MLB Best Bets Today March 28:
Day 2 (or Day 4, I guess) of the MLB season features a much smaller card. We had zero postponements and only one notable rain delay on Thursday, but teams build in a day for bad weather in case the Opening Day festivities get washed out or snowed out. As a result, we go from 14 games yesterday down to nine games today, with the majority of them at indoor venues.
It was good to have baseball back yesterday, but it was a reminder that what happened in the Spring may not be all that telling. Sonny Gray was objectively awful in Spring Training, but pitched well against the Twins. Garrett Crochet struck out 30 of the 66 batters he faced in Grapefruit League action, but struggled to get punchouts against the Rangers. Baseball is inherently a high-variance sport and we saw it on display already yesterday, on both an individual and team level.
It would be wise to check out my stats glossary, as you’ll see a lot of those terms and the application of them in my handicapping. Also, check out my 30 MLB Team Previews and my list of roster updates since the previews are about a month or so old.
This article will run Monday-Saturday and I’ll write up a standalone preview for Sunday Night Baseball on Sundays. This year, we’ll also have MLB best bets from Greg Peterson posted with overnight lines.
My tracking sheet is here. For transparency sake, I also have tracking for my three MLB seasons at VSiN (2024, 2023, 2022). This year, I intend to work in more props, derivatives, and maybe even some parlay bets to have a more diversified MLB portfolio and attack some different markets. What worked for me in the past has not worked as well the last two years, so I’m looking to make some changes and that includes my bet distribution by type and market.
Odds are from DraftKings Sportsbook because they are widely available to readers and because of some of our betting tools. I highly, highly, highly encourage you to shop around for the best lines. Sometimes they will be at DK. Oftentimes, they will not. Do what you can to shop around and get as much bang for your buck as possible.
Feel free to use my opinions and thoughts, as well as our suite of MLB Betting Tools, including the DraftKings and Circa Betting Splits, Steve Makinen’s Daily Ratings, Greg Peterson’s Daily Lines, the 1st 5 Innings Analyzer, and Umpire Stats.
Here are the MLB best bets today for March 28:
Colorado Rockies at Tampa Bay Rays (-218, 8)
4:10 p.m. ET
The first regular season game for the Rays at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa features Kyle Freeland up against Ryan Pepiot. These were the only two teams to not play yesterday, as the bad-weather day wasn’t needed and interleague teams don’t play four-game series. So, they’ll start today instead on a warm, 80-degree day on the Gulf Coast.
Steinbrenner Field has similar dimensions to Yankee Stadium, meaning it is just 314 to RF and 318 to LF. That should elevate the power potential for the Rays, who have a lot of guys with holes in their swings, but also a lot of guys with raw power. I also believe that their lineup projects better against southpaws and they get one here today in Freeland, who had a 5.24 ERA with a 5.11 xERA and a 4.90 FIP last season.
Obviously he pitches at Coors Field, so the home/road splits are important, so that’s why it is interesting that he had a 5.98 ERA on the road with a .313/.346/.539 slash against. He struggled his way through the Spring in Arizona with a 7.71 ERA in three March outings. He had more swing-and-miss upside than usual, but allowed 13 runs on 15 hits. His 16.5% HR/FB% on the road last season is a concern and I find it even more concerning that he only allowed one homer in Cactus League play and still couldn’t get outs effectively.
Pepiot gets the nod for the Rays here. He’s a guy that owns a career 3.28 ERA with a 4.25 FIP, as he’s given up some homers in his 208.1 innings of work. Pepiot has allowed 30 HR over 36 starts and seven relief outings. He allowed eight homers in 58.1 innings on the road last season, where his pitcher slash numbers were +41, +32, and +49 (BA/OBP/SLG) compared to at home.
He tilts more to the fly ball side of the ledger in terms of his batted ball distribution, so I think the Rockies and other teams playing road games in Tampa will look to exploit that, given that the safety net of Tropicana Field is not an option anymore. That’s one of the top pitcher’s parks in baseball. Righties, especially, elevated the baseball against him and the Rockies have a fairly right-handed-heavy lineup.
We’ll see how Steinbrenner Field plays for its first MLB game, but this feels more like a total you’d have gotten for this pitching matchup at The Trop. Not an outdoor game with Yankee Stadium dimensions.
Pick: Over 8 (-102)
Baltimore Orioles at Toronto Blue Jays (-130, 8.5)
7:07 p.m. ET
Ageless wonder Charlie Morton will toe the rubber for the Orioles for the first time as the Baltimore lineup gets a familiar foe in Kevin Gausman and the Blue Jays. Baltimore rolled to an easy 12-2 win by playing Home Run Derby to spoil Opening Day in The Six and will look for another victory here today to get off to a strong 2-0 start.
I’m really intrigued to see Morton with the O’s, who were already fourth in curveball percentage last season, but now added a CB artist in the 41-year-old right-hander. I would presume we see some increased cutter usage from Morton, as the Orioles, like so many MLB teams, have had an uptick with that pitch in recent years. Morton’s fastball was objectively bad the last two seasons for the Braves, grading -11.4 in 2023 and -11.3 in 2024 in Pitching Runs per Statcast. The Orioles were 21st in four-seam fastball usage last season.
Much has been made of the return of Gausman’s velocity, as he was said to add a good amount of muscle over the offseason. I’ve seen some interesting (and way over my head) discussions on X regarding some subtle changes to his mechanics and how he’s using his lower body. It does seem like his delivery is more compact, which has cut down on his Extension. As it is, he had slightly above average Extension, but he’s likely to counterfeit some of the velo gains if he’s coming from a different arm angle and slot.
Corbin Young of BaseballHQ also wrote about how his splitter had less downward movement in the Spring ($). In other words, he’s a guy tweaking a ton of things. And he’s doing so against one of the league’s most potent lineups, even a watered-down one without Gunnar Henderson. Gausman did dominate in his final minor league game tune-up before breaking camp, but he had trouble locating and putting away MLB hitters. He also had major pitch efficiency issues, needing 53 pitches to get eight outs on March 10 and 67 pitches to get nine outs on March 17. That tells me that there are a lot of foul balls and fewer swings and misses in there. In fact, he only had three Whiffs in 25 swings against the Yankees in that St. Patrick’s Day effort.
Add in the fact that the Orioles have one of the game’s best bullpens and that they had a light day thanks to yesterday’s blowout and I like Baltimore at plus money here.
Pick: Orioles +110
Boston Red Sox (-112, 9) at Texas Rangers
8:05 p.m. ET
We’ll see if Jack Leiter can build off of the exceptional Spring Training that he had for the Rangers, but this is a one-sided handicap for me centered around Tanner Houck. Houck, who fatigued in the second half last season, did not have a very promising month of March. His velocity is up and his pitch movement numbers were up based on his own quotes after talking to pitching coach Andrew Bailey, but he allowed 29 hits in 13.2 innings and only recorded seven strikeouts.
Hitters are a little bit behind right now, but that means fouling off a good number of pitches. Even against flamethrower Garrett Crochet yesterday, the Rangers had 21 foul balls, driving Crochet’s pitch count up despite a strong ratio of balls to strikes. Even Nathan Eovaldi surrendered 19 foul balls over his six innings.
So, even if the Rangers aren’t getting hits – and I feel like they will – they’re going to be fouling pitches off to run up the pitch count for Houck. The bullpen wasn’t terribly taxed for the Red Sox yesterday, so Alex Cora can go to them as soon as he wants to and it may make a lot of sense, given that Houck allowed a .281/.356/.409 slash the third time through the lineup and had a 5.83 ERA last season.
I like a lot of the pieces and parts of this Rangers offense, including Joc Pederson, who has a prolonged track record of hitting righties. I think Houck struggles to settle in a bit here and would be surprised if he’s able to go Over 16.5 Outs Recorded.
Pick: Tanner Houck (BOS) Under 16.5 Outs Recorded (-115)
Atlanta Braves at San Diego Padres (-142, 7)
9:40 p.m. ET
The Braves and Padres play Game 2 of their opening weekend set, as we’ll see Reynaldo Lopez for the Braves and Dylan Cease for the Padres. I’ve been trying to closely follow pitchers that had a massive innings increase from 2023 to 2024 and will be looking to go against some of those guys early in the season.
While not all of their stat lines looked bad in terms of Opening Day starters, we did see a few guys that weren’t quite as dominant as you would expect or maybe not as on point with their control. Lopez fits into the category of one of the guys that I am looking to fade. After an increased workload, followed by all of the training done to build up the arm for the season, some guys can definitely have a bit of a dead arm period where their command or velocity may not be where they want it to be.
Lopez is a guy that had a notable velocity decrease in Spring Training and actually struggled so much in his March 7 start that the Braves wanted him in a more controlled environment with a minor league start in his next outing. In his final Spring tune-up, he threw six shutout innings, but the context is important. He gave up 11 hard-hit balls and his velo was well below his 2024 readings. He only had three Whiffs out of 36 swings and zero on the fastball. I think he’s dealing with a lot of things right now and now faces a Padres lineup that I expect to hit right-handed pitching very well.
Dylan Cease had a solid Spring with a 3.26 ERA and he struck out 26 batters over 19.1 innings. There aren’t a lot of stats that matter in Grapefruit or Cactus League play, but K/BB ratio is a metric that stabilizes very quickly. Cease had a 26/6 K/BB ratio over his five starts. Meanwhile, Lopez only had five strikeouts over his 13 innings.
I like the Padres here at -142 for the game. They did use six relievers yesterday because Michael King really struggled (another guy with a big innings increase from 2023 to 2024), but I’m confident they’ll figure it out. I also like Padres -0.5 for the 1st 5 at +100 as a way to take advantage of the big edge I believe they have with Cease vs. Lopez. It is also a little bit of insurance if the bullpen does have problems bouncing back from yesterday’s workload.
Two waves of action, overnight and this morning, drove up the price on the Padres from -130 when I started writing to -142. Stiff price to lay, but I’m still on board. They also caused a move to the 1st 5 run line.
Picks: Padres -142; Padres 1st 5 -0.5 (+100)
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