The whole slate, ranked by how loudly the money disagrees with the crowd
| Game | Side the money likes | % of picks | % of money | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SF @ CLE | San Francisco +160 | 39 | 79 | +40 |
| TOR @ TB | Tampa Bay −170 | 50 | 67 | +17 |
| ATL @ CWS | Chi. White Sox −101 | 46 | 59 | +13 |
| LAA @ HOU | LA Angels +155 | 37 | 50 | +13 |
| ATH @ KC | Kansas City −143 | 53 | 63 | +10 |
| SEA @ MIL | Seattle +110 | 35 | 42 | +7 |
| NYY @ BAL | NY Yankees −125 | 62 | 67 | +5 |
| WSH @ TEX | Washington +135 | 40 | 44 | +4 |
| STL @ CIN | St. Louis −112 | 58 | 60 | +2 |
Covers consensus, captured 8:12–8:20 AM ET. The bottom four rows are noise and are treated as noise below.
St. Louis @ Cincinnati · 12:40 PM ET
The one real edge on paper is the starters — McGreevy has been more than a run better than Singer this season, and the line at −112 has priced almost none of it, which is usually a sign the market trusts the bullpen behind Singer more than the ERA suggests. Great American Ball Park at 76 degrees with a 3 mph wind blowing out is a mild nudge toward offence, and the total already sits at 9.0, the highest on the slate. Rain risk is 11% — effectively clear.
Splits: St. Louis 58% of picks, 60% of the money. A two-point gap is not a signal. The crowd and the cash are in the same place, which tells you the market is settled and there is nothing to fade or follow.
No lean. The pitching says St. Louis and the price says St. Louis, so there is nothing left to buy; the market has already made the argument we would make. We do not bet a conclusion we agree with at a price that reflects it.
San Francisco @ Cleveland · 1:10 PM ET
On the baseball this is straightforward and it favours Cleveland: better starter, home field, and an opponent that is 51-74 overall and 22-41 away from home. Williams has been the steadier arm all year. Progressive Field at 77 degrees with a 7 mph right-to-left wind and 9% precipitation is neutral weather that does nothing for either side.
Splits: San Francisco takes 39% of the picks and 79% of the money. Cleveland has 61% of the tickets and 21% of the dollars. That 40-point divergence is four times wider than anything else on this slate and it is the single largest we have recorded since we started tabling these. It is the textbook shape: a large number of small tickets on the home favourite, a small number of large ones on the road dog.
Lean: San Francisco moneyline +160, confidence 61. This rests on one thing and we are not going to dress it up as three. Every fundamental in the game points at Cleveland; the only argument for San Francisco is that the dollars are on it by a margin nothing else today comes close to. We hold at 61 rather than higher because a one-signal read on a 51-74 baseball team is exactly the sort of pick that looks brilliant when it lands and reckless when it does not, and because Covers' pool is smaller than a book's handle, so the 79% is directionally loud but not precisely the number we would have got from our usual source.
Toronto @ Tampa Bay · 1:10 PM ET
Bieber's 4.99 is the worst ERA of any starter on the nine-game slate, and Tampa Bay at 76-50 is the best team playing today. The Rays are home, in a dome, with no weather variable at all. Toronto is 62-66 and put six runs on this team last night, which is the argument for the visitors and also the reason the crowd is split.
Splits: the moneyline is a dead heat on tickets — 50/50 — while 67% of the money is on Tampa Bay, a 17-point divergence and the second-widest today. The total is the interesting counterpoint: 66% of picks are on the Over, comfortably the most one-sided total on the board, and the crowd is almost certainly chasing last night's ten runs.
Lean: Yandy Díaz Over 1.5 Bases +121 — published on today's MLB card, not here. We prefer the prop to the side. Tampa Bay at −170 asks you to lay a heavy price on a conclusion the money has already reached, whereas the prop takes the same read — Bieber is the weakest arm on the slate — at plus money. No team pick from this game.
Atlanta @ Chicago White Sox · 2:10 PM ET
A genuine pick'em on the number, which is odd on its face — Atlanta is 74-53 and Chicago 66-60 — and the reason is the starters are effectively identical, separated by 0.19 of an ERA. Rate Field at 74 degrees, no rain, an 8 mph left-to-right wind. Kay being left-handed matters for the Atlanta lineup, which projects four left-handed or switch bats in the top five.
Splits: the crowd is on Atlanta at 54% while 59% of the money is on Chicago — 13 points, and more importantly the two are on opposite sides rather than merely different intensities. That is a cleaner signal than a bigger gap in the same direction.
Lean: Chicago White Sox moneyline −101, confidence 58. The whole case is the direction of the divergence in a game the market cannot separate. There is no pitching edge underneath it and Atlanta is the better team by eight games in the standings, which is why this sits at 58 and not higher. If the money were on Atlanta we would have no lean here at all.
Athletics @ Kansas City · 2:10 PM ET
Dobnak's 1.73 ERA is the eye-catching number and it needs a sample warning attached to it: it comes off a 2-1 record and a workload small enough that one bad afternoon would move it by more than a run. Treat it as promising, not as a level. Jump at 4.50 is the more honestly-sampled arm and the worse one. Kauffman at 79 degrees with a 5 mph wind blowing in, which argues gently against the 62% of picks sitting on the Over.
Splits: Kansas City 53% of picks, 63% of the money — a 10-point tilt, moderate. Both teams are bad (49-78 and 54-74), which usually means thin, noisy markets.
Lean: Kansas City moneyline −136, confidence 58. Money and pitching agree, which is more than most games today offer, and the wind blowing in is a third small nudge toward a low-scoring game a favourite is likelier to win. Capped at 58 by Dobnak's sample. We considered the Under instead — wind in, 62% of the crowd on the Over — and did not take it because we have no money figure on totals from this source and would be reading a crowd number as though it were a market signal.
Seattle @ Milwaukee · 2:10 PM ET
Kirby is the better pitcher by two thirds of a run and Seattle is the worse team by eighteen games — 60-67 against 78-49. Milwaukee is home, in a dome, and beat these Mariners handily. Everything about this game is a tug-of-war between a pitching edge for the visitor and a team-quality edge for the host, and the −127 sits almost exactly where that tension resolves.
Splits: Seattle 35% of picks and 42% of the money — a 7-point drift toward the dog, which on this board is background noise rather than signal. Milwaukee holds 65% of tickets and 58% of dollars.
No lean. Pitching says Seattle, record and home field say Milwaukee, and the money leans Seattle by an amount too small to break the tie. Where signals conflict we make no call, and this is the cleanest example of it on the slate.
NY Yankees @ Baltimore · 6:35 PM ET
Cole is the best starter working today and Bradish is not far off him, which is why the total is 8.0 and 54% of picks sit on the Under. The forecast is 61% rain, comfortably the biggest weather variable on the board — a delay shortens the game and a postponement voids everything, and either outcome scrambles a total.
Splits: New York 62% of picks and 67% of the money. A 5-point gap in the same direction as the crowd is not a signal; it is the market and the public agreeing, which is what usually happens.
Lean: Heliot Ramos Under 1.5 Hits+Runs+RBIs −105 — published on today's MLB card, where we have also written the strongest case against it. No team pick from this game: laying −125 on a game with a 61% chance of rain is paying full price for a coin flip about the weather.
Washington @ Texas · 8:05 PM ET
deGrom against a rookie left-hander is the sort of matchup that gets overpriced, and −159 to −168 suggests it already has been. Alvarez's 3.72 is the better ERA of the two and nobody is treating it that way, which is usually correct — small samples on young arms are the trap we keep naming — but it is worth stating that the market is pricing reputation as much as results here. Globe Life Field is a dome, so no weather. Washington won this same series game 6−0 last night.
Splits: Washington 40% of picks and 44% of the money — a 4-point gap, noise. More telling: the total has drawn no consensus action at all, 0% on both sides, meaning there is not yet a market to read.
No lean. The moneyline signal is inside the noise band, the total has no market to speak of, and the two sources we captured disagree by nine cents on the price. That is three reasons to wait and none to act.
LA Angels @ Houston · 8:10 PM ET
Grayson Rodriguez's 7.17 ERA is the worst figure on this page by more than two runs, and he is throwing in a dome against a Houston lineup in a pennant race. Lambert's 3.11 is the second-best mark on the slate. That is the widest starter mismatch of the day and the −185 reflects it.
Splits: the crowd is 63% Houston while the money is split exactly 50/50 — a 13-point drift toward the Angels that only gets the dollars back to even. That is a weaker statement than it looks: the money is not on the Angels, it merely declines to pile onto Houston at that price.
Lean: Over 8.5, and we are not publishing it as a pick. The read is straightforward — a 7.17 ERA in a dome against a good lineup, with the money declining to back the favourite at −185 in a way that fits a high-scoring game rather than a comfortable one. We could not capture a priced total at a named book before our cutoff, only the 8.5 number itself, and we do not publish a leg without a real price attached. It goes in the report as a lean and stays off the board.
Ranking the leans, and what we were least sure about
Six leans, three no-leans. Ranked by confidence: San Francisco moneyline (61), then Kansas City (58) and Chicago White Sox (58) level, then the two player props carried on the card, then the LA Angels/Houston Over we could not price. The three games we made no call on — St. Louis at Cincinnati, Seattle at Milwaukee, Washington at Texas — are not oversights. In the first the market already agrees with us, in the second our own signals point at opposite teams, and in the third there is barely a market yet.
Sources
- Betting splits (picks vs wagers): Covers MLB consensus, captured 8:12–8:20 AM ET
- Lines, totals, starters and weather: our lineup service MLB Daily Lineups, 8:18 AM ET, and ESPN MLB schedule, 8:14 AM ET
- Attempted and unavailable: our data platform Games page — no data returned across five attempts, 8:01–8:41 AM ET