Giants vs. Diamondbacks
After the afternoon slate , we continue our look at Saturday’s MLB games by providing best bets for the evening matchups.
Dive in below to see our MLB best bets for Saturday evening.
Saturday Evening MLB Best Bets
The team logos in the table below represent each of the matchups that our MLB betting staff is targeting from today’s slate of games. Click the team logos for one the matchups below to navigate to a specific bet discussed in this article.
Pirates vs. Orioles
Saturday, May 13 7:05 p.m. ET MLB.tv Under 8.5 Runs (-110)
Despite consistently avoiding hard contact and outperforming his K-BB% peripherals, Tyler Wells is still being undervalued in the betting market. Wells is excellent at generating pop-ups, and the projection systems continue to project him for a .275 BABIP going forward.
In his career, which is now 200 major league innings, he’s kept a BABIP of .224.
You can say that’s somewhat unsustainable — and I would agree — but even if you regress it towards league average, he’s clearly better than most at controlling contact quality.
Wells has an xERA of 4.15 and has improved his strikeout rate. He’s also trimmed his walk rate thus far in 2023.
He’s countered by Roansy Contreras, who has improved his Stuff+ by using his slider more often. It’s his best pitch, and it’s helped him make up for a small loss in fastball velocity year over year.
Both offenses are league average or worse against right-handed pitching this year, so I’d bet the under down to 8.
What is QuickSlip? QuickSlip is an Action Network feature that allows users to automatically pre-load their bet slip at FanDuel Sportsbook.
Giants vs. Diamondbacks
Saturday, May 13 8:10 p.m. ET MLB.tv Over 7.5 Runs (-118)
One of my favorite bets on the slate for Saturday is for the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks to go over 7.5 runs at -118 on FanDuel Sportsbook.
Zac Gallen is obviously having a great season for the Diamondbacks so far, but he won’t pitch the entire game.
The Giants have also been one of the top offenses this season away from home. Entering Saturday, San Francisco is fifth in all of baseball in runs per game on the road (5.22).
Entering play Saturday, Arizona is sixth in all of baseball in runs per game at home (5.18).
Anthony Desclafani will start for the Giants and while he has a 2.80 ERA on the season, his xFIP is much higher at 3.61. He also allowed five earned runs to the Nationals in his last start.
Arizona also has the fifth-worst bullpen ERA in all of baseball at 4.73.
I really like this over because we get two good offenses in a good environment, and we have a matchup at a very low number.
Source: The Action Network
