Gallery Sports’ Betting Picks for April 14, 2023

After winning his only bet on Thursday while also giving out two value-packed futures bets, Dalton Brown puts his 27-17 season record on the line with three more MLB bets for Friday’s slate.

6:07 p.m. CT: Tampa Bay Rays at Toronto Blue Jays

The Pick: Rays First 5 Innings (-117) at BetRivers

The Tampa Bay Rays are 13-0 and the story of the 2023 season to date, yet I still believe they are undervalued in their series opener Friday night in Toronto. The Blue Jays are sending Jose Berrios to the mound, a pitcher who has quickly become one of my favorites to fade across baseball. Berrios has been abysmal so far in 2023, allowing 14 combined runs to the Angels and Royals over 9.2 innings of work. This terrible start follows a season in which the righty posted a 5.11 xERA in 2022, putting him in the bottom 9% of MLB pitchers. Berrios has been a mess for a while now, and Tampa Bay is not a team he should want any part of facing. The Rays have devoured right-handed pitching to the tune of a 170 wRC+ and battered Berrios for 10 runs over 13.1 innings of work last season. Drew Rasmussen, who has hurled 13 scoreless innings to begin 2023, starts for Tampa Bay. This is a mismatch on the mound and should be priced differently on the first five innings line than it is.

8:40 p.m. CT: New York Mets at Oakland Athletics

The Pick: Mets First 5 Innings -0.5 (-110) at BetMGM

Two of my favorite early-season betting angles will collide Friday night in Oakland when the A’s open a three-game series against Kodai Senga and the Mets. Senga has won us money twice already this season as the Japanese righty continues to be undervalued in April. He’s allowed just two runs in 11.1 innings this season, despite being exposed to the same offense twice in a row. Friday, he’ll take on arguably the least talented offense in the league in the A’s, and I’d be surprised if he gave up more than one through the first five innings. James Kaprielian starts for Oakland, hoping to find some modicum of success after allowing 12 earned runs in just 9.2 innings against Cleveland and Tampa Bay. For my money, the Mets are the most talented of those three offenses, so I wouldn’t count on it. Kaprielian was particularly poor at home all last season, allowing a 5.09 ERA compared to 3.67 on the road. Expect Senga to handle business and for the superior Mets lineup to take advantage of Oakland’s shaky starting pitcher.

9:10 p.m. CT: Chicago Cubs at Los Angeles Dodgers

The Pick: Cubs First 5 Innings +0.5 (+102) at FanDuel

It can feel like running into a buzzsaw to fade the Dodgers at home, but this pitching matchup is too advantageous for the Cubs for me to pass it up. Chicago sends lefty Justin Steele to the mound, an unheralded-but-dominant pitcher who has tossed 12 innings of one-run ball through two starts this season. Steele allows a very soft contact profile. On 31 batted balls against him this season, he’s yet to allow anything Statcast views as a “barrel,” – so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s put up such excellent numbers. His last two months of 2022 saw him post ERAs of 2.11 and 0.96, so his dominance goes back a little longer than meets the eye, too. I think he’ll keep the Dodgers’ lineup somewhat quiet in the early going and allow the Cubs’ offense to grab an early lead over Noah Syndergaard. The Dodgers’ veteran righty is not quite what he used to be, and it’s shown thus far in 2023. Syndergaard is struggling to miss bats, as evidenced by the seven runs he’s allowed through 10 innings of work while striking out only eight batters.