MLB Bets: Monday, April 3

Just one bet yesterday, but one win (Yankees -135 over Giants). I normally go to town on the board on Sundays, but there wasn’t much I liked, so I did the smart thing and backed Jhony Brito against Ross Stripling.

Here are the bets for Monday, April 3.

Mets-Brewers Under 9 (-120)
The Brewers have surprisingly good numbers against Carlos Carrasco, and the Mets have poor numbers against Freddy Peralta. I wouldn’t feel comfortable backing the Brewers on the money line because I don’t trust the Brewers, but I do like the under here and am surprised it’s 9.

The Mets’ offense is pretty blah to begin with and given their lack of success against Peralta (6-for-43 with 18 strikeouts) and given the lack of talent in the Brewers’ lineup, this projects to be a low-scoring game.

Yankees -170 over Phillies
It was odd when the Yankees didn’t touch the -200s as the home team in any game against the Giants over the weekend, and they don’t touch it again on Monday against the Phillies.

The Yankees have very strong numbers against Taijuan Walker, especially Aaron Judge (4-for-11 with four home runs) and Giancarlo Stanton (4-for-10 with one home run). Even Aaron Hicks (4-for-11 with one home run) hits Walker well (and Hicks will make his 2023 starting debut on Monday night after complaining about his playing time on Sunday).

The Phillies haven’t really seen Nestor Cortes. Just 17 plate appearances for active Phillies and just one single and one walk in those 17 plate appearances. Not a strong sample size, but not great for the Phillies either.

The Phillies blew a five-run lead on Opening Day, allowed 16 runs in their next game and then scored one run on Sunday Night Baseball last night. They are 0-3, having been outscored 29-11 against the Rangers.

I don’t expect the Yankees to sweep the Phillies, but I do expect them to win on Monday with the edge on the mound in Cortes’ season debut.

Rays -180 over Nationals
Astros -230 over Tigers
+123
As I wrote over the weekend, I will bet against the Nationals nearly every day of this season, and what better way to do than to build a parlay against them with the Astros over the Tigers, another very, very bad team. The sample sizes for Drew Rasmussen against the Nationals, Trevor Williams against the Rays, Hunter Brown against the Tigers and Matthew Boyd against the Astros aren’t all that large, so I’m going to with the simple fact that the Rays take care of business against bad teams (look what they did to the Tigers in the first three games of the season), and Boyd will be forced to face a nearly all-right-handed Astros lineup. The only lefties he will face are Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker and neither of them care which arm any pitchers throws with.

Here are the bets from yesterday.