Atlanta Braves at Cleveland Indians – Sunday, 4:10pm (PST)

After a successful debut with NFL Prop Bets, I’m back for the MLB season taking a slightly different approach to betting these games. You can find one of the most thorough daily MLB write ups here on this site from Adam Burke so I’ll be doing something a bit different.

Every weekend, I’ll be posting a play from Sunday Night Baseball looking along the edges for opportunities in the prop betting market. Some good bets can be found looking at 1st inning scoring, 1st five innings sides or totals and looking at individual player props. Let’s get creative and have some fun!

We’re back in the black baby! Week 3 was a successful one, going 6-2 making some cash and putting us in profit for the year (13W-11L +$245)

Holiday Easter isn’t going to slow us action junkies down, so keep reading and hopefully we’ll find a couple winners to distract you from having to discuss your career ambitions with your father in law over some lame ass dried ham.

This week feels eerily similar to last week’s write up where I’m leaning towards a pitcher’s duel but again don’t have much faith in the bullpens so I’m a bit cautious. Atlanta, specifically used up 11 bullpen innings yesterday in their double header compared to Cleveland’s 4.2 so if Max Fried doesn’t go 6+ innings then they’ll be in trouble. This is one of the reasons I like Fried to get some K’s as I think they’ll leave him in there as long as possible and the Indians rank 8th in the league for the most strike outs. More stats you say? Well Cleveland also ranks 28th in OPS and 27th in BAA versus lefties so there’s some reason to think they’ll struggle today. I know, I know….Lindor is back and they scored 15 runs yesterday (2 games) but I’ll still be siding with the lefty here for a good outing.

On the other side, we have Shane Bieber, who has been solid this year up against an above average hitting line up in Atlanta. The thing to note here is that the Braves have crushed lefties this year (#2 in OPS) but have been just average versus right handed pitching. (Hint: The Biebs is a righty)

In 3 starts this year, his stat line looks pretty impressive (2W, 19IP, 9H, 3ER, 6BB, 20k) and it actually looks pretty similar to Max Fried’s (2W, 18IP, 13H, 2ER, 3BB, 12K in his 3 starts) This combination of solid starting pitching and the fact that the Braves aren’t as good versus righties and that the Indians struggle versus lefties is part of the reason I like the 1st 5 innings under.

I’ll leave you with a PSA for future parents out there….Don’t name your kid something that you don’t like the shortened nick name for. I recently came across a child named Maximillian where the Father corrected me when I called him Max. Just ridiculous!

Happy Easter and cheers to a good performance from Max Fried tonight.

BETS:

Max Fried over 4.5 Strikeouts (-115) 1 unit
1st 5 Innings under 4 runs (-105) 1 unit
Markakis over L. Martin – Hits/R/RBIs (-115) 1 unit
Acuna over J. Ramirez – Hits/R/RBI’s (-115) 0.5 unit
No score in the first inning (-120) 0.5 unit
Total hits/runs/errors under 25.5 (-115) 0.5 unit
Cleveland to win the 2nd half (Innings 6-9) (+110) 0.5 unit
Double Result (ATL to win the 1st half, CLE to win the 2nd half (+650) 0.25 unit
Carlos Santana Home Run (+500) 0.25 unit

For record keeping, I’ll be using a 1 to 3 unit bet stake where 1 unit will equal $100 and I’ll try to stick to commonly found bets/lines from one of six offshore books. I’ll take the vig into account during my tracking so on a -110 line, I’ll be betting $110 to win $100.

2019 MLB Record = 13W-11L / + $245