With Thursday being a travel day for the MLB, there are only eight games on the slate. But that gives us a better chance to focus on a few MLB bets.
For this article, we will be providing the best MLB picks for today. Sign up on BetMGM Sportsbook to unlock a welcome offer for these wagers.
Best MLB Bets for Thursday, June 12th
Make each bet separately or try to combine the markets to create a parlay.
Nationals-Mets Results in 8+ Runs (-115)
One big reason runs are projected to be scored in this one is the weather, which is conducive for hitting and runs tonight. The temperatures in New York are going to be in the 90s, and hotter temps always favor the bats. It helps with carry, and the pitchers’ fatigue in the heat is always a factor as well.
From there, on paper this seems like a concerning spot for the Nationals bats, but they are a good look to put some runs on the board. Their team total over 2.5 would be a play, but the odds are too high to make that playable (-180 or worse).
Kodai Senga is on the mound for the Mets, who is thought of as an ace, but he struggles against lefties, and the Nats have some good lefties to throw at him. On the year, Senga has a wOBA of .341 against LHH, with a 1.55 WHIP and 4.55 FIP.
For context, against RHH those numbers are a low .227 wOBA, 0.84 WHIP and 3.67 FIP. Between James Wood, C.J. Abrams, Josh Bell, Robert Hassell and Luis Garcia, the Nats have five left-handed batters with a barrel rate 10% or higher against RHP.
As for the Mets, that is a much easier sell with all the power they have at the plate between the big names of Pete Alonso, Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor, along with the red-hot Brandon Nimmo.
Runs should not be hard to come by in New York tonight. We start our MLB betting picks with a high-scoring game in Queens.
Astros Cover the -1.5 Spread (+100)
The pitching discrepancy in this one is the reason this is a play. On the Astros side, Framber Valdez is on the mound, who has been awesome this year.
All his numbers across the board show a dominant pitcher, with an ERA of 3.07, xERA of 3.63, FIP (field-independent pitching) of 3.08 and an xFIP of 3.03. That puts him with the 16th-best FIP and 11th-best xFIP in the MLB. Even his SIERA, which is essentially a metric that calculates the quality of the batted balls allowed by the pitcher, is a very low 3.25 (16th-best in the MLB).
The White Sox, meanwhile, are a bottom eight offense in the MLB against left-handed pitching by most advanced metrics (wRC+, wOBA, wRAA, OPS).
On the other side of the mound we have Davis Martin, who is not quite as good as his 3.62 ERA shows. He has one of the biggest gaps between his ERA and his FIP (almost one full run), with a below average xFIP of 4.24 and SIERA of 4.33.
Look for the Astros, who put up 10 runs yesterday, to stay hot at the plate. Make more MLB bets on BetMGM after taking a swing in the daily free-to-play game
