After an awesome Wild Card week, the four Division Series all start on a glorious Saturday stuffed with playoff baseball. In the third game of the day, the ALDS featuring the two AL East heavyweights gets underway as the New York Yankees visit the Tampa Bay Rays, with first pitch scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET. Let’s dive into the matchup and take a look at my top three best bets from the player prop market in this Game 1 matchup.
In the big picture, the Rays are slight home favorites at -135 on the Moneyline, but the Yankees are getting 70% of the bets on the Moneyline as of Saturday afternoon at +112 on the Moneyline. The over/under is 7.0 runs, with 65% of the bets on the over.
For each Major League Baseball matchup, DraftKings Sportsbook has a wide variety of batter and pitcher props on the board. Let’s take a look at my top plays from this Game 1 Yankees-Rays matchup on Saturday night.
Yankees at Rays Prop Bets for Saturday 10/3/26
Ben Rice 3+ Hits + Runs + RBI (+161)
Rice comes into this series red hot after going 5-for-9 with two homers in the two-game Wild Card series against the Red Sox. He had 14 HRR (hits, runs and RBI) in those two games, continuing his success in the rivalry. He also thrived this year against the Rays, going 16-for-45 (.356) with 40 HRR and an average of 3.1 HRR per game against Tampa.
At the Trop, he went 11-for-24 with five homers, which is part of the reason that Rice’s home run props are one of the most popular bets of the day. While that’s an attractive play as well, Rice has multiple ways to get to 3+ HRR, with a home run being just one of the paths to success.
Rice hasn’t had much success against Drew Rasmussen in the past, but the 27-year-old lefty is so locked in that he still makes sense as a solid value with this prop as one of my best bets from Saturday’s game.
Cedric Mullins 2+ Hits + Runs + RBI (+148)
While I didn’t take Rice in my top home run props for the day, I did take a flier on Cedric Mullins. Mullins only hit .205 with a .281 wOBA in his first season with the Rays, but he did better down the stretch, going 5-for-18 in his last five games with 10 HRR. In September, he averaged 1.2 HRR per game with 20 HRR in 17 appearances.
He gets a good matchup in Game 1 against Gerrit Cole, since he is 12-for-38 (.316) in his past meetings with Cole, including a pair of home runs. He homered against Cole in New York just over a week ago and will look to carry that success into October.
Mullins has played in the postseason twice in his career, going 0-for-12 with the Orioles in 2023. But in 2024, he went 3-for-7 with 2+ HRR in each of his two games in that Wild Card Series. He could be a sneaky contributor in this matchup against Cole and getting him at +148 for just 2+ HRR is a great value.
Cody Bellinger 2+ Total Bases (+154)
Bellinger was another Yankee who came into the postseason hot and raked against the Red Sox. He and Rice have carried the Yankees’ offense in the absence of Aaron Judge. Bellinger hit .287 in 21 games with 43 total bases (2.0 TB per game).
In Game 1 against Boston, he had just a single, but he had 5 TB in Game 2, including a home run. In the playoffs last year, Bellinger had multiple total bases in three of his seven games against the Red Sox and Blue Jays.
Bellinger is 4-for-18 (.222) against Rasmussen in his career, but he has been successful enough as a playoff contributor in the past to like him to get at either two hits or an extra-base hit to go over this prop on Saturday.
Another way to be more aggressive is to combine these three Game 1 props into a Same Game Parlay on DraftKings Sportsbook. The odds of that SGP stack up to a strong +1100.
