Welcome to Opening Pitch, our daily column that you'll find throughout the 2024 MLB season.
The goal for Opening Pitch is to highlight top daily projection edges for MLB moneylines and totals, share favorite bets and provide some betting notes and analysis.
You can find expert projections for every MLB game on Friday in the Action App (on both the PRO Projections tab and the game pages) and our Projections Hub.
You can also shop for the best lines on our MLB Odds page.
Here are my favorite bets for Saturday, July 20.
MLB Predictions Saturday | 3 Moneyline Picks & Previews
| Padres Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-1.5 +150 | 7.5 -125o / 105u | -115 |
| Guardians Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+1.5 -178 | 7.5 -125o / 105u | -105 |
RHP Dylan Cease (SD) vs. RHP Gavin Williams (CLE)
Hello, it is I — the Dylan Cease fader — back to once again fade Dylan Cease on Saturday.
It's not as if either of these teams are hitting the ball particularly well at the moment, sitting inside the bottom five of the league in wRC+ over the course of this month, so that's why I'm choosing to go with an easily stylistic advantage here in this one.
Cease, as we've come to know over the years, is heavily reliant upon strikeouts. He's quite good at racking them up, doing so at a near-32% clip this year, but he's once again put himself in some prickly positions when he does allow the ball to come back in play.
His .216 Expected Batting Average (xBA) is more than acceptable, but we've seen a dramatic jump to .398 in his Expected Slugging (xSLG), which is just about even with the league average — and even worse than his slightly concerning .373 career mark.
We know one thing to be abundantly clear about the Guardians, and that's that they will not strike out. They've done so in under 20% of their plate appearances this season, good for fourth-best in the game, and while they've struggled lately, they've maintained that ability and then some with a 17.9% strikeout rate this month.
The Guardians have packed a bit stronger of a punch at the dish this year than in seasons' past and should be more than capable of doing damage against a fly-ball pitcher in their newfound hitter's park in Cleveland. They're sporting a slightly better OPS against fly-ball types, and with the ability to keep Cease's strikeout total down and put the ball into play, good things are bound to happen.
I do also like the young, talented Gavin Williams here, given he's shown significant improvements in xBA over his last two starts as he's accepted his fate as a contact-oriented pitcher at this point in his career.
The Padres will keep the ball out of the air and they have done little damage in the power department over the last few weeks, leading me to think that this should be yet another spot to fade Cease at a generous price.
Bet: Guardians ML -105 (Caesars) | Play to -115
St. Louis Cardinals vs. Atlanta Braves (Game 2)
| Cardinals Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+1.5 -210 | 8.5 -110o / -110u | +100 |
| Braves Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-1.5 +175 | 8.5 -110o / -110u | -120 |
RHP Sonny Gray (STL) vs. RHP Bryce Elder (ATL)
We were supposed to see Sonny Gray take aim at a struggling Braves offense, but after some rain we'll have to wait until Saturday to see the veteran righty pitch in Atlanta.
The handicap here remains the same, as I wrote on Friday. Atlanta's gone through an incredibly rough stretch at the dish over the course of July, striking out 26.2% of the time, and it continues to be a team which will live and die by the fly ball. That should put Gray in a fantastic spot, given he's been striking out batters left and right and pitching to a handsome 45.8% ground-ball rate.
Atlanta's just 19th in OPS to ground-ball types like Gray, in contrast to its 13th-ranked OPS against fly-ball arms, which comes with a 40-point jump in slugging percentage. The strikeouts in chorus with the less-than-advantageous matchup with a launch-angle avoider should firmly tilt the scales toward St. Louis.
If you liked the Cardinals against the promising Spencer Schwellenbach, too, then you'll really love them against Bryce Elder. Yes, they're technically a hair better against fly-ball pitchers and Elder attempts to record most of his outs on the ground, but Elder's allowed a generous .283 xBA and will be pitching to one of the hottest teams in baseball — one that owns a top-10 wRC+ this month.
There are umpteen reasons to believe in the Cardinals against almost any pitcher, so one who's been hit this hard might not stand a chance given Gray should be tossing up plenty of zeroes against the struggling Braves. The Cardinals aren't being treated fairly enough.
Bet: Cardinals ML +100 (Caesars) | Play to -112
| Astros Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
+1.5 -225 | 7 -110o / -110u | -105 |
| Mariners Odds | ||
|---|---|---|
| Spread | Total | Moneyline |
-1.5 +185 | 7 -110o / -110u | -115 |
LHP Framber Valdez (HOU) vs. RHP George Kirby (SEA)
The Astros may have taken the first game of this series, but we saw them score just three runs on six hits as they continue struggling to make their mark at the plate in July.
The task was already a tall one in the hellacious T-Mobile Park given Houston's been putting the ball in the air at an inordinate clip this month, and now they'll have to face arguably the best pitcher on this loaded Seattle staff in George Kirby.
Houston's seen a slight uptick in strikeouts along with the increase in fly balls, which should play right into Kirby's hands given those are two frequent outcomes against him. He flaunts his fastball just as much as Luis Castillo, who the Astros saw on Friday, and not only have the Astros fallen off a cliff in run value against that pitch this month, but they're also going to see more velocity out of Kirby on Saturday.
I do not like the way the Astros are hitting at the moment, and while I pretty much have never liked the way the Mariners hit, the one thing that can really bail them out is a ground-ball machine like Framber Valdez.
When forced to abandon their incredibly dumb fly-ball strategy, which has come along with the highest strikeout rate in baseball, the Mariners have actually looked like an average team at the plate. They're hitting 18 points better in this split with a 25-point jump in on-base percentage, which is also due in part to the fact that ground-ball pitchers generally pitch to fewer strikeouts.
Valdez's strikeout rate has fallen over four points to put him well below the league average, and his xBA has risen from .227 in 2022 to .252 in 2023 and .260 this season. He's very much a pitcher on the decline, allowing incredibly quality contact, and I think that even this horrid Mariners offense will look good against him.
Seattle should muster up a few rallies against Valdez, and that should be enough behind yet another gem from Kirby versus a team deprived of answers offensively right now.
Bet: Mariners ML -115 (BetMGM & Caesars) | Play to -130
