With Monday being one of two possible off-days, you never know what to expect from a Monday slate. Thankfully for baseball fans, teams have stacked their schedule for today, with 13 games (including a double-header between the Milwaukee Brewers and Chicago Cubs) set for this evening.
With so many teams in action, the slate of starting pitchers is impressive. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes is the headliner, but he’s far from the only stud who will toe the rubber tonight.
Here are my three favorite starting pitcher prop bets for tonight’s games at DraftKings Sportsbook.
Best Starting Pitcher Prop Bets on DraftKings Sportsbook
Eury Pérez to Record a Win (+180)
Pérez is coming off of a pair of rough outings, but that shouldn’t overshadow the Dominican’s strong season in his comeback from Tommy John surgery. In 12 starts, Pérez has posted a 3.58 ERA, recording five wins, which would imply +140 odds before considering the matchup and the fact that all five have come in his last eight starts. His fastball has regularly sat north of 100 miles per hour, with higher spin rates than any other pitcher.
Both teams’ form gives this bet even better value. Since the All-Star break, the Miami Marlins have gone 15-14 to give themselves at least a prayer at the playoffs, trailing the final Wild Card spot by seven games. The St. Louis Cardinals, on the other hand, have gone just 10-18 with the league’s second-worst OPS across that span. St. Louis has now lost five straight games and now goes on the road, where its OPS has been 36 points worse and where it has just a 26-34 record. Pérez has posted a stellar 2.08 ERA in four home starts this season, picking up a pair of wins.
Paul Skenes O1.5 Earned Runs Allowed (-125)
Skenes allowed four earned runs in just four innings against the white-hot Milwaukee Brewers in his most recent start last Tuesday, posting just a 36 game score, the worst outing of his career. Admittedly, this one’s a little risky: he’s only allowed two or more earned runs in back-to-back starts just twice this season, and two of his three genuinely poor outings have come on the road against the Brewers, who he’s obviously not facing tonight.
Still, the Toronto Blue Jays have been even better on offense than Milwaukee since the All-Star break, with a ridiculous .877 OPS. That number is partially buoyed by a series in Colorado in which the Blue Jays scored 45 runs across three games, but 14 runs at home against the Texas Rangers on Saturday is pretty good too. Toronto isn’t particularly suited to take advantage of Skenes’ lone weakness — it records hard hits at merely the 13th-highest rate — but elite offense tends to beat elite pitching. Six innings and two runs in a narrow defeat — a reasonable expectation for tonight — would be poor for Skenes and Skenes alone.
Gavin Williams U4.5 Hits Allowed (+100)
The Arizona Diamondbacks’ decision to deal Eugenio Suárez at the trade deadline without receiving any of the Seattle Mariners’ top 10 prospects seemed like one of the larger missteps of the season, but so far, it’s worked: Suárez has just a .483 OPS in his first 16 games back in a Mariners uniform and the Diamondbacks have posted an .811 OPS — the league’s fourth-best mark — since dealing him. In the short term, both trends can be real, but it’d be foolish to say that Arizona is better without Suárez. Three games against the Athletics and six against the Rockies in that span has helped.
It’s not like Williams is consistent — after a four-start stretch in which he pitched to a 1.30 ERA, he conceded five hits and four earned runs in three innings as his Cleveland Guardians lost to the Miami Marlins last Wednesday — but at +100, this prop is great value, given that he’s given up five or fewer hits in each of his past seven starts and four or fewer in five of those seven. The main concern here is that the Guardians’ bullpen is taxed, but Williams threw 126 pitches in a thwarted no-hit bid against the New York Mets on August 6 and might need another short outing to protect his arm.
