Playoff baseball is here! A quadruple-header of wild-card games kicks off the MLB postseason on Tuesday.
The pregame narrative: I like red-hot New York Mets star Francisco Lindor to continue mashing and also have plays on starters Michael King and Cole Ragans.
Check out the best MLB playoff prop bets for October 1.
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Best bet: King over 5.5 Ks (-113)
This line feels light, even for a playoff game.
The San Diego Padres right-hander gets an Atlanta Braves team that finished ninth in the majors in strikeout rate and 10th versus righties.
Multiple bats in their lineup (Matt Olson, Jorge Soler, Ramon Laureano and Travis d’Arnaud) had above-average K rates versus right-handed pitching.
King posted a 27.7 K% in the regular season, a top-10 mark among starting pitchers.
He had a 29.5% rate in a split role last season and fanned 33.2% of the batters he faced in 2022 when he was exclusively a reliever. The point: King is an elite strikeout arm (No. 4 in K% since 2022, minimum 300 innings).
He was 9-2 versus this line in the second half and went at least six innings in more than half of those starts.
Even if King can’t get to that six-inning mark, he has the swing-and-miss ability to blow past this line.
Key stat: King recorded six-plus Ks in 21 of 30 starts.
Quick picks
Lindor over 1.5 bases (+135)
New York’s dynamic shortstop, who powered the Mets to a playoff spot with a dramatic ninth-inning homer yesterday, posted a .933 OPS in the second half.
He’s hitting as well as ever before (his 136 wRC+ was a career-high mark) and has cleared this line in nine of his last 15 starts.
Lindor managed two-plus bases in 47.4% of his games this season, according to Team Rankings, which was the 12th-best mark in MLB.
The 30-year-old has hit 22 of his 33 homers versus right-handers, and he’ll start by seeing what hasn’t been the best version of Milwaukee Brewers ace Freddy Peralta (his 4.19 FIP is his highest mark since 2019).
Milwaukee’s bullpen is great (NL-best 2.72 ERA, sixth in K%). But this number screams value for the switch-hitter who bats well from both sides of the plate.
Ragans over 16.5 outs (-117): With clear action coming in on the over, this number has gone from -110 to -117 to -125 (still playable for me) by 10 a.m. ET on Tuesday morning.
The Orioles are a deep and powerful lineup but Ragans has shut down plenty of good teams this season. He finished with a 3.14 ERA and 223 strikeouts.
Ragans ranked top five among starters in FIP and WAR, sixth in K% and eighth in innings pitched.
Leashes are rightfully going to be shorter this time of year, but Ragans is Kansas City’s ace and this isn’t a must-win game even though it probably feels like it.
These teams play again tomorrow and Thursday, if necessary. That means this is all the Royals are getting from Ragans this series.
The left-hander has to deliver, but he’s probably not getting yanked at the first sign of trouble. And he has delivered on this line more often than not, topping 16.5 outs in 24 of 32 starts.
Picks made at 9:41 a.m. ET on 10/01/2024.
Chris joined NorthStar Gaming from Covers.com where he was a publishing editor and wrote betting content. Before that, he was the sports editor at VICE Canada, worked for theScore and covered the Blue Jays for MLB.com. In addition to filling out the lineup card each day for the editorial team, Chris writes frequently himself, primarily on the NBA and MLB.