Who doesn’t love an underdog?
Betting on an underdog is the easiest way to get the most bang for your buck with a single wager, yet it’s always a somewhat risky endeavor. I mean, they’re underdogs for a reason, right? Still, there’s no sport where the underdog comes through more often than in baseball. Over the course of a 162-game season, even the best teams are going to lose about 60 times a year. The volatility of results throughout the season makes playing underdogs a fun way to go, and yesterday, these picks stayed hot with 2-of-3 hits in Friday’s upsets.
With that in mind, let’s go looking for dogs this Saturday night on the DraftKings Sportsbook.
Best MLB Underdog Bets, Picks
Mets Moneyline (+112)
The Mets have won four straight after sweeping the Guardians in Cleveland and winning the first game of this series on Friday, 6-4. Maybe they just needed to get the trade deadline behind them to start playing more freely to gain a little momentum in their disappointing season. The Pirates, on the other hand, have been slumping with just two wins in their last 11 games. They’ve lost four straight and sunk to last place in the division, although they’re still very much in the NL Wild Card race coming into the last several weeks of the season.
The Mets will start 36-year-old righty Robert Stock in this matchup, who has spent time with the Padres and Red Sox before joining the Mets this year. After posting a solid 2.91 ERA and 2.30 FIP in 21 2/3 innings in the minors, he went five innings in his only MLB appearance, allowing one run on three hits against the Marlins and taking a tough-luck loss.
He’ll be opposed in this start by Bubba Chandler of the Pirates, who has gone 4-8 with a 4.57 ERA this year. He has given up multiple runs in five of his last six starts and hasn’t worked very deep into games, which has been a problem with the Pirates’ shaky bullpen. Chandler does still have tons of raw potential and is a familiar prospect name, which is why he and the Pirates are favored on Saturday.
However, given how the Mets have been gathering some momentum and the Pirates have skidded a little bit, it makes sense to grab the value and take the Mets to keep things going against Chandler. The Mets have some fun young outfielders in their lineup, and Carson Benge has been especially productive on this road trip, although he did leave Friday’s game with left wrist soreness and his status is uncertain for Saturday. It’s definitely too little, too late to save their season, but the Mets could be a fun spoiler team down the stretch with important series against contenders.
Astros Moneyline (+107)
The Astros are back on top of the AL West after going 8-2 in their last 10 games. They took the first game of their series in San Diego on Friday night, 6-3. Cam Smith, whom I highlighted as a value play for Saturday, stepped up with a pair of homers in that road win, and the Astros bullpen held the Padres scoreless for the final four innings to allow for the comeback off Robbie Ray in his Padres debut.
The Astros will give the ball to Peter Lambert as they look to make it two in a row in San Diego on Saturday. The 29-year-old righty has been a nice reclamation project for the Astros this season and has gone 8-5 with a 3.06 ERA. The Astros have won five of Lambert’s last six starts, including each of his last three. He has allowed two earned runs or fewer in each of those six outings, going 2-0 with a 2.10 ERA.
He’ll be opposed by Michael King, who definitely has the potential to dominate when at his best, but has struggled at times this season. He’s given up seven runs on 11 hits in 11 innings over his last two starts and issued four walks in his last outing on the road in Arizona. The 31-year-old is definitely having a solid bounce-back season but hasn’t been untouchable.
The Astros’ offense has been streaky all season long, but they’ve been gathering enough momentum lately to look for them to get enough runs off King to put Lambert in a place to secure them another win on the road and claim a series win in San Diego on Saturday night.
Rays Moneyline (+105)
The Rays are another first-place team that is a slight plus-money underdog on the road on Saturday. They face the Mariners in Seattle in the late game, and they’re the only team that I’m repeating from yesterday’s picks. They came through for me on Friday night behind a dominant start from Drew Rasmussen and held on to win, 2-1.
The Rays have won four straight and are 10-3 in their last 13 games. They’ll look to Griffin Jax to post another good start on Saturday to keep them rolling. Jax has been very strong lately, even though the team lost his last two starts. He allowed one earned run in five innings at home against the Rangers and the White Sox, with a total of 18 strikeouts, but he didn’t get much run support and took a pair of losses. He has allowed exactly one earned run in four of his last five outings, and the only exception was a rough outing against the red-hot Red Sox in Boston.
The Mariners haven’t had the same success as the Red Sox or even the Astros and Rays. They’ve dropped three of their last four games and are five games under .500. They have lots of nice pieces and the real potential to gel for a postseason push like they did last year, but they haven’t shown that direction just yet this season. They have only scored five runs total in their last four games, and the only offense they got on Friday was a ninth-inning solo homer from Julio Rodriguez.
George Kirby will start for the Mariners on Saturday, and the 28-year-old righty has had a solid season with a 3.76 ERA and an 8-9 record. He has been outstanding in his last two home starts, spinning 13 shutout innings and allowing only eight hits, but in his road outing in between, the Rangers thumped him for seven runs in four innings, with four homers in that matchup.
Kirby’s home success is why the Mariners are favored, but the Rays have been hot enough to give them a solid chance to overcome that on Saturday. It’s surprising to get two first-place teams as plus-money underdogs, and it’s unusual to get the Rays as road dogs in back-to-back days, but both scenarios make this matchup too good of a situation to pass up on Saturday night.
If you choose to stack the three MLB underdog picks in this post into a parlay, you can get juicy +799 odds if the three picks run the table. Since they do come with plenty of risk, though, it also makes sense to play them individually and as a round robin, so that if any two of the three hit, you’ll still secure some serious payouts.
