[extreme Tim Robinson voice]
“Fri-day night. I’m thinking that we just might, fly away to someplace where we can bet on baseball.”
But we don’t have to fly to anywhere else. We can bet on baseball right here. Here are my top two MLB picks on DraftKings Sportsbook for tonight’s massive slate.
Miami Marlins at New York Mets
Marlins ML (+152)
For as excited as I am to get to watch Jonah Tong pitch tonight — we Canadians support other Canadians — there’s another 22-year-old phenom taking the mound at Citi Field this evening: Eury Perez. It took Perez a couple of starts to shake off the cobwebs, but since the beginning of July, the Marlins’ ace has looked every bit as impressive as he did when he was a rookie back in 2023. In that 10-game span, Perez possesses a 2.63 ERA and a 0.82 WHIP to go along with a 26.9% strikeout rate. Heck, even if you include Perez’s first four appearances of 2025, he’s still managed a 2.91 xERA across 70.2 innings of work. The man is healthy again and he’s nasty.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully understand why the Mets are favored in this spot, even with the presence of Perez. Tong looked nearly unhittable at Double-A this season, then responded to a Triple-A call-up with 11.2 scoreless innings across two starts. New York also leads MLB in wRC+ (157) and wOBA (.391) over the past two weeks. All that said, while Tong could be amazing in the big leagues, we already know Perez’s track record. I’ll side with the known commodity — especially with odds this long.
New York Yankees at Chicago White Sox
Over 9 (-109)
The Yankees have been taking advantage of a soft schedule this week, picking up four wins in four days against the White Sox and the Nationals. More importantly, at least for the purposes of this bet, they’ve done so with quite a bit of offensive force, scoring double-digit runs in three of those contests. While that level of run-scoring potency is realistically untenable, this isn’t really out of the ordinary for the Bronx Bombers, who enter Friday’s action leading MLB in home runs (228) and ISO (.206) by a mile. This lineup can put crooked numbers on the board faster than any other club in the league. Yoendrys Gomez should be afraid.
On the other side, I also think the White Sox will be able to carry their weight towards this over. Losing a red-hot Luis Robert to the IL isn’t ideal, but this young Chicago squad has been near-elite since the All-Star break, sitting eighth in MLB in that span in both wOBA (.332) and wRC+ (112).
It’s not like Carlos Rodon has been all that sharp the past two months, either. Since the beginning of July, the left-hander has managed a 3.83 ERA, yet a .214 BABIP is keeping that figure in a respectable range. Rodon has an ugly 12.9% walk rate across his last nine starts and that’s translated to a 4.53 FIP. At some point, he’s going to pay for all those free passes. Why not tonight?
