 xFIP that belies the ERA. Also unlike Paxton, Max has been unlucky with a stand rate of 65.3%. So, we see this matchup as a pitching mismatch in favor of the pitcher with the higher ERA.
Fried has never been a huge strikeout guy, but no other pitcher “throws grounders” as well as he does. He has had a groundball rate of over 50% every season since entering the majors in 2017, and he currently leads the league this year at a whopping 67.0%. Sure that figure is unsustainable, but Max also has a higher soft-contact rate (19.6%) than a hard-contact rate (18.5%).
MLB Best Bet
So, with Fried being the much better starter Sabermetric-wise despite the higher ERA, bet the Braves as road chalk Sunday.
Predicted Score: Braves 7 – Dodgers 4
MLB Best Bet: Braves ML (-129) at Heritage Sports
*The line and/or odds on picks in this article might have moved since the content was commissioned. For updated line movements, visit BMR’s free betting odds product.
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